Abstract
At the land–sea interface, coastal waters and especially lagoons are prone to multiple anthropogenic pressures impacting ecosystem functioning. In the Baltic Sea, eutrophication, defined as increased nitrogen discharge in coastal waters, is one of the main ecosystem threats. A change in the ratios between the different nutrient, e.g. nitrogen and phosphate, influences the communities of primary producers at the base of the food web, as different types of primary producers (e.g. macrophytes and phytoplankton) have specific nutrient requirement. The type of primary producers influences the composition and availability of food resources for consumers, and how primary production enters and passes through the food web. Thus, ecosystem functioning of lagoons dominated by, e.g. phytoplankton will differ from that of lagoons dominated by, e.g. macrophytes. Commonly, higher nutrient discharge sustains higher ecosystem production. However, in lakes, it has been shown that high eutrophic systems had lower total production than non-eutrophic ones, a concept known as “the paradox of enrichment”. Here, we used ecological network analyses on carbon flow networks to compare the functioning and structure of two lagoon ecosystems in the German Baltic Sea under different eutrophication pressure: the highly eutrophic Grabow estuarine lagoon in the Darß-Zingst Bodden chain dominated by phytoplankton, and the less eutrophic Vitter Bodden marine lagoon, dominated by macrophytes. The Grabow lagoon, dominated by phytoplankton, had higher redundancy in longer trophic pathways and higher recycling rate than the macrophyte-dominated Vitter Bodden lagoon, characterised by a more specialised food web. The overall food web production was higher in the less eutrophic Vitter Bodden lagoon than in the highly eutrophic Grabow lagoon. Our results, showing a lower ecosystem production with an increased nutrient discharge, confirms empirically and for the first the “paradox of enrichment” in coastal waters.
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We are grateful to Sabine Horn and Stefan Forster for valuable comments on the manuscript.
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Paar, M., Berthold, M., Schumann, R., Blindow, I. (2023). Carbon Fluxes/Food-Webs: Effect of Macrophytes on Food Web Characteristics in Coastal Lagoons. In: Schubert, H., Müller, F. (eds) Southern Baltic Coastal Systems Analysis. Ecological Studies, vol 246. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13682-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13682-5_13
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