Sponsor
The impetus for this manuscript was a workshop on Mountain Lakes that was hosted by Jill Baron, Sudeep Chandra, and Bella Oleksy and funded by by USGS Climate and Land Use Program’s Western Mountain Initiative.
Published In
Global and Planetary Change
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
4-2019
Subjects
Paleolimnology, Climatic changes, Atmospheric deposition -- Environmental aspects, Carbon cycle (Biogeochemistry), Introduced organisms
Abstract
Mountain lakes are often situated in protected natural areas, a feature that leads to their role as sentinels of global environmental change. Despite variations in latitude, mountain lakes share many features, including their location in catchments with steep topographic gradients, cold temperatures, high incident solar and ultraviolet radiation (UVR), and prolonged ice and snow cover. These characteristics, in turn, affect mountain lake ecosystem structure, diversity, and productivity. The lakes themselves are mostly small and shallow, and up until recently, have been characterized as oligotrophic. This paper provides a review and update of the growing body of research that shows that sediments in remote mountain lakes archive regional and global environmental changes, including those linked to climate change, altered biogeochemical cycles, and changes in dust composition and deposition, atmospheric fertilization, and biological manipulations. These archives provide an important record of global environmental change that pre-dates typical monitoring windows. Paleolimnological research at strategically selected lakes has increased our knowledge of interactions among multiple stressors and their synergistic effects on lake systems. Lakes from transects across steep climate (i.e., temperature and effective moisture) gradients in mountain regions show how environmental change alters lakes in close proximity, but at differing climate starting points. Such research in particular highlights the impacts of melting glaciers on mountain lakes. The addition of new proxies, including DNAbased techniques and novel stable isotopic analyses, provides a gateway to addressing novel research questions about global environmental change. Recent advances in remote sensing and continuous, high-frequency, limnological measurements will improve spatial and temporal resolution and help to add records to spatial gaps including tropical and southern latitudes.
Rights
This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Locate the Document
The version of record may be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.gloplacha.2019.04.001.
DOI
10.1016/j.gloplacha.2019.04.001
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/29661
Citation Details
Published as: Moser, K. A., Baron, J. S., Brahney, J., Oleksy, I. A., Saros, J. E., Hundey, E. J., ... & Smol, J. P. (2019). Mountain lakes: Eyes on global environmental change. Global and Planetary Change, 178, 77-95.
Description
This is the Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article that was subsequently published in Global and Planetary Change, Volume 178, July 2019, Pages 77-95, published by Elsevier.