Dataset Information

Laurentian Great Lakes phytoplankton and their water quality characteristics, including a diatom-based model for paleoreconstruction of phosphorus.

ABSTRACT: Recent shifts in water quality and food web characteristics driven by anthropogenic impacts on the Laurentian Great Lakes warranted an examination of pelagic primary producers as tracers of environmental change. The distributions of the 263 common phytoplankton taxa were related to water quality variables to determine taxon-specific responses that may be useful in indicator models. A detailed checklist of taxa and their environmental optima are provided. Multivariate analyses indicated a strong relationship between total phosphorus (TP) and patterns in the diatom assemblages across the Great Lakes. Of the 118 common diatom taxa, 90 (76%) had a directional response along the TP gradient. We further evaluated a diatom-based transfer function for TP based on the weighted-average abundance of taxa, assuming unimodal distributions along the TP gradient. The r(2) between observed and inferred TP in the training dataset was 0.79. Substantial spatial and environmental autocorrelation within the training set of samples justified the need for further model validation. A randomization procedure indicated that the actual transfer function consistently performed better than functions based on reshuffled environmental data. Further, TP was minimally confounded by other environmental variables, as indicated by the relatively large amount of unique variance in the diatoms explained by TP. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the transfer function by hindcasting TP concentrations using fossil diatom assemblages in a Lake Superior sediment core. Passive, multivariate analysis of the fossil samples against the training set indicated that phosphorus was a strong determinant of historical diatom assemblages, verifying that the transfer function was suited to reconstruct past TP in Lake Superior. Collectively, these results showed that phytoplankton coefficients for water quality can be robust indicators of Great Lakes pelagic condition. The diatom-based transfer function can be used in lake management when retrospective data are needed for tracking long-term degradation, remediation and trajectories.

SUBMITTER: Reavie ED

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4126776 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Laurentian Great Lakes phytoplankton and their water quality characteristics, including a diatom-based model for paleoreconstruction of phosphorus.

Reavie Euan D ED Heathcote Adam J AJ Shaw Chraïbi Victoria L VL

PloS one 20140808 8

Recent shifts in water quality and food web characteristics driven by anthropogenic impacts on the Laurentian Great Lakes warranted an examination of pelagic primary producers as tracers of environmental change. The distributions of the 263 common phytoplankton taxa were related to water quality variables to determine taxon-specific responses that may be useful in indicator models. A detailed checklist of taxa and their environmental optima are provided. Multivariate analyses indicated a strong ...[more]

PMID: 25105416

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Project description:Geochemical analyses applied to lake sedimentary records can reveal the history of pollution by metals and the effects of remedial efforts. Lakes provide ideal environments for geochemical studies because they have steady deposition of fine grained material suitable for fixation of pollutants. The Laurentian Great Lakes are the most studied system in this field, and they have well-preserved chronological profiles. To date, this important system has been considered in parts for inorganic geochemistry, hampering basin-wide conclusions regarding metal contamination. We filled spatial and temporal gaps in a comprehensive geochemical analysis of 11 sediment cores collected from all five Great Lakes. Hierarchical cluster analysis of all Great Lakes samples divided the metal analytes into five functional groups: (1) carbonate elements; (2) metals and oxides with diverse natural sources, including a subgroup of analytes known to be anthropogenically enriched (Cd, Pb, Sn, Zn, and Sb); (3) common crustal elements; (4) metals related to coal and nuclear power generation; and (5) all of the co-occurring rare earth elements. Two contamination indices (Igeo and EF) applied to sedimentary metals indicated that Na, Co, Mn, Cd, Pb, Ta, and Cu were each, at some point during the Anthropocene, the most enriched metal pollutants in Great Lakes sediments. Land uses correlated with the metal analytes, such as increases in contaminant metals with the rise in catchment population and increases in carbonate elements (e.g. Ca) with agriculture. Certain contamination trends were observed basin-wide, such as for the atmospheric pollutant Pb, which followed a rise associated with fossil fuel combustion and a decline following the ban of leaded gasoline. Other trends were lake-specific, such as recent high concentrations of Na in Lake Superior, likely due to road salt applications, and a late-20th-century peak in Ca associated with algal whiting events in Lake Ontario. Some metals exceeded guidelines for sediment quality, in some cases prior to European settlement of the basin, indicating that a paleolimnological context is important for appropriate management of sediment contamination. The Great Lakes are sensitive to environmental changes such as pollution by metals, and it is clear that while there has been remedial success, results from the uppermost intervals of cores indicate ongoing problems.

Dataset Information

Laurentian Great Lakes phytoplankton and their water quality characteristics, including a diatom-based model for paleoreconstruction of phosphorus.

Publications

Laurentian Great Lakes phytoplankton and their water quality characteristics, including a diatom-based model for paleoreconstruction of phosphorus.

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