Abstract
Regime shifts from submersed macrophyte dominance to phytoplankton dominance have been widely reported in small- to medium-sized shallow lakes. However, alternative stable states in large shallow lakes (surface area >500 km2) remain unconfirmed. To understand the alternative stable states and the main influencing factors of submersed macrophytes in large lakes, the ecosystem states from monitoring data from 1959 to 2019 in large shallow Taihu Lake (2 338 km2 in average depth of 2.12 m) in China were examined. Changes in submersed macrophyte coverage (CMac) and phytoplankton chlorophyll a (Chl a) in the time series and their relationships with environmental factors were analyzed. During the field investigation from August 2018 to May 2019, nutrients and Chl a showed obvious heterogeneity across the lake, being generally higher in the western and northern areas and lower in the southeast area, while CMac was only observed in the eastern areas, e.g., East Taihu Lake, Xukou Bay, and Gonghu Bay. During the long-term monitoring from 1959 to 2019 in the Central Region, Meiliang Bay, and East Taihu Lake, Chl a increased significantly in the time series. CMac varied slightly among different subareas, always at low levels (<10%) in the Central Region and Meiliang Bay but at relatively high levels in East Taihu Lake (10%–90%). Frequency distributions of response variables had no multimodality except for CMac in East Taihu Lake, with two peaks between 15% and 20% and between 55% and 60%. A dual relationship was found between Chl a and total phosphorus (TP) in the areas with and without macrophytes, while CMac showed no relationship with TP, and submersed macrophytes did not flourish in the Central Region and Meiliang Bay even when TP was at very low levels (≈10 mg/m3). Taihu Lake had similar algal turbidity (TurbAlg) as small- to medium-sized lakes but generally presented with higher values of nonalgal turbidity (TurbNonAlg), as did their contribution to total turbidity as a percentage. This study suggested that large shallow Taihu Lake may have no alternative stable states, but more evidence is needed for East Taihu Lake, which was dominated by macrophytes, as it remains unknown whether hysteresis occurs between the processes of eutrophication and oligotrophication. Unfavorable conditions caused by wind might be the main reason due to the absence of submersed macrophytes in Taihu Lake. These results demonstrate that stricter nutrient control is needed to maintain a healthy state or to recover from a decayed state for large lakes.
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Data Availability Statement
All data generated and/or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon request on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgment
We thank Prof. Erik JEPPESEN (Aarhus University), Prof. Xiaoke ZHANG (Anqing Normal University), Hongxing XU (Wujin District Xueyan Zhongcheng Leasing Service Department), Haixin YU (Freshwater Fisheries Research Center, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences), Lei LIANG, Junyan WU and Tingting ZHOU (Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) their help with the fieldwork. We also thank the National Earth System Science Data Center, National Science & Technology Infrastructure of China for data support (http://www.geodata.cn).
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Supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2021YFC3200103), the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment of China (No. 2017ZX07302-002), the State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology (No. 2019FBZ01), the Wuhan Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 2020020602012152), the Research Project of Wuhan Municipal Construction Group Co., Ltd. (No. wszky202014), and Haijun WANG was supported by the Youth Innovation Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences as an excellent member (No. Y201859)
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Li, Y., Ma, Y., Wang, H. et al. Do alternative stable states exist in large shallow Taihu Lake, China?. J. Ocean. Limnol. 41, 959–971 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-022-1286-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-022-1286-z