Prediction climate change effects on the Iranian Sturgeon fishes (Acipenseridae) distribution under different climatic scenarios

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of biodiversity and ecosystem management, Environmenthal sciences research insitute, University of Shahid Beheshti, Tehran

2 The Quantitative and Applied Ecology Group, School of BioSciences, the University of Melbourne, Australia

3 Department of Biodversity, Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Shahid Beheshti, Tehran

Abstract

According to the reports of the International Panel Climate Change (IPCC), there is no doubt about climate change occurring. All ecosystems on the earth have being concerned by the effects of climate change. Freshwater communities are particularly vulnerable to change, because freshwaters are already exposed to numerous anthropogenic stressors (e.g. hydrological, morphological, connectivity, water quality pressures) and many species have limited dispersal ability to cope with habitat modifications. In this study, the climate change effects on the distribution of sturgeon fishes (Acipenseridae) in Iran has been modelled under   optimistic and pessimistic climatic scenarios (2050 and 2080) by nine different algorithms (GLM, GAM, GBM, RF, CTA, FDA, MARS, ANN, SRE). The results showed that there would be a reduction between 57 and 93 percent in the distribution range of this family and no new potential area for the distribution of the fishes of this family was predicted.