Climate variability promotes unprecedented cyanobacterial blooms in a remote, oligotrophic Ontario lake: evidence from paleolimnology

Favot, Elizabeth J.; Rühland, Kathleen M.; DeSellas, Anna M.; Ingram, R. Grant; Paterson, Andrew M.; Smol, John P.

doi:10.1007/s10933-019-00074-4

Cited by 37 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Longer term temperature trends for Algonquin Park show significant temperature increases (1975, Waite & Strickland, 20061915-2016, Favot et al, 2019. The parameter estimates for temperaturecondition relationships in our models (Figure 1a), and projected temperature increases for Algonquin Park over the next half-century (Lemieux et al, 2007;Ridgway et al, 2018), suggest that this trend in declining body condition is expected to continue (Figure 3).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Climate‐associated decline of body condition in a fossorial salamander

Moldowan

Tattersall

Rollinson

2021

Global Change Biology

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Global climate change is unequivocal, and rates of observed and predicted temperature increases are greater at higher latitudes (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014). High-and mid-latitude regions have experienced rapid environmental change over the past half-century, including increases in mean air and surface temperature, extreme high temperature events, decreases in the number of frost-free days, and decreases in ice cover (Bartolai et al., 2015;Cohen et al., 2014). The short post-glacial history of the Northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, combined with regional geology, climate, and varied habitat types, makes this region the

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Climate‐associated decline of body condition in a fossorial salamander

Moldowan

Tattersall

Rollinson

2021

Global Change Biology

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“…While a minimum concentration of nutrients is clearly a pre-requisite for an algal bloom to occur, as has now been shown in a variety of palaeolimnological studies (e.g. [63]) external nutrient additions are not a necessary precondition for triggering cyanobacterial blooms. Rather, accelerated warming over the past few decades appears to be the new 'threat multiplier' [3].…”

Section: Climate Warming and A 'Longer Summer': Potential Consequencementioning

confidence: 88%

Under the radar: long-term perspectives on ecological changes in lakes

Smol

2019

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Aquatic ecosystems are constantly changing due to natural and anthropogenic stressors. When dealing with such ‘moving targets’, one of the greatest challenges faced by scientists, managers and policy makers is to use appropriate time scales for environmental assessments. However, most aquatic systems lack monitoring data, and if a programme does exist, rarely have data been collected for more than a few years. Hence, it is often difficult or impossible to determine the nature and timing of ecosystem changes based on these short-term datasets. Furthermore, as environmental assessments are typically performed after a problem is identified, critical data regarding pre-disturbance (or reference) conditions are rarely available. Here, I summarize some recent studies employing lake sediment analyses (i.e. palaeolimnology) that have provided retrospective assessments of ecosystem changes that have been emerging slowly and often innocuously ‘under the radar’. My examples include the identification of legacy effects of acid rain and logging, namely long-term declines in calcium concentrations in softwater lakes, which have led to significant repercussions for ecosystem services. I then show that past trajectories of aerial pollution from the burgeoning oil sands operations of western Canada can be tracked using environmental proxies preserved in dated sediment cores, and how these data can be used to determine the relative contributions of natural versus industrial sources of pollutants. I conclude by reviewing how palaeolimnological analyses have linked climate change with the proliferation of harmful blue-green algal (cyanobacterial) blooms, even without the addition of limiting nutrients. Collectively, these studies show that effective ecosystem management, particularly for incremental environmental stressors, requires temporal sampling windows that are not readily available with standard monitoring, but can be supplemented with high-resolution lake sediment analyses.

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“…Rising temperatures induce extensive changes in plank tonic communities [135][136][137] , such as shifts towards increased cyanobacteria populations and greater toxin produc tion [138][139][140] . Unprecedented cyanobacterial blooms have been identified even in remote lakes, driven by earlier ice out, incomplete mixing, early stratification onset and subsequent increased internal nutrient loading 141 . Earlier onset of phytoplankton blooms has been observed in many lakes, including advances of 30 days from 2003 to 2017 for Lake Taihu, China 142 and of 28.5 days from the period 1984-1994 to 2007-2017 for Lake Köyliönjärvi, Finland 143 .…”

Section: Implications For Lake Ecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global lake responses to climate change

Woolway

Kraemer

Lenters

et al. 2020

Nat Rev Earth Environ

714

391

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| Climate change is one of the most severe threats to global lake ecosystems. Lake surface conditions, such as ice cover, surface temperature, evaporation and water level, respond dramatically to this threat, as observed in recent decades. In this Review, we discuss physical lake variables and their responses to climate change. Decreases in winter ice cover and increases in lake surface temperature modify lake mixing regimes and accelerate lake evaporation. Where not balanced by increased mean precipitation or inflow, higher evaporation rates will favour a decrease in lake level and surface water extent. Together with increases in extreme-precipitation events, these lake responses will impact lake ecosystems, changing water quantity and quality, food provisioning, recreational opportunities and transportation. Future research opportunities, including enhanced observation of lake variables from space (particularly for small water bodies), improved in situ lake monitoring and the development of advanced modelling techniques to predict lake processes, will improve our global understanding of lake responses to a changing climate.

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Climate variability promotes unprecedented cyanobacterial blooms in a remote, oligotrophic Ontario lake: evidence from paleolimnology

Cited by 37 publications

References 70 publications

Climate‐associated decline of body condition in a fossorial salamander

Climate‐associated decline of body condition in a fossorial salamander

Under the radar: long-term perspectives on ecological changes in lakes

Global lake responses to climate change

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