Anthropocene environmental change in an internationally important oligotrophic catchment on the Atlantic seaboard of western Europe

Dalton, Catherine M.; O’Dwyer, Barry; Taylor, David; Eyto, Elvira de; Jennings, Eleanor; Chen, Guangjie; Poole, Russell; Dillane, Mary; McGinnity, P.

doi:10.1016/j.ancene.2014.06.003

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 66 publications

(69 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Maximum summer temperatures rarely exceed 20 °C, and minimum winter temperatures are usually 2-4 °C. Palaeolimnological investigations in 3 lakes in the catchment confirmed an aquatic biotic response (phytoplankton and zooplankton) to catchment degradation in the form of soil erosion and nutrient enrichment associated with the onset of commercial conifer afforestation (Cassina et al 2013, Dalton et al 2014 in the mid-20 th century. This afforestation program required substantial land drainage to enable successful establishment of nonnative conifers on peat soils.…”

Section: Site Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Response of a humic lake ecosystem to an extreme precipitation event: physical, chemical, and biological implications

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate projections indicate that the frequency and severity of extreme precipitation events will increase over the next century. Although a large number of lakes across the globe are systematically monitored, it is rare to have a wide range of ecological indices measured at high enough frequency and over a sufficient time scale to allow characterisation of the response of a lake ecosystem to such events. We present data from Lough Feeagh, a relatively large oligotrophic lake in Ireland, which was at the epicentre of a once in 250-year precipitation event in July 2009 when 50 mm of rain fell in less than 2 hours. The effects of the resulting flood on the water column stability, chemistry, biology, and metabolism were examined, and data from multiple years before and after the event were used to ascertain the significance and longevity of any observed changes. The flood caused the water column to destabilise prematurely and depressed primary production. Bacterial biomass was high in the month after the flood, and zooplankton assemblages in late 2009 were significantly different from those of other years. Changes in all these variables combined to produce lower rates of gross primary production and higher rates of respiration than those measured between 2010 and 2014, resulting in more pronounced negative net ecosystem production than in the other years. Despite all these changes, the normal seasonal cycles resumed in 2010, and it appears that this rare but significant event did not have a long-term impact on the ecosystem functioning of the lake.

show abstract

Section: Site Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Response of a humic lake ecosystem to an extreme precipitation event: physical, chemical, and biological implications

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While, on average, the influx of water from the inlets might have had a limited impact on the heat budget, it could still play an important biological role in the lake. Such events have potential to wash both particulate and dissolved substances from the catchment into the lake as described in other studies from the catchment [5,6,23,24,56]. The allochthonous carbon inputs that come into the lake with such events would be particularly important for the biology in the lake [57].…”

Section: Heat Fluxes During Stormsmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Lough Feeagh has an average pH of 6.7 and low alkalinity [5,23,24]. It is dystrophic and has medium to high concentrations of coloured dissolved organic matter resulting in brown lake water with low transparency (average Secchi depth 1.6 m).…”

Section: Site Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The catchment is dominated by blanket peat and contains only dispersed houses. The main land uses are commercial non-native coniferous forestry, which covers 23% of the catchment, and extensive sheep grazing [23]. The catchment (outlined with red in Figure 1 is 100 km 2 , catchment for Lough Feeagh is 84 km 2 ) is well defined by the surrounding Nephin Beg mountain range which towers up to 580 m on either side of the elongated lake, but at the northern and southern ends the lake lies exposed to the wind ( Figure 1).…”

Section: Site Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

13 Years of Storms: An Analysis of the Effects of Storms on Lake Physics on the Atlantic Fringe of Europe

Andersen

Eyto

Dillane

et al. 2020

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While winter storms are generally common in western Europe, the rarer summer storms may result in more pronounced impacts on lake physics. Using long-term, high frequency datasets of weather and lake thermal structure from the west of Ireland (2005 to 2017), we quantified the effects of storms on the physical conditions in a monomictic, deep lake close to the Atlantic Ocean. We analysed a total of 227 storms during the stratified (May to September, n = 51) and non-stratified (November to March, n = 176) periods. In winter, as might be expected, changes were distributed over the entire water column, whereas in summer, when the lake was stratified, storms only impacted the smaller volume above the thermocline. During an average summer (May–September) storm, the lake number dropped by an order of magnitude, the thermocline deepened by an average of 2.8 m, water column stability decreased by an average of 60.4 j m−2 and the epilimnion temperature decreased by a factor of five compared to the average change in winter (0.5 °C vs. 0.1 °C). Projected increases in summer storm frequency will have important implications for lake physics and biological pathways.

show abstract

“…An increase in taxa associated with eutrophic lake conditions, such as M. pedellustype, T. pallidicornis-type, P. nubifer-type and C. edwardsi-type, after 1850 supports documentary evidence of an intensification of sheep farming within the lake catchment. Excessive erosion associated with overgrazing sheep in highland areas can lead to degradation of waterbodies (Dalton et al, 2014), as the erosion of peats can lead to excess levels of suspended sediment (Mainstone et al, 2008) with major ecological impacts (Dalton et al, 2014). Furthermore, evidence of 'new' large boulders around one of the outlet channels also suggests that the lake level was managed in conjunction with the intensification of land-use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Assessing recent climatic and human influences on chironomid communities from two moderately impacted lakes in western Ireland

McKeown

Potito

2015

Hydrobiologia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study assessed the influences of climate warming and human impacts on Irish lakes over the late nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries. High-resolution chironomid (Insecta: Diptera) stratigraphies were developed for two low-to mid-elevation lakes in northwest Ireland to determine if lakes with mild-to-moderate human impacts can be used to accurately reconstruct mean July air temperature. Application of an Ireland-based chironomid-inference model to quantitatively estimate July air temperature (r 2 jack = 0.60, RMSEP = 0.57°C) revealed that chironomids can reflect changes in Irish temperature, particularly post-1980 when warming accelerated, although this signal becomes compromised with intensified human impacts. A biotic response to nutrient enrichment and soil erosion from direct human activities was identified through a comparison of chironomid autecology with known catchment changes. Redundancy analysis and time series comparisons were used to identify when faunal turnover is a function of local (nutrient input, erosion) versus extra-regional (climate) drivers over the recent past, and identify any thresholds of human influence within the catchments. This study highlights the importance of careful site selection as moderately impacted sites do not follow a simple scheme, as well as multi-proxy analysis to assess catchment-based human activity for longer term chironomid-based temperature reconstructions in Ireland.

show abstract

Anthropocene environmental change in an internationally important oligotrophic catchment on the Atlantic seaboard of western Europe

Cited by 16 publications

References 66 publications

Response of a humic lake ecosystem to an extreme precipitation event: physical, chemical, and biological implications

Response of a humic lake ecosystem to an extreme precipitation event: physical, chemical, and biological implications

13 Years of Storms: An Analysis of the Effects of Storms on Lake Physics on the Atlantic Fringe of Europe

Assessing recent climatic and human influences on chironomid communities from two moderately impacted lakes in western Ireland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About