Limnology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    New alkenone results and existing temperature records together show contrasting Holocene temperature trends and thus display spatial patterns over mid-latitude Eurasia, with implications for the Holocene temperature conundrum.

    • Jiawei Jiang
    • , Bowen Meng
    •  & Zhonghui Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nutrient limitation is a well-known control of phytoplankton growth, but predicting specific responses in individual lakes based on nutrient data alone has proven challenging. Here, the authors show that long-term signals of chlorophyll-a dynamics in shallow lakes can be captured based on stoichiometric effects of N and P concentrations along a continuum of total N:total P ratios.

    • Daniel Graeber
    • , Mark J. McCarthy
    •  & Thomas A. Davidson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The response of organic molecules to climate change is linked to warming, nutrient loading, and greenhouse gas emissions, according to an indicator developed to quantify the aggregated thermal response of individual organic molecules.

    • Ang Hu
    • , Kyoung-Soon Jang
    •  & Jianjun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heat extremes occur more frequently with global warming. Here the authors show that short-term heat extremes play a critical role in shaping long-term dynamics of lake surface temperature, contributing 36.5% of the warming trends in Chinese lakes.

    • Weijia Wang
    • , Kun Shi
    •  & R. Iestyn Woolway

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study uses in situ respirometry assays and transplant experiments with salmonid fish to disentangle the effects of chronic and acute thermal exposure. They show that chronic exposure to warming can attenuate salmonid thermal sensitivity, highlighting the need to incorporate the potential for thermal acclimation or adaptation when forecasting global warming consequences.

    • Alexia M. González-Ferreras
    • , Jose Barquín
    •  & Eoin J. O’Gorman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Arctic is dotted with lakes, including thermokarst lakes highly threatened by climate change. Here, the authors investigate 35 years of lake drainage events and related vegetation trends across the Arctic, finding differences between thermokarst and non-thermokarst lake drainage events.

    • Yating Chen
    • , Xiao Cheng
    •  & Chengxin Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows that lake heating in response to atmospheric warming slows as surface waters warm and evaporate. Lake sensitivity to warming air is higher in clear, cold, undisturbed, or elevated lakes, but declines when land-use practices fertilize basins.

    • Jian Zhou
    • , Peter R. Leavitt
    •  & Boqiang Qin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors compile pollen records from across Iberia and Morocco, comparing them with other paleohydrological and archaeological data, as well as historical sources. Using these data, they suggest that a series of strong droughts could have contributed to the decline of the Visigothic Kingdom and subsequent Islamic expansion.

    • Jon Camuera
    • , Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo
    •  & Manuel Castro-Priego

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impact of climate change on Holocene human activity in the Altai-Sayan region of Central Asia is unclear. Here, the authors use pollen, biogenic silica, and isotope records from lake cores to show that the climate prompted human population expansion and intensified cultural exchange during the Bronze Age.

    • Lixiong Xiang
    • , Xiaozhong Huang
    •  & Fahu Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water temperature influences lake ecosystems, but little is known about changes in its seasonality. This study shows that the timing of spring temperatures will arrive earlier whilst autumn temperatures will be delayed globally under climate change.

    • R. Iestyn Woolway

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanisms underlying methane production in oxygenated waters of oceans and lakes are unclear. Here, Perez-Coronel and Beman show that aerobic methane production in freshwater incubation experiments is associated with (bacterio)chlorophyll metabolism and photosynthesis, and with Proteobacterial degradation of methylphosphonate.

    • Elisabet Perez-Coronel
    •  & J. Michael Beman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many lakes on Earth are covered by seasonal ice, and as lake ice loss has been increasing, it is ever more important to quantify this. Here the authors present a fully coupled lake ice model projection as a part of the new CESM2 large ensemble modelling project and show that unprecedented lake ice loss is emerging globally as a result of anthropogenic-induced warming.

    • Lei Huang
    • , Axel Timmermann
    •  & Eui-Seok Chung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lakes are essential components of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycles. Here, Pi et al develop a global lake dataset called GLAKES via high-resolution satellite images and deep learning to examine global lake changes over four decades.

    • Xuehui Pi
    • , Qiuqi Luo
    •  & Brett A. Bryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How lake temperatures are responding to widespread changes in lake ice remains unclear. Here the authors show the excess lake warming during the ice-off and ice-on month due to earlier ice loss and later ice formation across the Northern Hemisphere.

    • Xinyu Li
    • , Shushi Peng
    •  & Gang Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Under continued global warming, lakes will increasingly be covered by white ice, in particular towards the end of the ice cover season when fatal winter drownings occur most often and light limits the growth and reproduction of primary producers.

    • Gesa A. Weyhenmeyer
    • , Ulrike Obertegger
    •  & Roman Zdorovennov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry revealed that plastic bags leach labile compounds. Bioassays performed in Scandinavian lakes indicated that these compounds are incorporated into biomass faster and more efficiently than natural organic matter.

    • Eleanor A. Sheridan
    • , Jérémy A. Fonvielle
    •  & Andrew J. Tanentzap

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the evaporative water loss from global lakes is invisible, the volume is substantial. In recent decades, lake evaporation volume has been significantly increasing due to enhanced evaporation rate, melting lake ice, and expansion of water extent.

    • Gang Zhao
    • , Yao Li
    •  & Huilin Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbes are intimately linked with the fate of organic matter. Here the authors develop an ecological network framework and show how microbes and dissolved organic matter interact along global change drivers of temperature and nutrient enrichment via manipulative field experiments on mountains.

    • Ang Hu
    • , Mira Choi
    •  & Jianjun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An isotope synthesis of 1257 global lakes revealed on average 20% of inflow is lost to evaporation, but 10% of Earth’s lakes show extreme evaporative losses. Stable water isotope monitoring is an effective way to detect comparative climatic and catchment-scale impacts on lake water-balance budgets.

    • Yuliya Vystavna
    • , Astrid Harjung
    •  & Leonard I. Wassenaar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A large fraction of ice sheet discharge enters the ocean subsurface from underneath large floating ice-tongues. Here the authors show that associated nutrient export may be governed by shelf circulation and, especially for Fe, particle-dissolved phase exchanges, which is largely independent from freshwater Fe content.

    • Stephan Krisch
    • , Mark James Hopwood
    •  & Eric Pieter Achterberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Clean water is a fundamental resource, yet the economic impacts of pollution, drinking water availability, and greenhouse gas emissions from freshwaters are unknown. Here the authors combine models with economic assessments and find trillions of dollars in savings by mitigating lake methane emissions.

    • John A. Downing
    • , Stephen Polasky
    •  & Stephen C. Newbold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the past is necessary to comprehend Earth’s response to present climate change, but past climate reconstruction is hampered by a lack of temperature proxies. Here the authors develop the HDI26, a proxy using cyanobacterial glycolipids to reconstruct water temperatures of lakes worldwide.

    • Thorsten Bauersachs
    • , James M. Russell
    •  & Lorenz Schwark

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stratification has a considerable influence on lake ecology, but there is little understanding of past or future changes in its seasonality. Here, the authors use modelling and empirical data to determine that between 1901–2099, climate change causes stratification to start earlier and end later.

    • R. Iestyn Woolway
    • , Sapna Sharma
    •  & Eleanor Jennings

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The conditions that shaped Earth’s evolution during the Archaean and Proterozoic Eons remain unknown. Using Lake Towuti in Indonesia as an analog of early oceans the authors find that microbial methanogenesis exerts a strong influence with important implications for the composition of Earth’s early atmosphere.

    • André Friese
    • , Kohen Bauer
    •  & Jens Kallmeyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anthropogenic changes, such as eutrophication from lake pollution, can lead to rapid evolution. Comparing Daphnia resurrected from generations adapted to historical pollution to contemporary, post-cleanup populations finds that Daphnia rapidly reversed their evolved resistance to harmful cyanobacteria.

    • Jana Isanta-Navarro
    • , Nelson G. Hairston Jr
    •  & Dominik Martin-Creuzburg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study presents hourly data from a thermistor string in Lake Michigan, inspecting its response at depth to surface warming. Based on the data, the study suggests bottom lake temperatures respond to changes in turnover and re-stratification, with the ultimate possibility of the lake shifting from dimictic to monomictic.

    • Eric J. Anderson
    • , Craig A. Stow
    •  & Nathan Hawley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Enigmatic blooms of phytoplankton in aquatic oxygen-deficient zones could exacerbate depletion of nitrogen. Here the authors perform stable isotope experiments on the oxygen-deficient waters of Lake Tanganyika in Africa, finding that blooms drive down fixed nitrogen and could expand as a result of climate change.

    • Cameron M. Callbeck
    • , Benedikt Ehrenfels
    •  & Carsten J. Schubert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the abrupt warming events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial cycle have influenced the tropical climate is not well known. Here the authors present new lake sediment data from the Peruvian Andes that shows that these events resulted in rapid glacier retreat and large reductions in lake level.

    • Arielle Woods
    • , Donald T. Rodbell
    •  & Joseph S. Stoner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sedimentary DNA can be used to infer how organisms responded to changing environmental conditions over millennia. Here, the authors use sedimentary DNA of micro-eukaryotes in low-elevation (human-impacted) and high-elevation (more pristine) lakes to show how human influences have altered lake community composition in the Anthropocene.

    • François Keck
    • , Laurent Millet
    •  & Isabelle Domaizon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global environmental changes threaten many food-producing sectors, including aquaculture. Here the authors show that countries most vulnerable to climate change will probably face the highest antimicrobial resistance in aquaculture-related bacteria, and that infected aquatic animals have higher mortality at warmer temperatures.

    • Miriam Reverter
    • , Samira Sarter
    •  & Rodolphe E. Gozlan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High latitude droughts are increasing, but their effects on freshwater systems are poorly understood. Here the authors investigate Sweden’s most severe drought in the last century and show that these dry conditions induce hypoxia and elevated methane production from streams.

    • Lluís Gómez-Gener
    • , Anna Lupon
    •  & Ryan A. Sponseller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water temperature is a critical variable for lakes, but its spatial and temporal patterns are not well characterised globally. Here, the authors use surface temperature dynamics to define lake thermal regions that group lakes with similar patterns, and show how these regions shift under climate change.

    • Stephen C. Maberly
    • , Ruth A. O’Donnell
    •  & Andrew N. Tyler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The variations in overbank flow from rivers onto floodplains from regional to continental scales are understudied. Here, the authors investigate this variation as a function of hydroclimatic parameters and channel size in the conterminous U.S. and find that the timing of floodplain inundation is largely controlled by regional factors, while the frequency, duration and magnitude of these inundations vary consistently with channel size.

    • Durelle T. Scott
    • , Jesus D. Gomez-Velez
    •  & Judson W. Harvey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rivers are thought to be the largest source of the recalcitrant and abundant black carbon in the ocean. Here, Wagner and colleagues find distinct pools of black carbon between rivers and the open ocean, challenging the long-held assumption that marine black carbon is of terrestrial origin.

    • Sasha Wagner
    • , Jay Brandes
    •  & Aron Stubbins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Western Siberia Lowland (WSL) is the world’s largest frozen peatland complex, however carbon emissions (CO2+CH4) from lakes in this region remain unknown. Here, the authors sample 76 lakes and show high carbon emissions from lakes across all permafrost zones in the WSL.

    • S. Serikova
    • , O. S. Pokrovsky
    •  & J. Karlsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    .Agricultural intensification and a growing human population are likely to increase the eutrophication of lakes and impoundments over the next century.  Here, the authors show that this enhanced eutrophication will substantially increase emissions of methane (+ 30–90%), a potent greenhouse gas, from these systems over the next century.

    • Jake J. Beaulieu
    • , Tonya DelSontro
    •  & John A. Downing

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