Combining Hydrologic Simulations and Stream‐network Models to Reveal Flow‐ecology Relationships in a Large Alpine Catchment

Flow regimes profoundly influence river organisms and ecosystem functions, but regulatory approaches often lack the scientific basis to support sustainable water allocation. In part, this reflects challenge of understanding ecological effects flow variability over different temporal spatial domains. Here, we use a process-based distributed hydrological model simulate 23 years natural regime in 100 bioassessment sites across Adige River network (NE Italy), identify typical nivo-glacial, nivo-pluvial, pluvial reaches. We then applied stream-network models (SSN) investigate relationships between hydrologic macroinvertebrate metrics while accounting for autocorrelation local habitat conditions. Macroinvertebrate correlated most strongly with summer, winter, variation streamflow, varied types. For example (i) taxon richness appeared limited by high summer flows winter nivo-glacial streams, respectively; (ii) invertebrate grazers increased proportionally annual coefficient streams tended decline streams. Although land-use quality also affected benthic communities, was associated autocorrelation. These findings highlight importance developing environmental management policies ways that reflect specific hydro-ecological land contexts. Our analyses illustrate spatially-explicit account auto-correlation when quantifying flow-ecology relationships.