Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- I Introductory Chapters
- II Ecophysiology
- III Aquatic Bryophytes
- 6 Ecological and Physiological Effects of Changing Climate on Aquatic Bryophytes
- 7 Aquatic Bryophytes under Ultraviolet Radiation
- IV Desert and Tropical Ecosystems
- V Alpine, Arctic, and Antarctic Ecosystems
- VI Sphagnum and Peatlands
- VII Changes in Bryophyte Distribution with Climate Change: Data and Models
- VIII Conclusions
- Index
- References
6 - Ecological and Physiological Effects of Changing Climate on Aquatic Bryophytes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- I Introductory Chapters
- II Ecophysiology
- III Aquatic Bryophytes
- 6 Ecological and Physiological Effects of Changing Climate on Aquatic Bryophytes
- 7 Aquatic Bryophytes under Ultraviolet Radiation
- IV Desert and Tropical Ecosystems
- V Alpine, Arctic, and Antarctic Ecosystems
- VI Sphagnum and Peatlands
- VII Changes in Bryophyte Distribution with Climate Change: Data and Models
- VIII Conclusions
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
If you go hunting for bryophytes in the tropics, you soon learn that streambeds are depauperate and searching is futile. Witness the absence of such aquatic taxa as Fontinalis, Hygroamblystegium, and Rhynchostegium riparioides, so common in temperate mountainous areas. Ruttner (1955) reports that Fontinalis is especially common at 10–15 m depth in alpine lakes, but that in the tropics it is nowhere. And consider the paucity of bryophytes in exposed, warm valley and flatland temperate streams. Ward (1986) described the altitudinal zonation in a Rocky Mountain, USA, stream and noted that bryophytes had the greatest biomass in headwaters, whereas tracheophytes were absent from higher elevations. Suren (1996), in studying 118 streams on South Island, New Zealand, reported that sites with no bryophytes had a lower mean elevation than did sites with bryophytes. Hence rising temperatures are likely to force aquatic bryophytes into higher elevations or more northern locations.
Furthermore, factors that correlate with warmer temperatures may alter bryophyte distributions. Cappelletti and Bowden (2006) suggest that global warming will increase the soluble reactive phosphorus, water temperature, and discharge of Arctic rivers, hence changing other factors that might favor tracheophytes over bryophytes or change the species composition of the aquatic bryophyte communities. Elevated temperatures can be expected to change nutrients, CO2 concentrations, flow rates, flooding depth and frequency, competing primary producers, light penetration, and seasonal coordination.
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- Information
- Bryophyte Ecology and Climate Change , pp. 93 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
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