Inland Fisheries Management and Climate Impact Assessment

Inland fisheries play a critical role in food security, biodiversity conservation and cultural heritage across temperate and tropical regions. Effective management must address dynamic interactions among hydrology, thermal regimes and ecosystem processes under rapid climate change. Rising air and water temperatures alter species distributions, phenologies and trophic interactions, leading to recruitment failures, shifts in predator–prey balance and novel community assemblages. Assessment frameworks now integrate downscaled climate projections, ecosystem modelling and empirical field studies to evaluate future habitat suitability, safe harvest limits and resilience hotspots. Management responses range from adaptive harvest regulations and habitat restoration to experimental interventions under the resist–accept–direct (RAD) paradigm, which guides decisions on when to conserve existing conditions, accommodate change or steer ecosystems towards new states. Incorporating local and Indigenous knowledge alongside quantitative assessments enhances governance outcomes and bolsters the capacity of inland fisheries to withstand climate‐driven stressors.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Inland Fisheries Management and Climate Impact Assessment publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in inland fisheries management and climate impact assessment across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Phenological mismatch: Asynchrony between timing of biological events (e.g., spawning) and optimal environmental conditions or prey availability.

Resist–Accept–Direct (RAD) framework: Decision‐making model categorising management actions as resisting change, accepting change or directing ecosystems toward new desired states.

Safe operating space: Range of environmental conditions within which ecosystem functions and sustainable harvest can be maintained without crossing critical thresholds.

Thermal–optical habitat area: Proportion of a waterbody that simultaneously meets species‐specific temperature and light requirements for growth and reproduction.

References

1. Lagging spawning and increasing phenological extremes jeopardize walleye (Sander vitreus) in north‐temperate lakes. Limnology and Oceanography Letters (2024).
2. Water clarity and temperature effects on walleye safe harvest: an empirical test of the safe operating space concept. Ecosphere (2019).
3. Resisting ecosystem transformation through an intensive whole‐lake fish removal experiment. Fisheries Management and Ecology (2022).
4. Case study: Applying the resist–accept–direct framework to an Ojibwe Tribe's relationship with the natural world. Fisheries Management and Ecology (2022).