Abstract
Fish status in terms of ‘good, ‘sparse’, ‘lost’, ‘never had fish’, has previously been reported for several thousands of lakes in southermost Norway. In more than a thousand of these lakes pH and conductivity have also been measured. These data have been used to establish a relationship between pH and fish status (brown trout). It is estimated that a uniform pH increase of 0.2 units will result in status changes from category ‘lost’ to ‘sparse’ in 12% of the lakes (27% of the lakes which have lost the fish population). Altogether 21 % of the lakes are predicted to change to a better category. We have used a fixed pH shift in order to make the approach applicable. This is a rather drastic simplification since the lakes will respond very differently to a reduction in S deposition depending on the original acidity and a number of other factors. The limitations of the approach and an alternative method used by Chester (1982) are discussed in detail.
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Muniz, I.P., Seip, H.M. & Sevaldrud, I.H. Relationship between fish populations and pH for lakes in Southermost Norway. Water Air Soil Pollut 23, 97–113 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00185134
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00185134