The stable isotope composition of organic and inorganic fossils in lake sediment records: Current understanding, challenges, and future directions

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of stable isotope analysis (H, C, N, O, Si) of the macroand microscopic remains from aquatic organisms found in lake sediment records and their application in (palaeo)environmental science. Aquatic organisms, including diatoms, macrophytes, invertebrates, and fish, can produce sufficiently robust remains that preserve well as fossils and can be identified in lake sediment records. Stable isotope analyses of these remains can then provide valuable insights into habitat-specific biogeochemistry, feeding ecology, but also on climatic and hydrological changes in and around lakes. Since these analyses focus on the remains of known and identified organisms, they can provide more specific and detailed information on past ecosystem, food web and environmental changes affecting different compartments of lake ecosystems than analyses on bulk sedimentary organic matter or carbonate samples. We review applications of these types of analyses in palaeoclimatology, palaeohydrology, and palaeoecology. Interpretation of the environmental 'signal' provided by taxon-specific stable isotope analysis requires a thorough understanding of the ecology and phenology of the organism groups involved. Growth, metabolism, diet, feeding strategy, migration, taphonomy and several other processes can lead to isotope fractionation or otherwise influence the stable isotope signatures of the remains from aquatic organisms. This paper includes a review of the (modern) calibration, culturing and modeling studies used to quantify the extent to which these factors influence stable isotope values and provides an outlook for future research and methodological developments for the different examined fossil groups.

Synoptic and Mesoscale Mechanisms Drive Winter Precipitation δ18O/δ2H in South‐Central Alaska

“…Measurements of oxygen and hydrogen stable isotopes in precipitation (δ 18 O P and δ 2 H P ) provide a valuable and increasingly applied tool for tracing hydrological processes through space and time. These include processes occurring in the modern water cycle (Aggarwal et al, 2016;Klein et al, 2015;Puntsag et al, 2016), in atmospheric circulation models (Jouzel et al, 1994;Yoshimura et al, 2008), and those recorded in natural precipitation archives such as ice cores, tree rings, and lake sediments (Dansgaard et al, 1993;McCarroll & Loader, 2004;van Hardenbroek et al, 2018).…”

Moisture origin and stable isotope characteristics of precipitation in southeast Siberia

“…In recent years, the stable isotope composition of precipitation has become one of the most reliable tools for meteorological, climatological, and hydrological studies (Bowen, 2010; Tang et al, 2017; Wei, Lee, Liu, Seeboonruang, & Koike, 2018; Wu, Zhang, Xiaoyan, Li, & Huang, 2015; Yang et al, 2019) and modelling (Bowen, 2008; Butzin et al, 2014; Gryazin et al, 2014; Werner, Langebroek, Carlsen, Herold, & Lohmann, 2011; Yao et al, 2013). In addition, data on isotope composition of modern precipitation are widely used for decoding information about past climate conditions stored in natural archives (Rozanski, Johnsen, Schotterer, & Thompson, 1997) such as lake sediments (Kostrova, Meyer, Chapligin, Tarasov, & Bezrukova, 2014; van Hardenbroek et al, 2018), ground ice (Meyer et al, 2015; Meyer, Dereviagin, Siegert, Hubberten, & Rachold, 2002), firn/ice cores (Casado, Orsi, & Landais, 2017; Fernandoy, Meyer, & Tonelli, 2012; Pang, Hou, Kaspari, & Mayewski, 2014), tree rings (e.g., Leonelli et al, 2017), and cave stalagmites (Liang et al, 2015; Partin et al, 2012).…”

Late-Holocene variability in chironomid functional assemblages and carbon utilization in a tundra lake food web

“…Exploring longer time scales over different climatic periods may improve the understanding of environmental controls on resource utilization. Resource utilization in contemporary ecology is commonly studied by consumer stable isotope (SI) signatures, which have been increasingly applied to chitinous invertebrate remains for disentangling various paleoecological questions (van Hardenbroek et al, 2018). Paleoecological work on chironomid SI signatures has demonstrated timeand space-sensitive consumption of both autochthonous and allochthonous resources (Belle et al, 2017(Belle et al, , 2018Kivilä et al, 2019), as well as feeding on isotopically distinct methane-oxidizing bacteria (van Hardenbroek et al, 2012(van Hardenbroek et al, , 2013).…”