Research project How does climate change affect northern lake ecosystems?
A present major scientific challenge is to understand and predict effects of climate change on lake ecosystems and the services they deliver. Globally, lakes are concentrated at northern latitudes where the magnitude of climate change is expected to be strongest. Recent advances in lake research suggest that responses of Northern lakes to global warming are fundamentally different from the expectations based on conventional knowledge.
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
David Bastviken, Linköping University
Isabelle Domaizon, French National Institute for Agricultural Research
Dag Hessen, Oslo University, Norway
Sally MacIntyre, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
Frank Peeters, University of Konstanz, Germany
André de Roos, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A present major scientific challenge is to understand and predict effects of climate change on lake ecosystems and the services they deliver. Globally, lakes are concentrated at northern latitudes where the magnitude of climate change is expected to be strongest. Recent advances in lake research suggest that responses of Northern lakes to global warming are fundamentally different from the expectations based on conventional knowledge. This project brings together new tools and concepts in biogeochemistry and ecology, with the aims of understanding and predicting the effects of climate change on the delivery of two major ecosystem services, fish production and the net greenhouse gas balance of Northern lakes. Specific objectives include:
1. Assessment of long vs. short term effects of climate change; 2. Assessment of nonlinear dynamics and regime shifts; 3. Projection of responses to future climate conditions. The project's core is made up of a multi-scale (pond to whole-lake) experimental test of ecosystem responses to increases in temperature and precipitation/runoff. Further, we will use aDNA techniques to address past regime shifts and ecosystem resilience to climate change from paleolimnological sediment records. Finally, the project will develop process-based models to be used in the projection of future conditions in lakes at the whole ecosystem scale.
