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Twentieth century human and climate impacts on a large mountain lake in southwest China

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Abstract

Subfossil chironomid and sediment geochemistry data from Lugu Lake, a large high-elevation lake in southwest China, were used to assess the influences of climate warming and direct human impacts on the lake through time. A 95-year-long sediment record was recovered from the lake. Principal components analysis (PCA) and redundancy analysis of fossil chironomid data were performed to determine the controlling factors on the chironomid community. The four prominent environmental controls were summer air temperature, organic matter C:N ratio (Corg:N), dry mass accumulation rate (DMAR), and total nitrogen. Corg:N proved to be the most important controlling factor through time. However, Corg:N and summer air temperature were highly co-linear, possibly due to temperature directly impacting lake productivity (and thus C:N ratios) through increased stratification and a longer growing season. PCA Axis 1 scores were a strong predictor of summer temperatures even after DMAR was factored out to account for direct human influences. The strong temperature–chironomid relationship over the last 50 years could be due to the lake becoming more responsive to climate warming after cultural eutrophication of the 1950s, as lakes with higher nutrient loads are shown to be more responsive to the effects of climate warming.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Sichuan University State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering Open Research Fund (2008) and the Key Project of the Chinese Ministry of Education (No. 108177). We would like to thank Hongbing Luo and Shaobo Li for their help with the fieldwork portion of this study.

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  1. Xinchun Guo

    Present address: Southwest Electric Power Design Institute, CPECC, Chengdu, 610021, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Xinchun Guo & Lin Luo

  2. Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit, School of Geography and Archaeology, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Aaron P. Potito

  3. Department of Geography, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 445 Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    David W. Beilman

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Correspondence to Aaron P. Potito.

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Handling editor: Jasmine Saros

Lin Luo—Deceased.

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Guo, X., Potito, A.P., Luo, L. et al. Twentieth century human and climate impacts on a large mountain lake in southwest China. Hydrobiologia 718, 189–206 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-013-1615-5

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