In:
Nature Communications, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Vol. 9, No. 1 ( 2018-03-29)
Abstract:
Using a whole-watershed approach and a combination of historical, contemporary, modeled and paleolimnological datasets, we show that the High Arctic’s largest lake by volume (Lake Hazen) has succumbed to climate warming with only a ~1 °C relative increase in summer air temperatures. This warming deepened the soil active layer and triggered large mass losses from the watershed’s glaciers, resulting in a ~10 times increase in delivery of glacial meltwaters, sediment, organic carbon and legacy contaminants to Lake Hazen, a 〉 70% decrease in lake water residence time, and near certainty of summer ice-free conditions. Concomitantly, the community assemblage of diatom primary producers in the lake shifted dramatically with declining ice cover, from shoreline benthic to open-water planktonic species, and the physiological condition of the only fish species in the lake, Arctic Char, declined significantly. Collectively, these changes place Lake Hazen in a biogeochemical, limnological and ecological regime unprecedented within the past ~300 years.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2041-1723
DOI:
10.1038/s41467-018-03685-z
Language:
English
Publisher:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication Date:
2018
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2553671-0
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