Extreme weather events alter planktonic communities in boreal lakes

Abstract

Climate warming has been shown to increase the frequency of extreme weather effects on small lakes by increasing the variability of terrigenic inputs and surface water temperatures. We hypothesized that the effect of thermal variability on boreal plankton depends on dissolved terrigenic matter (i.e., temperature-terrigenic interaction). A two-factor mesocosm (1500-L capacity) experiment consisting of three terrigenic treatment levels (control, [2] runoff, [+] runoff) and three temperature treatment levels (control, warm, and cold) was conducted in triplicate for a total of 27 mesocosms deployed in Lake 302S of the Experimental Lakes Area in Canada. The warming treatment amplified the positive effect of terrigenic amendment on total phytoplankton biomass by stimulating large (.35-mm Greatest Axial Linear Dimension; GALD) taxa during the 50-d experiment. In comparison, removal of terrigenic matter increased the abundance of smaller (,35-mm GALD) phytoplankton along with copepods and cladocerans under cold and warm conditions, respectively. We also attempted to corroborate our experimental findings by comparing planktonic communities collected from reference Lake 239 during climatically contrasting summers between 1970 and 2001. Although planktonic communities in Lake 239 also differed significantly between years characterized by cold, wet vs. warm, dry ice-free conditions, their responses ran opposite to those detected during the experiment, highlighting the potential overriding importance of other scale-dependent factors (e.g., fish predation, vertical migration) mediating the effects of climate on lake communities.

Implications of climate change for Daphnia in alpine lakes: predictions from long-term dynamics, spatial distribution, and a short-term experiment

“…Treeline advancement affects the water chemistry of lakes through changes in inputs of terrestrially derived dissolved organic matter (DOM) . Inputs of DOM in turn affect lakes through changes in transparency, pH, productivity, and food web structure (Jones, 1992;Williamson et al, 1999;Graham & Vinebrooke, 2009;Rose et al, 2009, Cole et al, 2011.…”

Size Distribution, Surface Coverage, Water, Carbon, and Metal Storage of Thermokarst Lakes in the Permafrost Zone of the Western Siberia Lowland

“…The small lakes exhibited a deviation from the general power dependence between the lake size and the lake number [4,5]; as a result, the extrapolation of power law to smaller lakes may overestimate the lake number [3]. At the same time, the small lakes subjected to full freezing in winter or evaporation in summer, with a short residence time of water, play a crucial role in the integration of the carbon and other elements transported from the watershed [6][7][8], which is particularly important in high latitude regions, which are the most vulnerable to climate change [9,10].…”

Lakes and reservoirs as sentinels, integrators, and regulators of climate change

“…Several papers examine climatic control of the physical structure (MacIntyre et al 2009;Mueller et al 2009;Verburg and Hecky 2009) and carbon chemistry (Catalan et al 2009;Finlay et al 2009;Weyhenmeyer and Karlsson 2009) of lake ecosystems. Climatic forcing of biological responses in lake ecosystems (Castañ eda et al 2009;Drö scher et al 2009;Graham and Vinebrooke 2009;Wagner and Adrian 2009a;Winder et al Fig. 3.…”