A European Multi Lake Survey dataset of environmental variables, phytoplankton pigments and cyanotoxins

Abstract

Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-change induced stressors, like poor transparency, increased water temperature and enhanced stratification. Consistency in data collection and analysis methods is necessary to achieve fully comparable datasets and for statistical validity, avoiding issues linked to disparate data sources. The European Multi Lake Survey (EMLS) in summer 2015 was an initiative among scientists from 27 countries to collect and analyse lake physical, chemical and biological variables in a fully standardized manner. This database includes in-situ lake variables along with nutrient, pigment and cyanotoxin data of 369 lakes in Europe, which were centrally analysed in dedicated laboratories. Publishing the EMLS methods and dataset might inspire similar initiatives to study across large geographic areas that will contribute to better understanding lake responses in a changing environment.

Distribution of Toxic Cyanobacteria in Volcanic Lakes of the Azores Islands

“…limnetica) and associated mainly to the lake's morphometrics (depth, area, and altitude), as well as temperature, pH, conductivity and/or chlorophyll a. These synergies are supported by the DistLM analysis ( Figure 4; Table 2) and reinforced by the literature [7,41,93,94]. Some studies also confirm that toxic strain blooms and toxin release are enhanced by temperature, in interaction with other factors such as nutrients and light absorption [2,7,10,18,20,93].…”

“…As it is observed worldwide [32][33][34][35], eutrophication in the Azorean lakes has led to the increase of cyanobacteria abundance and the formation of cyanoHABs [30,35,36]. References to the presence of cyanobacteria in the Azores date back to the late Nineteenth century [37][38][39], but the current knowledge on their distribution and ecology is still limited [35,36], and even less is known about the presence of toxigenic strains in the Azorean lakes [7,30,40,41]. Considering that several species known from the literature as producers of MC, STX, ATX-a, and CYN, such as Aphanizomenon gracile [42], Microcystis aeruginosa [43], and Raphidiopsis curvata [44], were found in the Azores lakes [45], the presence of toxigenic strains and/or cyanotoxins should be further investigated, in order to determine the present risk in these waters.…”

The Impact of Lake Water Quality on the Performance of Mature Artificial Recharge Ponds

“…Furthermore, eutrophic conditions tend to enhance the growth and bloom formation of algae, specifically cyanobacteria [25], and particularly when total phosphorus is above 20 µg/L [26]. The nutrient conditions in the pond water were examined.…”

Functional Groups of Phytoplankton and Their Relationship with Environmental Factors in the Restored Uzarzewskie Lake

“…An additional reason for the intensive growth of phytoplankton, especially from the coda H1 and S1 (cyanobacteria), were very favorable temperature conditions in summer [42][43][44]. It is worth mentioning that the increasing trends of temperature in the last decades favor cyanobacterial blooms [45][46][47][48] and reconstruction of species composition towards an increase of the number of invasive taxa [49][50][51]. This was the cause of higher cyanobacteria biomass in 2015 than in other years of the second method application, as summer 2015 was extremely hot in Poland.…”