@article{MarkovicCarrizoKaercheretal.2017,
  author    = {Markovic, Danijela and Carrizo, Savrina F. and Kaercher, Oskar and Walz, Ariane and David, Jonathan N. W.},
  title     = {Vulnerability of European freshwater catchments to climate change},
  series = {Global change biology},
  volume    = {23},
  journal   = {Global change biology},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {1354-1013},
  doi       = {10.1111/gcb.13657},
  pages     = {3567 -- 3580},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Climate change is expected to exacerbate the current threats to freshwater ecosystems, yet multifaceted studies on the potential impacts of climate change on freshwater biodiversity at scales that inform management planning are lacking. The aim of this study was to fill this void through the development of a novel framework for assessing climate change vulnerability tailored to freshwater ecosystems. The three dimensions of climate change vulnerability are as follows: (i) exposure to climate change, (ii) sensitivity to altered environmental conditions and (iii) resilience potential. Our vulnerability framework includes 1685 freshwater species of plants, fishes, molluscs, odonates, amphibians, crayfish and turtles alongside key features within and between catchments, such as topography and connectivity. Several methodologies were used to combine these dimensions across a variety of future climate change models and scenarios. The resulting indices were overlaid to assess the vulnerability of European freshwater ecosystems at the catchment scale (18 783 catchments). The Balkan Lakes Ohrid and Prespa and Mediterranean islands emerge as most vulnerable to climate change. For the 2030s, we showed a consensus among the applied methods whereby up to 573 lake and river catchments are highly vulnerable to climate change. The anthropogenic disruption of hydrological habitat connectivity by dams is the major factor reducing climate change resilience. A gap analysis demonstrated that the current European protected area network covers <25\% of the most vulnerable catchments. Practical steps need to be taken to ensure the persistence of freshwater biodiversity under climate change. Priority should be placed on enhancing stakeholder cooperation at the major basin scale towards preventing further degradation of freshwater ecosystems and maintaining connectivity among catchments. The catchments identified as most vulnerable to climate change provide preliminary targets for development of climate change conservation management and mitigation strategies.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{KaercherFrankWalzetal.2019,
  author    = {K{\"a}rcher, Oskar and Frank, Karin and Walz, Ariane and Markovic, Danijela},
  title     = {Scale effects on the performance of niche-based models of freshwater fish distributions},
  series = {Ecological modelling : international journal on ecological modelling and engineering and systems ecolog},
  volume    = {405},
  journal   = {Ecological modelling : international journal on ecological modelling and engineering and systems ecolog},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Amsterdam},
  issn      = {0304-3800},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.05.006},
  pages     = {33 -- 42},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {Niche-based species distribution models (SDMs) have become an essential tool in conservation and restoration planning. Given the current threats to freshwater biodiversity, it is of fundamental importance to address scale effects on the performance of niche-based SDMs of freshwater species' distributions. The scale effects are addressed here in the context of hierarchical catchment ordering, considered as counterpart to coarsening grain-size by increasing grid-cell size. We combine fish occurrence data from the Danube River Basin, the hierarchical catchment ordering and multiple environmental factors representing topographic, climatic and anthropogenic effects to model fish occurrence probability across multiple scales. We focus on 1st to 5th order catchments. The spatial scale (hierarchical catchment order) only marginally influences the mean performance of SDMs, however the uncertainty of the estimates increases with scale. Key predictors and their relative importance are scale and species dependent. Our findings have useful implications for choosing proper species dependent spatial scales for river rehabilitation measures, and for conservation planning in areas where fine grain species data are unavailable.},
  language  = {en}
}