Quantifying Relationships Among Phosphorus, Agriculture, and Lake Depth at an Inter-Regional Scale

Taranu, Zofia E.; Gregory‐Eaves, Irene

doi:10.1007/s10021-008-9153-0

Cited by 79 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Many other studies have also shown increases in TP in lakes related to the intensity of agricultural cultivation (Umbanhowar 2003, Jones et al 2004, Taranu and Gregory-Eaves 2008 and determinations of higher phosphorus exports with agricultural land as opposed to forested land (Endreny and Wood 2003).…”

Section: Lakementioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape factors influencing lake phosphorus concentrations across Minnesota

Cross

Jacobson

2013

Lake and Reservoir Management

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Section: Lakementioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape factors influencing lake phosphorus concentrations across Minnesota

Cross

Jacobson

2013

Lake and Reservoir Management

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“…Much of our understanding regarding the interactions between changes in land cover/use, climate, and lake eutrophication comes from detailed studies of individual lakes (5), modeling exercises (1), and/or regional-scale syntheses of instrumental data (6,7); these studies are largely based on relatively short time series (8). Depending on the multitudinous local differences in catchment and lake morphology, river transport capacity, climate, geology, and regional trajectories in socioeconomic development, the responses of lakes to surrounding land changes can differ greatly in intensity, modalities, and kinetics (9)(10)(11)(12).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban point sources of nutrients were the leading cause for the historical spread of hypoxia across European lakes

Jenny

Normandeau

Francus

et al. 2016

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

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Enhanced phosphorus (P) export from land into streams and lakes is a primary factor driving the expansion of deep-water hypoxia in lakes during the Anthropocene. However, the interplay of regional scale environmental stressors and the lack of long-term instrumental data often impede analyses attempting to associate changes in land cover with downstream aquatic responses. Herein, we performed a synthesis of data that link paleolimnological reconstructions of lake bottom-water oxygenation to changes in land cover/use and climate over the past 300 years to evaluate whether the spread of hypoxia in European lakes was primarily associated with enhanced P exports from growing urbanization, intensified agriculture, or climatic change. We showed that hypoxia started spreading in European lakes around CE 1850 and was greatly accelerated after CE 1900. Socioeconomic changes in Europe beginning in CE 1850 resulted in widespread urbanization, as well as a larger and more intensively cultivated surface area. However, our analysis of temporal trends demonstrated that the onset and intensification of lacustrine hypoxia were more strongly related to the growth of urban areas than to changes in agricultural areas and the application of fertilizers. These results suggest that anthropogenically triggered hypoxia in European lakes was primarily caused by enhanced P discharges from urban point sources. To date, there have been no signs of sustained recovery of bottom-water oxygenation in lakes following the enactment of European water legislation in the 1970s to 1980s, and the subsequent decrease in domestic P consumption.Anthropocene | lake hypoxia | land cover/uses | meta-analysis | varves C hanges in land cover and land use have been identified as important drivers of phosphorus (P) transfers from terrestrial to aquatic systems, resulting in significant impacts on water resources (1-3). In post-World War II Europe, changes in land cover, land use, and P utilization caused widespread eutrophication of freshwaters (3). Elevated rates of P release from point sources to surface water bodies increased in step with population increases, with the novel use of P in domestic detergents and with enhanced connectivity of households to sewage systems that generated concentrated effluents (4). The intensification of agriculture and drastic increased use of fertilizers from industrial and manure sources resulted in elevated P concentrations in runoff from diffuse sources (4). These trends have now metastasized from Europe and North America to most nations, which explains the almost global development of eutrophication problems in surface waters (1).Much of our understanding regarding the interactions between changes in land cover/use, climate, and lake eutrophication comes from detailed studies of individual lakes (5), modeling exercises (1), and/or regional-scale syntheses of instrumental data (6, 7); these studies are largely based on relatively short time series (8). Depending on the multitudinous local differences in catchment and lake mor...

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“…Ecoregions have been used to partition water quality at the national scale (Paulsen et al 2008, USEPA 2009, Griffith 2014; however, an understanding of the specific biogeochemical processes classified by ecoregions is lacking. Large-scale studies show that lakespecific characteristics (e.g., depth), watershed-scale land use and land cover, and surface and groundwater connectivity are important for predicting water quality (e.g., Kratz et al 1997, Martin and Soranno 2006, Wagner et al 2007, Bremigan et al 2008, Taranu and Gregory-Eaves 2008, Nielsen et al 2012, Zhang et al 2012, Cheruvelil et al 2013); these drivers can vary both within and among ecoregions. To some extent, national policy takes into account cross-scale interactions among these multi-scaled drivers by using regional variation in water quality to set nutrient criteria recommendations (USEPA 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of lake‐specific characteristics for water quality across the continental United States

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Patil

Oliver

et al. 2015

Ecological Applications

105

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Abstract. Lake water quality is affected by local and regional drivers, including lake physical characteristics, hydrology, landscape position, land cover, land use, geology, and climate. Here, we demonstrate the utility of hypothesis testing within the landscape limnology framework using a random forest algorithm on a national-scale, spatially explicit data set, the United States Environmental Protection Agency's 2007 National Lakes Assessment. For 1026 lakes, we tested the relative importance of water quality drivers across spatial scales, the importance of hydrologic connectivity in mediating water quality drivers, and how the importance of both spatial scale and connectivity differ across response variables for five important in-lake water quality metrics (total phosphorus, total nitrogen, dissolved organic carbon, turbidity, and conductivity). By modeling the effect of water quality predictors at different spatial scales, we found that lake-specific characteristics (e.g., depth, sediment area-tovolume ratio) were important for explaining water quality (54-60% variance explained), and that regionalization schemes were much less effective than lake specific metrics (28-39% variance explained). Basin-scale land use and land cover explained between 45-62% of variance, and forest cover and agricultural land uses were among the most important basin-scale predictors. Water quality drivers did not operate independently; in some cases, hydrologic connectivity (the presence of upstream surface water features) mediated the effect of regional-scale drivers. For example, for water quality in lakes with upstream lakes, regional classification schemes were much less effective predictors than lake-specific variables, in contrast to lakes with no upstream lakes or with no surface inflows. At the scale of the continental United States, conductivity was explained by drivers operating at larger spatial scales than for other water quality responses. The current regulatory practice of using regionalization schemes to guide water quality criteria could be improved by consideration of lake-specific characteristics, which were the most important predictors of water quality at the scale of the continental United States. The spatial extent and high quality of contextual data available for this analysis makes this work an unprecedented application of landscape limnology theory to water quality data. Further, the demonstrated importance of lake morphology over other controls on water quality is relevant to both aquatic scientists and managers.

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Quantifying Relationships Among Phosphorus, Agriculture, and Lake Depth at an Inter-Regional Scale

Cited by 79 publications

References 41 publications

Landscape factors influencing lake phosphorus concentrations across Minnesota

Landscape factors influencing lake phosphorus concentrations across Minnesota

Urban point sources of nutrients were the leading cause for the historical spread of hypoxia across European lakes

The importance of lake‐specific characteristics for water quality across the continental United States

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