Simulated long term temperature and dissolved oxygen characteristics of lakes in the north‐central United States and associated fish habitat limits

Abstract

Water temperatures and dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations in lakes are related to climate. Temperature and DO in 27 lake classes (3 depth classes x 3 surface area classes x 3 trophic states) were simulated by numerical models with daily weather data input. The weather data used are from the 25-yr period . The lakes and the weather are representative of the north-central U.S. Daily profiles ofwater temperature and DO concentrations were computed and several temperature and DO characteristics extracted from this information base. Temperature and minimum oxygen requirements for good growth of cold, cool, and warm water fish were then applied to determine the length of the good-growth periods and the relative lake volumes available for good growth. All characteristics are presented in graphical form using lake surface area, maximum lake depth, and Secchi depth as independent variables. The surface area and maximum depth were combined in a lake geometry ratio which is a relative measure of the susceptibility of a lake to stratification; Secchi depth was retained as a measure of lake transparency and trophic state. To determine an effect of latitude, we investigated a southern and northern region separately. The effect of climate change due to a projected doubling of atmospheric CO, was investigated by applying the output from the GISS 2 x CO, global circulation model to the lake models.The following is an analysis of recently completed simulations that project long-term average water temperature and dissolved oxygen conditions in lakes of the northcentral U.S. and their suitability for fish habitat. Minnesota was selected for this study because it has many valuable lakes, an extensive lake database, and is located in the center of the continent. It is also at a latitude where climate change may have the greatest impact on aquatic ecosystems. Baseline water-quality simulations were made with historical records of meteorological parameters known to influence the temperature and the dissolved oxygen (DO) of north-temperate lakes. We used processoriented, deterministic numerical modeling which, when sufficiently calibrated and validated, offers the possibility AcknowledgmentsThe investigation described herein was conducted for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/OPPE in cooperation with the Environmental Research Laboratory, Duluth, as a part of a project on climate change effects on fisheries. The Minnesota Supercomputer Institute, University of Minnesota, provided a resource grant and access to its CRAY2 supercomputer.Eville Gorham and Joseph Shapiro provided valuable suggestions that considerably improved the manuscript.

Water quality assessment and ecoregional comparison of a reservoir in east-central Indiana

“…This type of thermal regime would be expected for the geometry ratio (A 0.25 : z max ) of 5.2 (Stefan et al 1996). Contrary to the findings of Stefan that anoxic conditions never occur in lakes with the ratio >5, however, anoxia was observed in this reservoir.…”

Simulations of climate effects on water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and ice and snow covers in lakes of the contiguous U.S. under past and future climate scenarios

“…The model was calibrated and validated against extensive Minnesota lake data (5378 water temperature measurements for 48 ''lake years'') (Fang and Stefan 1996b;Stefan et al 1998). Average standard error between simulated and measured water temperatures year round was 1.4uC with a range from 0.92uC to 1.69uC, and 0.5uC for the ice cover season (Fang and Stefan 1996b).…”

“…BOD in water bodies can vary greatly with external waste load inputs. For the regional lake simulations it is assumed that there are no external inflows of BOD to a lake (Stefan and Fang 1994), BOD is related to primary productivity represented as chlorophyll a; therefore, BOD is set as 1.0 mg L 21 , 0.5 mg L 21 , and 0.2 mg L 21 for eutrophic, mesotrophic, and oligotrophic lakes, respectively. The combined oxygen consumption due to BOD and algal respiration during summer is within the range of respiration measured in 36 lakes using dark bottles (Pace and Prairie 2005).…”

“…The year-round lake water quality model MINLAKE96 was developed from regional models for water temperature (Hondzo and Stefan 1993a), dissolved oxygen (Stefan and Fang 1994), and winter (snow and ice) covers (Gu and Stefan 1990) under the original model framework of the Minnesota Lake model MINLAKE (Ford and Stefan 1980; Fig. 1.…”

Investigating hypoxia in aquatic environments: diverse approaches to addressing a complex phenomenon

“…Global warming also results in rising lake surface water temperatures (Adrian et al, 2009) and an increase in the intensity and duration of thermal stratification (Stefan et al, 1998;Peeters et al, 2002;Livingstone, 2003). During winter and spring -when temperate lakes typically undergo deep mixing -shorter periods of homothermy, or their complete absence, will reduce or inhibit deep-water renewal, resulting in lower deep-water oxygen concentrations (Stefan et al, 1996;Livingstone, 1997;Peeters et al, 2002;Jankowski et al, 2006;Rempfer et al, 2009Rempfer et al, , 2010. Climate warming is therefore likely to lead to an increase in the occurrence of hypoxia in lakes (Stefan and Fang, 1994;Jankowski et al, 2006).…”