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Temporal scales of water-level fluctuations in lakes and their ecological implications

  • WATER-LEVEL FLUCTUATIONS
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Abstract

Water-level fluctuations (WLF) of lakes have temporal scales ranging from seconds to hundreds of years. Fluctuations in the lake level generated by an unbalanced water budget resulting from meteorological and hydrological processes, such as precipitation, evaporation and inflow and outflow conditions usually have long temporal scales (days to years) and are here classified as long-term WLF. In contrast, WLF generated by hydrodynamic processes, e.g. basin-scale oscillations and travelling surface waves, have periods in the order of seconds to hours and are classified as short-term WLF. The impact of WLF on abiotic and biotic conditions depends on the temporal scale under consideration and is exemplified using data from Lake Issyk-Kul, the Caspian Sea and Lake Constance. Long-term WLF induce a slow shore line displacement of metres to kilometres, but immediate physical stress due to currents associated with long-term WLF is negligible. Large-scale shore line displacements change the habitat availability for organisms adapted to terrestrial and aquatic conditions over long time scales. Short-term WLF, in contrast, do not significantly displace the boundary between the aquatic and the terrestrial habitat, but impose short-term physical stress on organisms living in the littoral zone and on organic and inorganic particles deposited in the top sediment layers. The interaction of WLF acting on different time scales amplifies their overall impact on the ecosystem, because long-term WLF change the habitat exposed to the physical stress resulting from short-term WLF. Specifically, shore morphology and sediment grain size distribution are the result of a continuous interplay between short- and long-term WLF, the former providing the energy for erosion the latter determining the section of the shore exposed to the erosive power.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Georg Heine and his colleagues from the electronic and mechanical workshop at the University of Konstanz for technical assistance and the development of the pressure sensors. We gratefully acknowledge the help of the technical staff at the Limnological Institute and many students during fieldwork and data analysis. We thank the two anonymous referees whose valuable comments improved the manuscript. The gauge Konstanz water level time series between 1817 and 2005 was provided by the State Institute for Environment, Measurements and Nature Conservation Baden-Württemberg (LUBW). This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre 454 “Littoral Zone of Lake Constance”.

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  1. Environmental Physics, Limnological Institute, University of Konstanz, Mainaustr. 252, 78465, Konstanz, Germany

    Hilmar Hofmann, Andreas Lorke & Frank Peeters

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  1. Hilmar Hofmann
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  2. Andreas Lorke
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Correspondence to Hilmar Hofmann.

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Guest editors: K. M. Wantzen, K.-O. Rothhaupt, M. Mörtl, M. Cantonati, L. G.-Tóth & P. Fischer

Ecological Effects of Water-Level Fluctuations in Lakes

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Hofmann, H., Lorke, A. & Peeters, F. Temporal scales of water-level fluctuations in lakes and their ecological implications. Hydrobiologia 613, 85–96 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-008-9474-1

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