Expanding towards contraction: the alternation of floods and droughts as a fundamental component in river ecology

Climate warming is causing more extreme weather conditions, with both larger and more intense precipitation events as well as extended periods of drought in many regions of the world. The consequence is an alteration of the hydrological regime of streams and rivers, with an increase in the probability of extreme hydrological conditions. Mediterranean-climate regions usually experience extreme hydrological events on a seasonal basis and thus, freshwater Mediterranean ecosystems can be used as natural laboratories for better understanding how climate warming will impact ecosystem structure and functioning elsewhere. In this study, we revisited and contextualized historical and new datasets collected at Fuirosos, a well-studied Mediterranean intermittent stream naturally experiencing extreme hydrological events, to illustrate how the seasonal alternation of floods and droughts influence hydrology, microbial assemblages, water chemistry, and the potential for biogeochemical processing.
The Hydroshare files contain the data and R code to reproduce the figures shown in this paper, entitled \"Expanding towards contraction: the alternation of flood and droughts as fundamental component in river ecology\".

气候变暖正引发愈发频发的极端天气事件，全球多数地区不仅会遭遇量级更大、强度更高的降水过程，还会经历持续时间更长的干旱期。上述变化会改变溪流与河流的水文节律（hydrological regime），提升极端水文事件发生的概率。地中海气候区（Mediterranean-climate regions）通常会季节性地出现极端水文事件，因此地中海淡水生态系统可作为天然实验室，助力我们更深入地理解气候变暖将如何影响其他区域的生态系统结构与功能。本研究对采集自富罗索斯（Fuirosos）——一处已被充分研究的地中海天然间歇溪流，该溪流会自然经历极端水文事件——的历史数据集与新增数据集进行了回溯梳理与情境化分析，以此阐明洪水与干旱的季节性交替如何影响水文过程、微生物群落结构、水化学特征以及生物地球化学循环潜力。
本研究附带的Hydroshare文件包含了复现本文图表所需的数据集与R代码，本文标题为《从扩张到收缩：洪水与干旱交替是河流生态学的核心组成部分》。