Effects of Land Use on Lake Nutrients: The Importance of Scale, Hydrologic Connectivity, and Region

Soranno, Patricia A.; Cheruvelil, Kendra Spence; Wagner, Tyler; Webster, Katherine E.; Bremigan, Mary T.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135454

Cited by 96 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…These results build on studies demonstrating the important role of scale, hydrologic connectivity, and geographic region influencing how land use impacts lakes (Soranno et al. ). Understanding and managing trends in water clarity, and quality more broadly, represents an important challenge for water resource managers, especially in the face of mounting environmental changes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Annual precipitation regulates spatial and temporal drivers of lake water clarity

Rose

Greb

Diebel

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

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Understanding how and why lakes vary and respond to different drivers through time and space is needed to understand, predict, and manage freshwater quality in an era of rapidly changing land use and climate. Water clarity regulates many characteristics of aquatic ecosystems and is responsive to watershed features, making it a sentinel of environmental change. However, whether precipitation alters the relative importance of features that influence lake water clarity or the spatial scales at which they operate is unknown. We used a data set of thousands of northern temperate lakes and asked (1) How does water clarity differ between a very wet vs. dry year? (2) Does the relative importance of different watershed features, or the spatial extent at which they are measured, vary between wet and dry years? (3) What lake and watershed characteristics regulate long-term water clarity trends? Among lakes, water clarity was reduced and less variable in the wet year than in the dry year; furthermore, water clarity was reduced much more in high-clarity lakes during the wet year than in low-clarity lakes. Climate, land use/land cover, and lake morphometry explained most variance in clarity among lakes in both years, but the spatial scales at which some features were important differed between the dry and wet years. Watershed percent agriculture was most important in the dry year, whereas riparian zone percent agriculture (around each lake and upstream features) was most important in the wet year. Between 1991 and 2012, water clarity declined in 23% of lakes and increased in only 6% of lakes. Conductance influenced the direction of temporal trend (clarity declined in lakes with low conductance), whereas the proportion of watershed wetlands, catchment-to-lake-area ratio, and lake maximum depth interacted with antecedent precipitation. Many predictors of water clarity, such as lake depth and landscape position, are features that cannot be readily managed. Given trends of increasing precipitation, eliminating riparian zone agriculture or keeping it <10% of area may be an effective option to maintain or improve water clarity.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Annual precipitation regulates spatial and temporal drivers of lake water clarity

Rose

Greb

Diebel

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

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“…Lower elevation sites from cluster 1 and 3, in the southern region zone, where the lake is narrow and shallow, are more severely affected by drought and are characterized by slower water flow, which implies greater water compartmentalization and site-specific biochemical profiles. Coupled with greater intensive agricultural pressure and other human influence, sites from cluster 1 and 3 are more susceptible to contaminant, nutrient and dissolved solid accumulation [57, 58]. The southern region zone also presents a greater concentration of rice paddy fields and a higher overall agrarian pressure, which combined with a lack of human and animal waste monitoring, the unregulated use of agrochemicals and pesticides [59, 60], and general poor irrigation and domestic practices, create a highly contaminated environment, contributing to what others have called a ‘pathogenic landscape’ [13].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal and Spatial Environmental Influence on Opisthorchis viverrini Intermediate Hosts, Abundance, and Distribution: Insights on Transmission Dynamics and Sustainable Control

et al. 2016

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BackgroundOpisthorchis viverrini (Ov) is a complex-life-cycle trematode affecting 10 million people in SEA (Southeast Asia). Human infection occurs when infected cyprinid fish are consumed raw or undercooked. Ov requires three hosts and presents two free-living parasitic stages. As a consequence Ov transmission and infection in intermediate and human hosts are strongly mediated by environmental factors and understanding how environmental variability influences intermediate host abundance is critical. The objectives of this study were 1) to document water parameters, intermediate hosts abundance and infection spatio-temporal variation, 2) to assess their causal relationships and identify windows of transmission risk.Methodology/Principal FindingsFish and snails were collected monthly for one year at 12 sites in Lawa Lake, an Ov-endemic region of Khon Kaen Province in Northeast Thailand. Physicochemical water parameters [pH, temperature (Tp), dissolved oxygen (DO), Salinity, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solid (TDS), nitrite nitrogen (NO2-N), lead (Pb), total coliform bacteria (TCB) and fecal coliform bacteria (FCB)] were measured. Multivariate analyses, linear models and kriging were used to characterize water parameter variation and its influence on host abundance and infection prevalence. We found that sampling sites could be grouped in three clusters and discriminated along a nitrogen-salinity gradient where higher levels in the lake’s southern region predicted higher Bithynia relative abundance (P<0.05) and lower snail and fish species diversity (P<0.05). Highest Bithynia abundance occurred during rainy season (P<0.001), independently of site influence. Cyprinids were the most abundant fish family and higher cyprinid relative abundance was found in areas with higher Bithynia relative abundance (P<0.05). Ov infection in snails was anecdotal while Ov infection in fish was higher in the southern region (P<0.001) at sites showing high FCB.Conclusions/SignificanceOur results indicate that water contamination and waterways configuration can influence freshwater communities’ assemblages possibly creating ideal conditions for sustained transmission. Sustainable control may require a better appreciation of the system’s ecology with wise governance and development planning particularly in the current context of SEA agricultural intensification and landscape modification.

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“…Soranno et al. () found that when comparing lake watersheds to 1,500 m buffers around lakes, they were equally effective in quantifying the effect of land use/cover on lake nutrients. Previous studies at the national scale have similarly used wetland buffers to characterize the landscape (e.g., Moon et al.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drivers and spatial structure of abiotic and biotic properties of lakes, wetlands, and streams at the national scale

King

Cheruvelil

Pollard

2019

Ecological Applications

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Broad‐scale studies have improved our ability to make predictions about how freshwater biotic and abiotic properties will respond to changes in climate and land use intensification. Further, fine‐scaled studies of lakes, wetlands, or streams have documented the important role of hydrologic connections for understanding many freshwater biotic and abiotic processes. However, lakes, wetlands, and streams are typically studied in isolation of one another at both fine and broad scales. Therefore, it is not known whether these three freshwater types (lakes, wetlands, and streams) respond similarly to ecosystem and watershed drivers nor how they may respond to future global stresses. In this study, we asked, do lake, wetland, and stream biotic and abiotic properties respond to similar ecosystem and watershed drivers and have similar spatial structure at the national scale? We answered this question with three U.S. conterminous data sets of freshwater ecosystems. We used random forest (RF) analysis to quantify the multi‐scaled drivers related to variation in nutrients and biota in lakes, wetlands, and streams simultaneously; we used semivariogram analysis to quantify the spatial structure of biotic and abiotic properties and to infer possible mechanisms controlling the ecosystem properties of these freshwater types. We found that abiotic properties responded to similar drivers, had large ranges of spatial autocorrelation, and exhibited multi‐scale spatial structure, regardless of freshwater type. However, the dominant drivers of variation in biotic properties depended on freshwater type and had smaller ranges of spatial autocorrelation. Our study is the first to document that drivers and spatial structure differ more between biotic and abiotic variables than across freshwater types, suggesting that some properties of freshwater ecosystems may respond similarly to future global changes.

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Effects of Land Use on Lake Nutrients: The Importance of Scale, Hydrologic Connectivity, and Region

Cited by 96 publications

References 48 publications

Annual precipitation regulates spatial and temporal drivers of lake water clarity

Annual precipitation regulates spatial and temporal drivers of lake water clarity

Seasonal and Spatial Environmental Influence on Opisthorchis viverrini Intermediate Hosts, Abundance, and Distribution: Insights on Transmission Dynamics and Sustainable Control

Drivers and spatial structure of abiotic and biotic properties of lakes, wetlands, and streams at the national scale

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