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Predicting outcomes of nature based solutions and river reconnection for endangered cold-water fishes in European rivers

Project description

Protecting cold-water fish in warming rivers

Climate change and river fragmentation threaten cold-water fish populations like Salmonidae across Europe. Nature-based solutions (NBS) can create cool-water refuges to mitigate extreme summer warming, but fragmented rivers often lack accessible fish passages. The combined impact of NBS and fish-pass engineering on fish diversity and behaviour remains poorly understood. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the RESOLUTE project will study how these approaches can sustain cold-water fish in warming, fragmented rivers. Using fish biotelemetry in a natural field experiment, it will test hypotheses across four different NBS and fish-pass scenarios and develop predictive models based on the results.

Objective

Climate change and river fragmentation are interacting in Europe's rivers to drive population extinctions of cold-water fishes, including those of the Salmonidae family. The effects of extreme warming in summer can be mitigated by increasing the provision of cool-water refugia through nature based solutions (NBS) that provide salmonid fishes with optimal rather than critical temperatures. However, the fishes must be able to access these refugia, which can be difficult in highly fragmented rivers, unless fish pass engineering is applied to the barriers fragmenting the river. The beneficial interactions of NBS and fish pass engineering on salmonid populations are, however, unknown. While they could facilitate behavioural thermoregulation, where fish actively move from warm areas into cooler waters (often moving >10km), fish passes also impose considerable inter- and intra-specific selectivity of fishes, often only being passable of specific size ranges and behavioural phenotypes (e.g. proactive individuals with bold, exploratory behaviours). Consequently, mitigating for warming and river fragmentation using NBS and fish pass engineering could result in considerable modifications to the diversity and distribution of fish species and phenotypes in Europe's rivers. This project aims to overcome these considerable knowledge gaps on how NBS and fish pass engineering can act in concert to provide sustainability in cold-water fishes in warming and fragmented rivers. The complementarity of an outstanding researcher in applied fish ecology with a European research group with exceptional expertise in fish spatial and trophic ecology will complete an empirical study based on fish biotelemetry methods in a natural field experiment testing relevant hypotheses within four NBS/ fish pass scenarios. The generated empirical data are then used as the basis for predictive models for simulating the outcomes of different scenarios of warming and fragmentation of global relevance.

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01

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Coordinator

BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 260 347,92
Address
FERN BARROW BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY
BH12 5BB POOLE
United Kingdom

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Region
South West (England) Dorset and Somerset Bournemouth
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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