Direct versus indirect climate controls on Holocene diatom assemblages in a sub-tropical deep, alpine lake (Lugu Hu, Yunnan, SW China)

2016 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Wang ◽  
Xiangdong Yang ◽  
Nicholas John Anderson ◽  
Xuhui Dong

AbstractThe reconstruction of Holocene environmental changes in lakes on the plateau region of southwest China provides an understanding of how these ecosystems may respond to climate change. Fossil diatom assemblages were investigated from an 11,000-year lake sediment core from a deep, alpine lake (Lugu Hu) in southwest China, an area strongly influenced by the southwest (or the Indian) summer monsoon. Changes in diatom assemblage composition, notably the abundance of the two dominant planktonic species, Cyclotella rhomboideo-elliptica and Cyclostephanos dubius, reflect the effects of climate variability on nutrient dynamics, mediated via thermal stratification (internal nutrient cycling) and catchment-vegetation processes. Statistical analyses of the climateediatom interactions highlight the strong effect of changing orbitally-induced solar radiation during the Holocene, presumably via its effect on the lake’s thermal budget. In a partial redundancy analysis, climate (solar insolation) and proxies reflecting catchment process (pollen percentages, C/N ratio) were the most important drivers of diatom ecological change, showing the strong effects of climateecatchmentevegetation interactions on lake functioning. This diatom record reflects long-term ontogeny of the lake-catchment ecosystem and suggests that climatic changes (both temperature and precipitation) impact lake ecology indirectly through shifts in thermal stratification and catchment nutrient exports.

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Wang ◽  
Xiangdong Yang ◽  
N. John Anderson ◽  
Junfeng Ji

Author(s):  
Ksenya V. Poleshchuk ◽  
Zinaida V. Pushina ◽  
Sergey R. Verkulich

The diatom analysis results of sediment samples from Dunderbukta area (Wedel Jarlsberg Land, West Svalbard) are presented in this paper. The diatom flora consists of four ecological groups, which ratio indicates three ecological zones. These zones show environmental changes of the area in early–middle Holocene that is demonstrating periods of regression and temperature trends.


2008 ◽  
Vol 43 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 85-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Thienpont ◽  
Brian K. Ginn ◽  
Brian F. Cumming ◽  
John P. Smol

Abstract Paleolimnological approaches using sedimentary diatom assemblages were used to assess water quality changes over the last approximately 200 years in three lakes from King's County, Nova Scotia. In particular, the role of recent shoreline development in accelerating eutrophication in these systems was assessed. Sediment cores collected from each lake were analyzed for their diatom assemblages at approximately 5-year intervals, as determined by 210Pb dating. Analyses showed that each system has changed, but tracked different ecosystem changes. Tupper and George lakes recorded shifts, which are likely primarily related to climatic warming, with diatom assemblages changing from a preindustrial dominance by Aulacoseira spp. to present-day dominance by Cyclotella stelligera. In addition to the recent climatic-related changes, further diatom changes in the Tupper Lake core between approximately 1820 and 1970 were coincident with watershed disturbances (farming, forestry, and construction of hydroelectric power infrastructure). Black River Lake has recorded an increase in diatom-inferred total phosphorus since about 1950, likely due to impoundment of the Black River system for hydroelectric generation and subsequent changes in land runoff. Before-and-after (i.e., top-bottom) sediment analyses of six other lakes from King's County provided further evidence that the region is being influenced by climatic change (decreases in Aulacoseira spp., increases in planktonic diatom taxa), as well as showing other environmental stressors (e.g., acidification). However, we recorded no marked increase in diatom-inferred nutrient levels coincident with shoreline cottage development in any of the nine study lakes. Paleolimnological studies such as these allow lake managers to place the current limnological conditions into a long-term context, and thereby provide important background data for effective lake management.


2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1929) ◽  
pp. 20201185
Author(s):  
Neal Michelutti ◽  
Marianne S. V. Douglas ◽  
Dermot Antoniades ◽  
Igor Lehnherr ◽  
Vincent L. St. Louis ◽  
...  

Lake Hazen, the High Arctic's largest lake, has received an approximately 10-fold increase in glacial meltwater since its catchment glaciers shifted from net mass gain to net mass loss in 2007 common era (CE), concurrent with recent warming. Increased glacial meltwater can alter the ecological functioning of recipient aquatic ecosystems via changes to nutrient budgets, turbidity and thermal regimes. Here, we examine a rare set of five high-resolution sediment cores collected in Lake Hazen between 1990 and 2017 CE to investigate the influence of increased glacial meltwater versus alterations to lake ice phenology on ecological change. Subfossil diatom assemblages in all cores show two major shifts over the past approximately 200 years including: (i) a proliferation of pioneering, benthic taxa at approximately 1900 CE from previously depauperate populations; and (ii) a rise in planktonic taxa beginning at approximately 1980 CE to present-day dominance. The topmost intervals from each sequentially collected core provide exact dates and demonstrate that diatom regime shifts occurred decades prior to accelerated glacial inputs. These data show that diatom assemblages in Lake Hazen are responding primarily to intrinsic lake factors linked to decreasing duration of lake ice and snow cover rather than to limnological impacts associated with increased glacial runoff.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ondrej Vargovčík ◽  
Zuzana Čiamporová-Zaťovičová ◽  
Fedor Čiampor Jr

State of ecosystems and biodiversity protection are becoming the key interests for modern society due to climate change and negative human impacts (Leese 2018). Environmental changes in freshwaters are indicated also by benthic communities, especially in sensitive ecosystems like alpine lakes (Fjellheim 2009). Moreover, remoteness and isolation of alpine lakes make them a source of biodiversity, which is worth conserving (Hamerlík 2014). A promising tool for efficient large-scale monitoring of aquatic communities is DNA metabarcoding (Leese 2018). In this study, we applied metabarcoding to analyse macrozoobenthos of 12 lakes in the Tatra Mountains, using benthic bulk samples and eDNA filtered from water (Fig. 1). In compliance with recent publications, eDNA amplified with BF3/BR2 primers resulted in high percentage of non-invertebrate reads (Leese 2021). Based on in silico tests with the obtained sequences, we confirm that the recently developed EPTDr2n primer enables minimizing non-target amplification even with eDNA filtered from alpine-lake water (Elbrecht and Leese 2017). This ability is facilitated by 3’ end of the primer and we observed the two important mismatches in non-target sequences from our study (Leese 2021). Thus, our future analyses of eDNA (and bulk-sample fixative) will benefit from the new primer. Concerning bulk samples, a wide range of invertebrate taxa was assigned to the OTUs and they showed good congruence with previous studies using morphological determination (e.g. Krno 2006). Certain differences with (and among) the previous records per lake were observed, which could suggest ecological changes, but at the moment the influence of sampling error cannot be excluded. In eDNA, several taxa were congruent with the previous records, but their amount and read abundance was considerably lower due to non-target amplification. Apart from that, filling gaps in barcoding databases remains one of our priorities, as identification to species or genus level was not yet possible for some invertebrate OTUs. In addition, we subjected the NGS data to denoising and abundance-filtering in order to explore haplotype-level diversity (Andújar 2021). Although more comprehensive conclusions will be possible only after obtaining data from more lakes and years, already the two metabarcoding experiments presented here enabled us to efficiently detect within-species genetic diversity and identify a large variety of taxa, including groups that would otherwise be omitted or very challenging to identify. This underlines the potential of DNA methods to provide valuable ecological and biodiversity data across the tree of life for modern biomonitoring. This study was realized with support from VEGA 2/0030/17 and VEGA 2/0084/21.


2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fengyue Shu ◽  
Frank Köhler ◽  
Cuichang Fu ◽  
Hongzhu Wang

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 121-130
Author(s):  
Jeffery R. Stone

Fossil diatom assemblages are useful for reconstructing past environmental changes in riverine systems. However, few studies have attempted to utilize paleolimnological techniques in these settings. Analysis of sediments from riverine environments can provide key information predating the impact of human development, which cannot be acquired by other means. Paleolimnological techniques can be used to determine the natural variability in these systems and to estimate the magnitude and rates of change that the environment may have undergone as a result of anthropogenic or climatic factors, and to provide realistic goals for management of negatively-impacted systems.Reconstructing past riverine settings requires an understanding of the factors that control the spatial distribution of diatoms in riverine settings; this paper discusses the impact of resources, stressors, and disturbance events, which are the primary controls on the distribution of benthic diatoms in modern riverine environments. A selection of case studies that utilize paleolimnological techniques to infer past stream hydrology are also discussed; these examples encompass the use of fossil diatom assemblages from sediments recovered from lowland floodplain and meandering river systems, estuarine environments, fluvial lakes, arctic deltaic environments, and terminal lakes.


2000 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian L. Sherrod ◽  
Robert C. Bucknam ◽  
Estella B. Leopold

At a marsh on the hanging wall of the Seattle fault, fossil brackish water diatom and plant seed assemblages show that the marsh lay near sea level between ∼7500 and 1000 cal yr B.P. This marsh is uniquely situated for recording environmental changes associated with past earthquakes on the Seattle fault. Since 7500 cal yr B.P., changes in fossil diatoms and seeds record several rapid environmental changes. In the earliest of these, brackish conditions changed to freshwater ∼6900 cal yr B.P., possibly because of coseismic uplift or beach berm accretion. If coseismic uplift produced the freshening ∼6900 cal yr B.P., that uplift probably did not exceed 2 m. During another event about 1700 cal yr B.P., brackish plant and diatom assemblages changed rapidly to a tidal flat assemblage because of either tectonic subsidence or berm erosion. The site then remained a tideflat until the most recent event, when an abrupt shift from tideflat diatoms to freshwater taxa resulted from ∼7 m of uplift during an earthquake on the Seattle fault ∼1000 cal yr B.P. Regardless of the earlier events, no Seattle fault earthquake similar to the one ∼1000 cal yr B.P. occurred at any other time in the past 7500 years.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document