Humans have altered natural patterns of fire for millennia, but the impact of human-set fires is thought to have been slight in wet closed-canopy forests. In the South Island of New Zealand, Polynesians (Māori), who arrived 700–800 calibrated years (cal y) ago, and then Europeans, who settled ∼150 cal y ago, used fire as a tool for forest clearance, but the structure and environmental consequences of these fires are poorly understood. High-resolution charcoal and pollen records from 16 lakes were analyzed to reconstruct the fire and vegetation history of the last 1,000 y. Diatom, chironomid, and element concentration data were examined to identify disturbance-related limnobiotic and biogeochemical changes within burned watersheds. At most sites, several high-severity fire events occurred within the first two centuries of Māori arrival and were often accompanied by a transformation in vegetation, slope stability, and lake chemistry. Proxies of past climate suggest that human activity alone, rather than unusually dry or warm conditions, was responsible for this increased fire activity. The transformation of scrub to grassland by Europeans in the mid-19th century triggered further, sometimes severe, watershed change, through additional fires, erosion, and the introduction of nonnative plant species. Alteration of natural disturbance regimes had lasting impacts, primarily because native forests had little or no previous history of fire and little resilience to the severity of burning. Anthropogenic burning in New Zealand highlights the vulnerability of closed-canopy forests to novel disturbance regimes and suggests that similar settings may be less resilient to climate-induced changes in the future.

The premise of this article is that climate effects on lakes can be quantified most effectively by the integration of process-oriented limnological studies with paleolimnological research, particularly when both disciplines operate within a common conceptual framework. To this end, the energy (E)-mass (m) flux framework (Em flux) is developed and applied to selected retrospective studies to demonstrate that climate variability regulates lake structure and function over diverse temporal and spatial scales through four main pathways: rapid direct transfer of E to the lake surface by irradiance, heat, and wind; slow indirect effects of E via changes in terrestrial development and subsequent m subsidies to lakes; direct influx of m as precipitation, particles, and solutes from the atmosphere; and indirect influx of water, suspended particles, and dissolved substances from the catchment. Sedimentary analyses are used to illustrate the unique effects of each pathway on lakes but suggest that interactions among mechanisms are complex and depend on the landscape position of lakes, catchment characteristics, the range of temporal variation of individual pathways, ontogenetic changes in lake basins, and the selective effects of humans on m transfers. In particular, preliminary synthesis suggests that m influx can overwhelm the direct effects of E transfer to lakes, especially when anthropogenic activities alter m subsidies from catchments.The structure and function of lake ecosystems is regulated by complex interactions among climate, humans, ecosystem morphology, and catchment characteristics, each of which varies in time and space (Schindler 2001). For example, climatic controls range from daily meteorological variations in local irradiance, temperature, and water fluxes (Keller 2007) through to large-scale interactions of the atmosphere and oceans (Trenberth and Hurrell 1994;Hurrell 1995;Mantua et al. 1997) and millennium-long changes in energy (E) and mass (m) flux around the planet (Williams et al. 1997;Diffenbaugh et al. 2006). Within this framework, chemical, physical, and ecological processes combine to determine the production and composition of aquatic communities, both uniquely and in consort with other mechanisms (Carpenter 1999). In addition, lakes are affected both by human disturbance of biotic communities and biogeochemical cycles (e.g., land use, urbanization, fisheries management) and by creation of novel stressors (e.g., acidic precipitation, toxicants, ozone loss). However, because these factors interact over diverse spatial and temporal scales, it is difficult to determine the relative importance of regulatory processes using only traditional site-based observation and experimentation. Instead, it is the premise of this article that the combined use of limnology and paleoecology represents the best means to quantify and scale interactions between climate and other control mechanisms and to develop a hierarchical understanding of how these regulatory processes are likely to influence lakes pres...

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Air temperatures in the tropical Andes have risen at an accelerated rate relative to the global average over recent decades. However, the effects of climate change on Andean lakes, which are vital to sustaining regional biodiversity and serve as an important water resource to local populations, remain largely unknown. Here, we show that recent climate changes have forced alpine lakes of the equatorial Andes towards new ecological and physical states, in close synchrony to the rapid shrinkage of glaciers regionally. Using dated sediment cores from three lakes in the southern Sierra of Ecuador, we record abrupt increases in the planktonic thalassiosiroid diatom Discostella stelligera from trace abundances to dominance within the phytoplankton. This unprecedented shift occurs against the backdrop of rising temperatures, changing atmospheric pressure fields, and declining wind speeds. Ecological restructuring in these lakes is linked to warming and/or enhanced water column stratification. In contrast to seasonally ice-covered Arctic and temperate alpine counterparts, aquatic production has not increased universally with warming, and has even declined in some lakes, possibly because enhanced thermal stability impedes the re-circulation of hypolimnetic nutrients to surface waters. Our results demonstrate that these lakes have already passed important ecological thresholds, with potentially far-reaching consequences for Andean water resources.

BackgroundAlthough arctic lakes have responded sensitively to 20th-century climate change, it remains uncertain how these ecological transformations compare with alpine and montane-boreal counterparts over the same interval. Furthermore, it is unclear to what degree other forcings, including atmospheric deposition of anthropogenic reactive nitrogen (Nr), have participated in recent regime shifts. Diatom-based paleolimnological syntheses offer an effective tool for retrospective assessments of past and ongoing changes in remote lake ecosystems.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe synthesized 52 dated sediment diatom records from lakes in western North America and west Greenland, spanning broad latitudinal and altitudinal gradients, and representing alpine (n = 15), arctic (n = 20), and forested boreal-montane (n = 17) ecosystems. Diatom compositional turnover (β-diversity) during the 20th century was estimated using Detrended Canonical Correspondence Analysis (DCCA) for each site and compared, for cores with sufficiently robust chronologies, to both the 19th century and the prior ∼250 years (Little Ice Age). For both arctic and alpine lakes, β-diversity during the 20th century is significantly greater than the previous 350 years, and increases with both latitude and altitude. Because no correlation is apparent between 20th-century diatom β-diversity and any single physical or limnological parameter (including lake and catchment area, maximum depth, pH, conductivity, [NO3 −], modeled Nr deposition, ambient summer and winter air temperatures, and modeled temperature trends 1948–2008), we used Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to summarize the amplitude of recent changes in relationship to lake pH, lake:catchment area ratio, modeled Nr deposition, and recent temperature trends.Conclusions/SignificanceThe ecological responses of remote lakes to post-industrial environmental changes are complex. However, two regions reveal concentrations of sites with elevated 20th-century diatom β-diversity: the Arctic where temperatures are increasing most rapidly, and mid-latitude alpine lakes impacted by high Nr deposition rates. We predict that remote lakes will continue to shift towards new ecological states in the Anthropocene, particularly in regions where these two forcings begin to intersect geographically.