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Paleolimnological Indicators of Global Change

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The Landscape of the Sierra Nevada

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change and the recent increase of Saharan dust deposition are potentially affecting Sierra Nevada alpine lakes. In this chapter, we summarize the results of paleolimnological research conducted to track recent environmental and ecological changes in the lakes and their catchments during the last two centuries. We analyzed several independent paleolimnological indicators preserved in highly resolved dated lake sediment cores including spectrally inferred chlorophyll-a concentration, leaf waxes (n-alkanes), and the subfossil remains of diatoms, cladocerans, and chironomids. Our results are indicative of significant changes in the lakes and their catchments with subtly starting over a century ago that accelerated in the 1960s–1970s, concurrent with trends in rising regional air temperature, declining precipitation, and increased Saharan dust deposition in the region. Our biological indicators registered pronounced changes in the composition of aquatic communities and a recent increase in algal biomass (inferred from chlorophyll-a). Temperature was identified as the main predictor of the observed changes, whereas Saharan dust deposition drivers were secondary explanatory variables. The synchronous change among the paleolimnological proxies and climatic variables analyzed in the Sierra Nevada study lakes indicated that this is a regional shift. The nature of the change in these independent proxies is interpreted as a response to a lengthening of the lake ice-free period, an increase in lake water temperature, as well as a reduction in water availability in the catchments, which affected the volumes and water residence times. All these processes reflect the intensification of summer drought in the Sierra Nevada summit area over the last 50–60 years. In addition, distinct changes in species composition indicate an alkalinization of lake waters. Projected increases in global temperature, decreasing precipitation, and possible increases in Saharan dust inputs will further exacerbate the changes observed so far in these valuable aquatic ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all our colleagues for their assistance in core collection and laboratory analyzes. We thank AEMET and San Fernando Naval Base of the Spanish Army for providing meteorological data and Dr. María Jesús Esteban-Parra from the Dept. of Applied Physics (University of Granada) for climate data. Financial support was provided by two grants to C. Pérez-Martínez (Programa Nacional de Movilidad de Recursos Humanos de Investigación Grant PR2009-0414 (MEC) and Plan Propio de Investigación y Transferencia de la Universidad de Granada Grant PPSAB2018) and two Research Projects (MMA Project 87/2007, MICINN Project CGL2011-23483) to C. P.-M. and an FPU fellowship (AP2007-00352) to L. J. from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Institute of Water Research, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Carmen Pérez-Martínez, José María Conde-Porcuna, Eloísa Ramos-Rodríguez, Emilio Moreno, Eulogio Corral-Arredondo & Laura Jiménez

  2. Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL), Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Kathleen M. Rühland, Adam Jeziorski & John P. Smol

  3. Department of Stratigraphy and Paleontology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Antonio García-Alix

  4. Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, 4056, Basel, Switzerland

    Oliver Heiri

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  1. Carmen Pérez-Martínez
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  2. José María Conde-Porcuna
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  3. Eloísa Ramos-Rodríguez
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  4. Emilio Moreno
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  5. Kathleen M. Rühland
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  6. Adam Jeziorski
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  7. John P. Smol
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  8. Antonio García-Alix
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  9. Oliver Heiri
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  10. Eulogio Corral-Arredondo
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  11. Laura Jiménez
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Correspondence to Carmen Pérez-Martínez .

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  1. Department of Ecology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Regino Zamora

  2. Department of Geography, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Marc Oliva

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Pérez-Martínez, C. et al. (2022). Paleolimnological Indicators of Global Change. In: Zamora, R., Oliva, M. (eds) The Landscape of the Sierra Nevada. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94219-9_17

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