Exploring climate change trends in major river basins and its impact on the riverine ecology, fish catch and fisheries of the Peninsular region of India: Issues and a brief overview

Abstract

Riverine fisheries will have a knock-on effect due to the changes in water flow and increased irrigation in the agriculture sector to cope with the climate change impact. The present study showed a very high perception existing in the fishing community about climate change observed in the last 10 years. About 95% of fishermen understand temperature and sea level are changing, whereas 91% responded that rainfall is changing and salinity also is increasing and 86% think extreme rainfall is affecting productivity. Moreover, though the monsoon period is shorter than the non-monsoon period, about 62.3% of the total fish catch in River Cauvery takes place during the monsoon. The variations in climate can enormously impact the inland fisheries, especially the riverine resources, their productivity and sustainability. With this view, it was attempted to (i) investigate the changing climate trends in the major river basins of the Peninsular region of India over the decades, (ii) key drivers and its implication on the fish catch, biodiversity, inland fisheries, (iii) analyse the perception of the fishermen and (iv) suggest appropriate strategies like the development of climate-smart villages and waterbodies for livelihood and sustainable utilization of the invaluable biological resources.

Histological changes in Horabagrus brachysoma acclimated to warm temperature and exposed to critical thermal maxima and minima

“…Climate change is expected to have a significant influence on tropical freshwater fish species (Ficke et al 2007;Li et al 2022;de Visser et al 2023), with 74-81% of them declining and more than half of their range becoming endangered with a 2°C rise in global temperature (Barbarossa et al 2021). It is also predicted that global climate change may also cause ''surprises'' or sudden ecological changes altering the limnological characteristics, which may lead to increased incidences of fish kills in the coming years (Ficke et al 2007;Panikkar et al 2022). Several researchers have reported fish kills due to rapid temperature changes in freshwater bodies (Nair et al 2021;Phelps et al 2019;Kangur et al 2016).…”