Climate risk assessment in tropical wetlands through integrated hydroclimatic, land cover, and community knowledge
- 1Universidad del Rosario
Abstract
Climate-risk assessments in tropical wetlands increasingly combine hydroclimatic and land-cover data, but rarely integrate them with structured community evidence on experienced impacts and adaptation priorities. We address this gap in six communities around the Complejo Cenagoso de Zapatosa, a Ramsar site, and the Morales wetland in the Colombian Caribbean. We integrated hydroclimatic records and climate-extreme indices (1991-2020), land-cover change and runoff-potential analysis (1991-2020), flood-susceptibility modelling, and structured participatory evidence from 106 participants. Mean annual temperature increased by 0.4 °C decade⁻¹, while warm nights and warm days increased by 17.1% and 17.3% decade⁻¹, respectively; precipitation and precipitation-extreme indices showed no significant domain-mean trends. Forest cover declined by 1,122.9 km², whereas flooded non-forest formations, agriculture/pasture mosaic, and oil palm increased by 800.9, 254.4, and 244.2 km², respectively, altering runoff potential. Flood susceptibility was concentrated along floodplains and wetland margins (AUC = 0.95). Of 50 valid community-reported extreme-event records, 76.0% matched the expected sign of annual instrumental anomalies; both heat records matched, while agreement reached 91.3% for floods and 53.8% for droughts. Drought mismatches indicate that annual rainfall anomalies incompletely capture wetland drought, where dry-spell persistence, water-level change, and livelihood disruption shape local experience. Community priorities emphasized wetland restoration, hydrological connectivity, fisheries governance, livelihood diversification, and monitoring. Integrating technical and community evidence therefore revealed complementary climate-risk signals and the conditions under which ecosystem-based adaptation may be locally feasible.
Related
- Modeling freshwater inflow to a tropical estuary using stochastic and neural-network approaches under contrasting hydroclimatic conditions in Brazil.
- Scenario-based assessment of urban community climate resilience under flood Risk: An integrated UCCRI–AHP–TOPSIS framework
- Microbial community structure and pathogen persistence in tropical drinking water distribution systems: the role of seasonality and treatment
- Unlocking spatial ecological assessment for tropical seagrass habitats using a new rapid assessment method (SEARAM)
- Assessment of tropical cyclone vulnerability of coastal communities in Mtwara Municipal Council, Tanzania: a Composite Vulnerability Index approach
BibTeX
@article{estradazuleta2026climate,
title = {{Climate risk assessment in tropical wetlands through integrated hydroclimatic, land cover, and community knowledge}},
author = {Juliana M. Estrada-Zuleta and Julián E Meneses Bernal and Alvaro Avila-Diaz and Benjamin Quesada},
journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/aeba00},
url = {https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeba00},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Climate risk assessment in tropical wetlands through integrated hydroclimatic, land cover, and community knowledge
AU - Juliana M. Estrada-Zuleta
AU - Julián E Meneses Bernal
AU - Alvaro Avila-Diaz
AU - Benjamin Quesada
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
JO - Environmental Research Letters
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/aeba00
UR - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeba00
AB - Climate-risk assessments in tropical wetlands increasingly combine hydroclimatic and land-cover data, but rarely integrate them with structured community evidence on experienced impacts and adaptation priorities. We address this gap in six communities around the Complejo Cenagoso de Zapatosa, a Ramsar site, and the Morales wetland in the Colombian Caribbean. We integrated hydroclimatic records and climate-extreme indices (1991-2020), land-cover change and runoff-potential analysis (1991-2020), flood-susceptibility modelling, and structured participatory evidence from 106 participants. Mean annual temperature increased by 0.4 °C decade⁻¹, while warm nights and warm days increased by 17.1% and 17.3% decade⁻¹, respectively; precipitation and precipitation-extreme indices showed no significant domain-mean trends. Forest cover declined by 1,122.9 km², whereas flooded non-forest formations, agriculture/pasture mosaic, and oil palm increased by 800.9, 254.4, and 244.2 km², respectively, altering runoff potential. Flood susceptibility was concentrated along floodplains and wetland margins (AUC = 0.95). Of 50 valid community-reported extreme-event records, 76.0% matched the expected sign of annual instrumental anomalies; both heat records matched, while agreement reached 91.3% for floods and 53.8% for droughts. Drought mismatches indicate that annual rainfall anomalies incompletely capture wetland drought, where dry-spell persistence, water-level change, and livelihood disruption shape local experience. Community priorities emphasized wetland restoration, hydrological connectivity, fisheries governance, livelihood diversification, and monitoring. Integrating technical and community evidence therefore revealed complementary climate-risk signals and the conditions under which ecosystem-based adaptation may be locally feasible.
SN - 1748-9326
ER -