New research by scientists at the University of Minnesota (U of M) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute indicates that oxygen levels in the planet's freshwater lakes are declining rapidly due to climate change and land use. Published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the project analyzed more than 45,000 dissolved oxygen and temperature profiles collected between 1941 and 2017, from nearly 400 lakes around the globe. Among those lakes are 84 from.
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IMAGE: Oxygen levels in the world s temperate freshwater lakes are declining faster than in the oceans. view more
Credit: Gretchen Hansen, University of Minnesota
TROY, N.Y. Oxygen levels in the world s temperate freshwater lakes are declining rapidly faster than in the oceans a trend driven largely by climate change that threatens freshwater biodiversity and drinking water quality.
Research published today in
Nature found that oxygen levels in surveyed lakes across the temperate zone have declined 5.5% at the surface and 18.6% in deep waters since 1980. Meanwhile, in a large subset of mostly nutrient-polluted lakes, surface oxygen levels increased as water temperatures crossed a threshold favoring cyanobacteria, which can create toxins when they flourish in the form of harmful algal blooms.
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Climate change: Worldwide emergence of dead zones in lakes
As climate change progresses, lakes also warm up, the oxygen concentration in the water decreases and dead zones in deep zones develop. Ruben Sommaruga from the Institute of Ecologyand an international team of researchers were the first to identify this dramatic widespread development in a study of 393 lakes around the world. The results were published in the journal Nature.
The temperature in lakes is also subject to the continuous warming of the climate. As water temperature increases, gas diffusion at the surface of lakes decreases and thus, the oxygen concentration in the lake decreases as well. Ruben Sommaruga and more than 40 scientists from all over the world studied the oxygen concentration in relation to temperature in 393 lakes over a period of more than 70 years. A total of 45,000 combined profiles of temperature and oxygen were analyzed. This close collaboration was made possible by the Global Lake Ec
Flathead Lake Is Part of Worldwide Study
Montana s Flathead Lake was one of 100 lakes around the planet in a recent study on how warming surface temperatures on Earth affect lake ecosystems. The study at Flathead was reported by the University of Montana Flathead Lake Biological Station and Shawn Devlin, an aquatic ecologist (Photo above).
The study was published in Nature s Scientific Reports and researchers collected long-term summertime temperatures at different depths, collected over 40 years, starting in 1970. In a news release, Devlin said, One thing that made this study so remarkable is the scope. We were able to track the long-term surface and deep-water temperatures trends of each individual lake and insert that information into a much larger picture to uncover patterns that help us understand what s happening.