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Comparison of Cladocera-based water-depth reconstruction against other types of proxy data in Finnish Lapland

  • CLADOCERA AS INDICATORS
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Abstract

Lake depth is an important limnological attribute defining the structure and function of freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Lake levels have fluctuated and lake depths changed through the Holocene reflecting regional climate variations and sediment accumulation. Cladoceran remains preserved in sediments have been widely used for qualitative (P/L ratio) and quantitative (inference models) lake-depth reconstructions. In addition to estimations of prediction errors for performance power of modern data sets, it is important also to evaluate the reliability of reconstructed environmental values and to ensure that they are ecologically and paleoclimatically meaningful. In this study, we reconstructed the Holocene lake-depth history of a northern boreal lake using the Cladocera P/L ratio and a Cladocera—lake-depth inference model. These results were evaluated by comparison with reconstructions based on other proxies (aquatic macrofossils, sediment composition and sedimentation pattern) derived from three radiocarbon-dated sediment cores from the same lake. Whilst the reconstructions based on Cladocera and on the combination of other proxies yielded similar long-term trends, the absolute water depth values derived from the quantitative cladoceran model deviated from what was indicated by the other proxies. Therefore, we strongly recommend that also other, independent methods should be used simultaneously when reconstructing past water depths using Cladocera remains.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge funding to SS from the Arctic doctoral programme ARKTIS, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. Funding for MV and JW was provided by the REBECCA-project, supported by the Helsinki University Environmental Research Centre (HERC) and the Academy of Finland (project number 123503). We warmly thank Virpi Kuutti for help with fieldwork and analyses. We are grateful to Ossi Aikio and many other local people for their helpful and cooperative attitude towards our fieldwork in Kaamanen and Kaarina Weckström for improving the language. We also acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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  1. Environmental Change Research Unit, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Susanna Siitonen, Minna Väliranta, Jan Weckström & Atte Korhola

  2. Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Sari Juutinen

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  1. Susanna Siitonen
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  2. Minna Väliranta
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Correspondence to Susanna Siitonen.

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Guest editors: H. Eggermont & K. Martens / Cladocera as indicators of environmental change

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Siitonen, S., Väliranta, M., Weckström, J. et al. Comparison of Cladocera-based water-depth reconstruction against other types of proxy data in Finnish Lapland. Hydrobiologia 676, 155–172 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-011-0885-z

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