Regional versus local drivers of water quality in the Windermere catchment, Lake District, United Kingdom: The dominant influence of wastewater pollution over the past 200 years

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dc.contributor.authorMoorhouse, Heather L.
dc.contributor.authorMcGowan, Suzanne
dc.contributor.authorTaranu, Zofia E.
dc.contributor.authorGregory-Eaves, Irene
dc.contributor.authorLeavitt, Peter R.
dc.contributor.authorJones, Matthew D.
dc.contributor.authorBarker, Philip
dc.contributor.authorBrayshaw, Susan A.
dc.date.accessioned2023-06-09T20:33:00Z
dc.date.available2023-06-09T20:33:00Z
dc.date.issued2018-05-10
dc.description©2018 The Authors.Global Change Biology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited.en_US
dc.description.abstractFreshwater ecosystems are threatened by multiple anthropogenic stressors acting over different spatial and temporal scales, resulting in toxic algal blooms, reduced water quality and hypoxia. However, while catchment characteristics act as a ‘filter’ modifying lake response to disturbance, little is known of the relative importance of different drivers and possible differentiation in the response of upland remote lakes in comparison to lowland, impacted lakes. Moreover, many studies have focussed on single lakes rather than looking at responses across a set of individual, yet connected lake basins. Here we used sedimentary algal pigments as an index of changes in primary producer assemblages over the last ~200 years in a northern temperate watershed consisting of 11 upland and lowland lakes within the Lake District, United Kingdom, to test our hypotheses about landscape drivers. Specifically, we expected that the magnitude of change in phototrophic assemblages would be greatest in lowland rather than upland lakes due to more intensive human activities in the watersheds of the former (agriculture, urbanization). Regional parameters, such as climate dynamics, would be the predominant factors regulating lake primary producers in remote upland lakes and thus, synchronize the dynamic of primary producer assemblages in these basins. We found broad support for the hypotheses pertaining to lowland sites as wastewater treatment was the main predictor of changes to primary producer assemblages in lowland lakes. In contrast, upland headwaters responded weakly to variation in atmospheric temperature, and dynamics in primary producers across upland lakes were asynchronous. Collectively, these findings show that nutrient inputs from point sources overwhelm climatic controls of algae and nuisance cyanobacteria, but highlights that large-scale stressors do not always initiate coherent regional lake response. Furthermore, a lake's position in its landscape, its connectivity and proximity to point nutrients are important determinants of changes in production and composition of phototrophic assemblages.en_US
dc.description.authorstatusFacultyen_US
dc.description.peerreviewyesen_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number 1095396, (HM), the Environment Agency (HM), Universitas 21 (HM), NSERC (PRL & ZET), Canada Foundation for Innovation (PRL) and Canada Research Chairs (PRL & IGE).en_US
dc.identifier.citationMoorhouse, H.L., S. McGowan, M.D. Jones, Z.E. Taranu, I. Gregory-Eaves, P.R. Leavitt, M.D. Jones, P. Barker, and S.A. Brayshaw. 2018. Regional versus local drivers of water quality in the Windermere catchment: The dominant influence of wastewater pollution over the past 200 years. Global Change Biol. 24: 4009-4022. doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14299en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14299
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10294/15952
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherWileyen_US
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 United States*
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.titleRegional versus local drivers of water quality in the Windermere catchment, Lake District, United Kingdom: The dominant influence of wastewater pollution over the past 200 yearsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
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