Disappearing Winters: Implications for water quality
Abstract: Winter, the un-monitored season, is important and changing. Winters are getting shorter, but our ability to forecast change is hindered by our limited understanding of what happens under lake ice. Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) are occurring more frequently on a global basis. Is there a relationship between these two global limnology trends? Are changing winter conditions catalysts for potentially toxic summer cyanoHABs? This presentation explores what happens in lakes in the winter and what will happen when our winters disappear. I hypothesize that rapidly changing seasonal physical factors (i.e., light, temperature, and mixing dynamics) may be facilitating cyanoHABs, confounding our ability to manage year-round water quality. Life is getting better for cyanobacteria; our data suggests that we might be looking at the wrong times, wrong places, and for the wrong cyanotoxins (e.g., cold water blooms, oligotrophic blooms, and ubiquitous cyanotoxins). Here, I will investigate changing drivers of blooms, and suggest that our indicators of toxic lakes are failing us. I will present preliminary results from the SUMMER-FISH LakeLab experiment that suggests that light and temperature are important factors in microcystin persistence and degradation. Understanding winter phytoplankton dynamics will be important for predicting future changes in year-round lake function.
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IGB strives to facilitate and accelerate the exchange of knowledge and ideas within and also outside of IGB. One element contributing to inter- and transdisciplinary exchange, and more (scientific) cooperation and innovation, is to open up IGB Colloquia to an interested external audience from science (other research institutes, universities, laboratories) as well as practice (i.e. conservationists, freshwater/land-use managers, authorities, associations). If you would like to join this IGB Colloquium as a guest, we ask you to register until the morning of the colloquium 10 o'clock the latest. After we have checked your registration, you will receive the participation link.