Journal
LIMNOLOGY AND OCEANOGRAPHY
Volume 59, Issue 3, Pages 840-850Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.4319/lo.2014.59.3.0840
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation grants from the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) [0734277]
- DEB Integrated Research Challenges in Environmental Biology [0552283]
- Division of Graduate Education [0903560]
- Direct For Education and Human Resources
- Division Of Graduate Education [0903560] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0734277] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
As the lowest point in the surrounding landscape, lakes act as sensors in the landscape to provide insights into the response of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to climate change. Here a novel suite of climate forcing optical indices (CFOI) from lakes across North America is found to respond to changes in air temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation at timescales ranging from a single storm event to seasonal changes to longer-term interdecadal trends with regression r(2) values ranging from 0.73 to 0.89. These indices are based on two optical metrics of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) quality: DOC specific absorbance (a*(320)) and spectral slope (S275-295), where the ratio a*(320) to S275-295 gives a composite climate forcing index. These indices of DOC quality are more responsive to climate forcing than is DOC concentration. A similar relationship between the component indices a*(320) and S275-295 is observed across a wide range of lake types. A conceptual model is used to examine the similarities and differences in DOC-related mechanisms and ecological consequences due to increased temperature vs. precipitation. While both warmer and wetter conditions increase thermal stratification, these two types of climate forcing will have opposite effects on water transparency as well as many ecological consequences, including oxygen depletion, the balance between autotrophy and heterotrophy, and depth distributions of phytoplankton and zooplankton.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available