Modeling of climate change effects on nutrients

Abstract

Nowadays, coastal waters have to face a series of common threats that are caused primarily by human activity. In particular, the overload of nutrients can lead to an evident degradation of aquatic ecosystems. Moreover, anthropogenic activities have also affected Earth’s climate. Changes in climate have the potential to alter significantly the availability and quality of waters. In the last decade, research started to focus on how anthropogenic climate change can influence the effects posed by nutrients to aquatic ecosystems. In fact, the occurrence, fate and transport of nutrients are influenced by physico-chemical processes (e.g. runoff, flooding events, nutrient speciation and distribution, water-sediment interactions) which are likely to be altered by climate change. As a result, the exposure of living organisms is affected, and so can be the effects. In this study, we present the case study of the Zero river basin, one of the main contributors of freshwater and nutrient loadings to the Venice lagoon (Italy). In order to predict the effects of climate change on the loadings of nutrients and their effects on the first trophic levels of the lagoon ecosystem, we applied a methodology integrating an ensemble of climate projections, the hydrological model SWAT and the ecological model AQUATOX.