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Perspectives in winter limnology: closing the annual cycle of freezing lakes

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Abstract

Winter has traditionally been considered as an ecologically insignificant season and, together with technical difficulties, this has led winter limnology to lag behind summer limnology. Recently, rapidly expanding interest in climate warming has increased water research in winter. It has also become clear that neither winter conditions of lakes nor under-ice communities are as static as often supposed. Although interannual differences in water temperature are small, close to the maximum density temperature, they may have profound effect on under-ice hydrodynamics. Thus, stochastic variations in weather, particularly those preceding the time of freezing and ice melting, may have important consequences for hydrodynamics which then affect the distributions and conditions of microorganisms and probably further to higher trophic levels. Even fish distributions can be dictated by under-ice conditions and their activities as well as behavior can sometimes approach those in summer. Life in freshwater ice is one of the least studied aspects of winter limnology and recent studies suggest that a thorough evaluation is needed. Altogether there are strengthening signs that winter should be considered as an integral part in the functioning and dynamics of lakes affecting quantitative and qualitative characteristics of aquatic communities in summer. There are great prospects that more thorough understanding of the prevailing limnological conditions in winter will improve our understanding of lake ecosystems in their entirety, and there is no doubt that such an approach requires multidisciplinary and long- term studies at different spatial scales.

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Acknowledgments

The Symposium on Winter Limnology in Kilpisjärvi, Finland was hosted jointly by the Universities of Helsinki, Joensuu and Jyväskylä. We are grateful to the members of the organizing (T. Huttula, M. Kiili, K. Salonen, M. Viljanen) and advisory (P.-A. Amundsen, P. Blanchfield, M. Dokulil, T. Huttula, M. Jobling, H. Lehtonen, Matti Leppäranta, T. Nõges, A. Terzhevik, O. A. Timoshkin) committees who contributed to the success of the symposium Very special thanks are due to Ms. Tuula Toivanen, the practical organizer of the symposium, and to Ms. Pirjo Hakala, who was responsible for the symposium arrangements at Kilpisjärvi. Financial support was provided by a grant (120138) from the Academy of Finland

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological and Environmental Science, P.O. Box 35 (YAC), 40014, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

    K. Salonen

  2. Department of Physics, P.O. Box 64, 00014, University of Helsinki, Finland

    M. Leppäranta

  3. Ecological Research Institute, University of Joensuu, P.O. Box 111, 80101, Joensuu, Finland

    M. Viljanen

  4. Centre for Limnology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, De Rijkstraatweg 6, 3631 AC, Nieuwersluis, The Netherlands

    R. D. Gulati

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  1. K. Salonen
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Correspondence to K. Salonen.

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Salonen, K., Leppäranta, M., Viljanen, M. et al. Perspectives in winter limnology: closing the annual cycle of freezing lakes. Aquat Ecol 43, 609–616 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-009-9278-z

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