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Contenuto archiviato il 2024-04-30

Response of European freshwater lakes to environmental and climatic change

Obiettivo



Freshwater plankton communities are widely regarded as ideal 'sentinels' of environmental change. They respond in a predictable way to changes in the catchment and are dominated by short-lived organisms that respond rapidly to changes in the weather. Limnologists throughout Europe have long been interested in the processes that influence the seasonal succession of plankton but are only now becoming aware of the large-scale (climatic) forces that influence their interannual variation.
Recent studies in the UK and Germany have demonstrated that large-scale changes in the atmospheric pressure and the north-south movements of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic have an important effect on the seasonal dynamics of lakes. Some of these changes are quasi-cyclical in nature and are reminiscent of the large-scale environmental changes associated with El Nino events in the southern ocean. In the REFLECT proposal we have assembled a group of scientists from the leading limnological laboratories in Europe to produce a definitive study of the natural and anthropogenic factors that influence the dynamics of plankton in lakes situated in three climatic zones (Northern Europe, the Atlantic Coast and Central Europe). Particular attention will be paid to the problem of separating catchment and climatic effects and quantifying the responses of lakes at local and regional scales. The proposal is structured around four key activities. A historical study of the changes recorded in fourteen representative lakes over the last 20-50 years. These long-term data sets represent a unique resource and can only be fully exploited by concerted actions of the kind proposed here. The historical studies will be supported by detailed meteorological/limnological studies at seven key sites using the Automatic Water Quality Monitoring Stations developed by the EU 'LIFE' programme. These stations are designed to telemeter data to a remote operator and are fitted with a new optical sensor that can identify different classes of algae by their pigment content. The output from these instruments will then be used to validate a suite of water quality models that will pay particular attention to the role of disturbance in structuring plankton communities. An important feature of the proposed models is their explicit link to weather variables generated by climate change experiments (GCM's). The climatologists in the consortium will prepare detailed scenarios of the weather changes expected in the different regions and will perform a range of 'what if' experiments to assess the effect of these variations on a selected series of lakes. In the final stages of the project, the output from the historical, instrumental and modelling studies will be combined to produced impact assessments that will be of strategic interest to a wide variety of end-users. The proposed project will provide the knowledge base necessary to inform Community Discussions and strengthen the links that have already been formed between several limnological laboratories in Europe.

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Coordinatore

NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL
Contributo UE
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