Effects of Climatic Warming on Lakes of the Central Boreal Forest

Schindler, D. W.; Beaty, K. G.; Fee, Everett; Cruikshank, D. R.; DeBruyn, E. R.; Findlay, D. L.; Linsey, G. A.; Shearer, J. A.; Stainton, M. P.; Turner, Michael A.

doi:10.1126/science.250.4983.967

Cited by 407 publications

(267 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In the Black Sea warm temperature and low wind stress can trigger unusually large blooms throughout the entire growing period (McQuatters-Gollop et al 2008). Similarly, increased wind stress, water temperature and reduced water run-off affected the phytoplankton dynamics in Boreal lakes (Schindler et al 1990).…”

Section: Phytoplankton Phenology As An Indicator Of Global Changementioning

confidence: 99%

The annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass

Winder

Cloern

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

254

170

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Terrestrial plants are powerful climate sentinels because their annual cycles of growth, reproduction and senescence are finely tuned to the annual climate cycle having a period of one year. Consistency in the seasonal phasing of terrestrial plant activity provides a relatively low-noise background from which phenological shifts can be detected and attributed to climate change. Here, we ask whether phytoplankton biomass also fluctuates over a consistent annual cycle in lake, estuarine -coastal and ocean ecosystems and whether there is a characteristic phenology of phytoplankton as a consistent phase and amplitude of variability. We compiled 125 time series of phytoplankton biomass (chlorophyll a concentration) from temperate and subtropical zones and used wavelet analysis to extract their dominant periods of variability and the recurrence strength at those periods. Fewer than half (48%) of the series had a dominant 12-month period of variability, commonly expressed as the canonical spring-bloom pattern. About 20 per cent had a dominant six-month period of variability, commonly expressed as the spring and autumn or winter and summer blooms of temperate lakes and oceans. These annual patterns varied in recurrence strength across sites, and did not persist over the full series duration at some sites. About a third of the series had no component of variability at either the six-or 12-month period, reflecting a series of irregular pulses of biomass. These findings show that there is high variability of annual phytoplankton cycles across ecosystems, and that climate-driven annual cycles can be obscured by other drivers of population variability, including human disturbance, aperiodic weather events and strong trophic coupling between phytoplankton and their consumers. Regulation of phytoplankton biomass by multiple processes operating at multiple time scales adds complexity to the challenge of detecting climate-driven trends in aquatic ecosystems where the noise to signal ratio is high.

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Section: Phytoplankton Phenology As An Indicator Of Global Changementioning

confidence: 99%

The annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass

Winder

Cloern

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

254

170

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“…The stratification process creates a potential for temperature differentials between deeper offshore and shallower near-shore subhabitats within a lake, as temperatures remain relatively constant in deep habitats, whereas shallower near-shore temperatures are strongly influenced by air temperatures (26). Monitoring in the boreal region (27,28) has shown that rising air temperature warms surface waters, accelerates the stratification process, and extends the duration of stratification; thus, air temperature is a primary determinant of lake thermal heterogeneity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of differential habitat warming on complex communities

Tunney

McCann

Lester

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

116

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Food webs unfold across a mosaic of micro and macro habitats, with each habitat coupled by mobile consumers that behave in response to local environmental conditions. Despite this fundamental characteristic of nature, research on how climate change will affect whole ecosystems has overlooked (i) that climate warming will generally affect habitats differently and (ii) that mobile consumers may respond to this differential change in a manner that may fundamentally alter the energy pathways that sustain ecosystems. This reasoning suggests a powerful, but largely unexplored, avenue for studying the impacts of climate change on ecosystem functioning. Here, we use lake ecosystems to show that predictable behavioral adjustments to local temperature differentials govern a fundamental structural shift across 54 food webs. Data show that the trophic pathways from basal resources to a cold-adapted predator shift toward greater reliance on a cold-water refuge habitat, and food chain length increases, as air temperatures rise. Notably, cold-adapted predator behavior may substantially drive this decoupling effect across the climatic range in our study independent of warmer-adapted species responses (for example, changes in nearshore species abundance and predator absence). Such modifications reflect a flexible food web architecture that requires more attention from climate change research. The trophic pathway restructuring documented here is expected to alter biomass accumulation, through the regulation of energy fluxes to predators, and thus potentially threatens ecosystem sustainability in times of rapid environmental change.species interactions | thermoregulation | trophic structure | habitat coupling | heterogeneity N atural systems are inherently complex entities, wherein organisms act as agents of material and biomass transport (1) weaving food webs through a mosaic thermal environment. Direct temperature effects on trophic interactions arise through thermal regulation of an organism's physiology and behavior (2-5). For ecotherms (that is, organisms whose body temperature is aligned with ambient temperature), several biological rates show unimodal responses to temperature (2, 3, 6), and correspondingly, studies have shown that consumption rates initially rise with warming to a peak rate and then fall rapidly approaching a critical temperature (6). Understanding the ways that these organism responses alter food webs, and how these food web responses affect ecosystem function, are key requirements to predicting climate change impacts on ecosystems (7-11).A simple way to think about temperature's effects on any single trophic interaction is through the general linear consumption function:Consumptionðper capitaÞ = a t s R;[1]where a is the attack rate, t s is the time searching, and R is the resource biomass density. The direct effects of temperature on an organism's ability to encounter and capture resources in a given habitat may largely depend on a, and t s (with potential indirect effects relative to the consumer throug...

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“…Research on the relationship between climate change observed in the previous decades and aquatic food webs (Schindler et al 1990 Climate change can affect aquatic food webs in many ways. It can alter duration and timing of the successional status (Straile 2002), or modify the structure of the food web within different successional stages (Wehenmeyer et al 1999).…”

Section: Observed and Expected Reactions Of Aquatic Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in Research on the Possible Effects of Climate Change Concerning Aquatic Ecosystems With Special Emphasis on the Modelling Approach

et al. 2009

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Abstract. Knowledge on the expected effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems is defined by three ways. On the one hand, long-term observation in the field serves as a basis for the possible changes; on the other hand, the experimental approach may bring valuable pieces of information to the research field. The expected effects of climate change cannot be studied by empirical approach; rather mathematical models are useful tools for this purpose. Within this study, the main findings of field observations and their implications for future were summarized; moreover, the modelling approaches were discussed in a more detailed way. Some models try to describe the variation of physical parameters in a given aquatic habitat, thus our knowledge on their biota is confined to the findings based on our present observations. Others are destined for answering special issues related to the given water body. Complex ecosystem models are the keys of our better understanding of the possible effects of climate change. Basically, these models were not created for testing the influence of global warming, rather focused on the description of a complex system (e. g. a lake) involving environmental variables, nutrients. However, such models are capable of studying climatic changes as well by taking into consideration a large set of environmental variables. Mostly, the outputs are consistent with the assumptions based on the findings in the field. Since synthetized models are rather difficult to handle and require quite large series of data, the authors proposed a more simple modelling approach, which is capable of examining the effects of global warming. This approach includes weather dependent simulation modelling of the seasonal dynamics of aquatic organisms within a simplified framework.

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Effects of Climatic Warming on Lakes of the Central Boreal Forest

Cited by 407 publications

References 25 publications

The annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass

The annual cycles of phytoplankton biomass

Effects of differential habitat warming on complex communities

Trends in Research on the Possible Effects of Climate Change Concerning Aquatic Ecosystems With Special Emphasis on the Modelling Approach

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