Abstract
Studies on small, shallow lakes are few and have traditionally focused on humic lakes, whereas transparent, oligotrophic lakes dominated by submerged macrophytes have been overlooked. This may have given rise to a skewed perception of shallow lakes as being well mixed, turbid and dominated by ecosystem respiration relative to primary production. Mixing patterns and ecosystem metabolism in five oligotrophic shallow lakes dominated by charophytes were investigated in order to determine gross primary production, ecosystem respiration, their regulation and mutual coupling in this very common lake type. Although lakes were very shallow (<0.5 m), high charophyte biomass caused strong daytime stratification followed by nocturnal mixing. Despite the nutrient-poor water, volumetric rates of production and respiration during spring–summer were high compared to most medium to large lakes. This intensive metabolism is likely a result of the high charophyte biomass and the shallow mixed surface layer. Areal rates of production and respiration were also high compared to values from other aquatic systems. Strong coupling between daily rates of production and respiration suggested that the majority of organic substrates for ecosystem respiration were produced within the lakes. Net ecosystem production was slightly positive during the growth season. This study highlights the role of submerged macrophytes as primary drivers of temperature dynamics, stratification-mixing as well as high metabolism in small, shallow lakes with dense vegetation.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants to KSJ from the Carlsberg Foundation to the study of small lakes and Center of Excellence to Lake Restoration from the Villum Kann Rasmussen Foundation. We thank Sara Schousboe for linguistic corrections.
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27_2017_550_MOESM1_ESM.eps
Fig. S1 Examples from analysis of one lake day in Lake 1, summer 2016. Upper panel shows oxygen concentration (g m-3) at saturation (DOsat), observed concentration (DOobs) and modeled concentration (DOmod) from sunrise to sunrise. The lower panel shows an example from the accompanying bootstrap analysis of the free parameters Pmax, Rmax and α with histograms including nominal fit (solid line) and 95% CI limits (dotted lines) (EPS 147 KB)
27_2017_550_MOESM2_ESM.eps
Fig. S2 Linear relationship of daily rates of R (g O2 m-3 day-1) versus GPP (g O2 m-3 day-1) in Lake 4 loc B and C (2015). Shown are 95% CI (grey area), the 1:1 linear relationship (dotted line) and standard major axis regression (solid line). Rates are per unit volume and normalized to 20 °C. Regression parameter estimates of intercept (Rbase) and slope (β) with 95% CI in parenthesis are: Lake 4 loc B: Rbase= -0.55 (-1.9-0.7) and β = 0.93 (0.87-1.0), Lake 4 loc C: Rbase= -0.19 (-3.6-2.6) and β = 0.62 (0.51-0.76) (EPS 117 KB)
27_2017_550_MOESM3_ESM.eps
Fig. S3 Surface water dissolved oxygen concentrations (solid line, g m-3) and water temperature (dotted line, °C) in Lake 4 loc A and Lake 5 loc A during spring 2015. Raw values measured every 10 minutes are plotted (EPS 768 KB)
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Martinsen, K.T., Andersen, M.R., Kragh, T. et al. High rates and close diel coupling of primary production and ecosystem respiration in small, oligotrophic lakes. Aquat Sci 79, 995–1007 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-017-0550-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-017-0550-3