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Modelling the Impacts of Climate Change on Dissolved Organic Carbon

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The Impact of Climate Change on European Lakes

Abstract

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from peat soils has implications both for the ecology of receiving waters and for the quality and treatment costs of water used for human consumption. Fluxes of DOC from peat soils are also relevant in the context of the global carbon cycle. Chapter 12 in this volume has reviewed the evidence for the effects of different environmental factors on the decomposition of peat soils and the export of DOC, drawing on literature and long-term data acquired from a number of European sites. The conclusion from this and many other studies is that, although there may be other influences such as land management and recovery from acid deposition, climate factors are a major player in both the short-term variability and longer-term trends seen in measured DOC concentrations and fluxes. Given the importance of DOC and likely future changes in climate, it is timely and opportune to make use of our current understanding to project possible future DOC.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    DOC estimated from a regression on water colour (R 2= 0.98; n = 50)

  2. 2.

    DOC approximated by total organic carbon (TOC) measurements

  3. 3.

    *DOC derived from hourly coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM) corrected for temperature-mediated quenching of the fluorescence signal (Moore et al., submitted)

  4. 4.

    * inclusion of runoff threshold R 0 of 0.10 cm; in other cases, no threshold applied R 0 =R luDOC

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Acknowledgements

The CLIME project was supported under contract EVK1-CT-2002-00121 by the Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development (EESD) Programme of the 5th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. We should also like to thank the Environmental Change Network (ECN) in the UK, the British Atmospheric Data Centre, the National River Flow Archive, UK Meteorological Office, UK Environment Agency and Jo Clark for access to data for Trout Beck; Kerry County Council, the Office of Public Works and Met Éireann for access to data for the Irish sites; Lammi Biological Station, University of Helsinki, for the Mustajoki data; Swedish Agricultural University (SLU), Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) and the Swedish Land Survey (Lantmäteriet) for access to the Swedish data; and to the European Environment Agency (EEA), Copenhagen, for access to the CORINE land cover data.

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Naden, P.S. et al. (2010). Modelling the Impacts of Climate Change on Dissolved Organic Carbon. In: George, G. (eds) The Impact of Climate Change on European Lakes. Aquatic Ecology Series, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2945-4_13

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