Watershed forest cover and habitat restoration can offset some negative impacts of climate change on freshwater fishes and mussels

PLOS Climate
By: , and 

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Abstract

Many species of freshwater fishes and freshwater mussels have experienced population declines over the past century due to threats including habitat degradation, overexploitation, species invasion, and climate change. Management actions may offset climate-related changes to biodiversity, although identifying appropriate strategies is challenging. Our goal was to identify the impacts of climate change on freshwater biota (i.e., fish and mussel) distribution and management actions that may offset the climate change impacts across the northeastern United States. We used land use, geography, stream temperature, and streamflow variables to predict species distribution in a baseline scenario, climate change scenario, and several climate change plus land use management scenarios. We found climate change negatively impacted (i.e., reduced the probability of occurrence of) coldwater fishes and reduced the relative occurrence probability of fluvial specialist and coolwater fishes compared to other species. Increasing watershed forest cover best offset these negative impacts and minimized the predicted transition from coldwater fish dominance to warmwater fish dominance in coldwater habitats; however, no intervention fully offset the negative impacts of climate change on vulnerable fish groups (i.e., coldwater and fluvial specialist fishes). Climate change negatively impacted all vulnerable groups of mussels (e.g., lotic species, drying intolerant) and mussel species richness. Combining multiple management interventions (e.g., increase forest cover, dam removal, etc.) had the greatest potential to offset the negative impacts of climate change for freshwater mussels and fishes. This study provides managers a comparison of management interventions across a landscape to combat the impacts of climate change on biota in streams and rivers.

Suggested Citation

Rogers, J.B., DiRenzo, G.V., Roy, A.H., Carmignani, J., O’Brien, R.S., Quiñones, R.M., Richards, T., 2025, Watershed forest cover and habitat restoration can offset some negative impacts of climate change on freshwater fishes and mussels: PLOS Climate, v. 4, no. 12, e0000742, 29 p., https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000742.

Study Area

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Watershed forest cover and habitat restoration can offset some negative impacts of climate change on freshwater fishes and mussels
Series title PLOS Climate
DOI 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000742
Volume 4
Issue 12
Publication Date December 26, 2025
Year Published 2025
Language English
Publisher PLOS
Contributing office(s) Coop Res Unit Leetown
Description e0000742, 29 p.
Country United States
State Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont
Other Geospatial northeastern United States
Additional publication details