This would lead to flooding. These floods can severely damage habitat, and disrupt nesting (and therefore egg-laying) seasons of freshwater turtles, not just Sidenecks. Floods would also wash food sources downstream at a far quicker rate than usual. However on the whole these floods would not have an overly extreme effect on Sidenecks. However if sea levels rise to the point where freshwater systems are contaminated, this could have a major effect on most freshwater turtles in this area. The increased salt content of the water would dehydrate the turtles, meaning that their bodies would lose more and more water through osmosis. This would cause them to shrivel, causing their cells to die, and eventually causing death. However it is most likely that this would not result in full extinction. The populations would take a big hit originally, but they would eventually adapt to survive in increasingly salty conditions. This is one example of how climate change would cause greater diversification within Sidenecks, so that African Sidenecks and South Americans would become decreasingly related due to new adaptations.
In Australia the most severe problems climate change causes are heatwaves. In the last 50 years the amount of days which break heat records has doubled. In the last few decades more people have died due to heatwaves than all other natural disasters combined. Inland Australia is expected to increase in temperature faster than along the coast. Oceans around Australia are severely struggling, with biodiversity on a rapid decline due to increasing acidity caused by climate change. This is causing mass destruction of coral reefs. In Australia the average rise in temperature since 1910 is 1.4° C. This is 0.3° higher than the global average. In 2019 Australia experienced the driest and hottest year recorded. This is causing the death of many trees, particularly mangroves and river species. Fires in 2019 and 2020 burnt across most of Australia more severely than ever before. Forests with vast wetlands, which have always suppressed fires, ‘burned for the first time’. Increasing temperatures and dryness will have similar effects to those which have already been discussed. However the wildfires which go hand in hand with these increased temperatures are a major problem for all wildlife in Australia. Vegetation and therefore both habitat and food webs are damaged to extraordinary levels. Insect populations decrease vastly, and soil ecosystems are massively damaged. The vast combination of factors mentioned have a massive knock-on affect on aquatic ecosystems as well, and therefore turtles like Sidenecks will be massively affected.
This is an image of an Australian wildfire.
In addition to looking at specific areas a good way to measure the effect of climate change on Sidenecks is to focus on the way in which increasing temperatures will have an affect on freshwater turtles as a whole. Already almost half of all turtle and tortoise species are at risk of extinction. Scientists at the Natural History Museum, London have been looking at the late Cretaceous period and how testudines (turtles, tortoises and terrapins) adapted to large increases in temperature in this period, roughly 66-72 million years ago. They discovered that these creatures flourished in these conditions. However they also saw that they depended on a great deal on rainfall levels. This is
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