Phytoplankton communities as indicators of environmental change in the Canadian Rockies

Remote mountain lakes in protected areas are sentinels of the ecological impacts of extreme and novel environmental changes occurring at broad regional scales. Ecosystem responses to such stressors are often first detected as shifts in community composition. We surveyed phytoplankton communities acr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian journal of fisheries and aquatic sciences 2023-07, Vol.80 (7), p.1156-1169
Main Authors: Cook, Jenna, Loewen, Charlie J.G, Nagao, Tamika L, Graham, Mark D, Vinebrooke, Rolf D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algae
Bioassays
Biomass
Chlorophyll
Climate change
Climatic changes
Community composition
Composition
Dissolved organic carbon
Dissolved organic phosphorus
Environmental aspects
Environmental changes
Environmental indicators
Genera
Meltwater
Mountain lakes
Phosphorus
Phytoplankton
Pigments
Plankton
Protected areas
Wildfires
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Summary:Remote mountain lakes in protected areas are sentinels of the ecological impacts of extreme and novel environmental changes occurring at broad regional scales. Ecosystem responses to such stressors are often first detected as shifts in community composition. We surveyed phytoplankton communities across 82 mountain lakes to test the hypothesis that taxonomic composition is indicative of more environmental changes than are aggregate properties, such as total biomass. Phosphorus was the only significant predictor of chlorophyll-inferred algal biomass, a correlative finding supported by evidence from our nutrient amendment bioassays. Interlake variances in taxonomically diagnostic algal pigments and 78 genera were indicative of changes in total phosphorus, glacial coverage, underwater light availability, and dissolved organic carbon. Lack of concordance was observed between ordinations of pigment- and genus-based data as environmental variables captured more variance in the pigment data. Our findings provide a baseline for future lake monitoring programs in the Canadian Rockies as they increasingly experience interactive effects involving climate change and landscape features, such as variation in turbid glacial meltwaters and aeolian phosphorus deposition from wildfires.
ISSN:0706-652X
1205-7533
DOI:10.1139/cjfas-2022-0256