High-mountain lakes that are sentinels of change
In a scene reminiscent of the Aguadors of Andalusia who used to ferry barrels of ice on mules from the Sierra Nevada to the town of Granada centuries ago when refrigerators had not yet been invented, we are returning at the end of this summer with water samples and field gear from an expedition to Laguna Caldera at the base of The Mulhacen – the highest peak in the Iberian peninsula at ~3500 m above sea level.
Oligotrophic high-mountain lakes in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains located in the junction between two of Earth’s major continents serve as sentinels of regional and global change. Here, in ultra-clear oligotrophic waters, tiny plankton react strongly to small changes in temperature, snowfall, rain, dust deposition, solar radiation, nutrient runoff, etc. In in-lake mesocosm experiments mimicking a variety of environmental perturbations while simultaneously monitoring of water quality conditions with moored sensors, we are studying the interactive effects of environmental stressors on the lake ecosystem. We will be keenly analyzing the field observations, experimental results and accompanying time-series sensor data this fall to see what they reveal about the sensitivity of high-mountain lakes to environmental change and look for lessons that can be learned.
Mani Villar-Argaiz, Juanma Medina-Sánchez, Juanma González-Olalla, María Vila Duplá, Guille Garrido Cañete, Alejandra Fernández-Zambrano, Cassandra Davin, Marco J. Cabrerizo, Pre Carrillo, Verónica Moreno, and Bopi Biddanda
Departamento de Ecología and Instituto del Agua, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain.
Annis Water Resources Institute, Grand Valley State University, Muskegon, Michigan, USA.
(http://ecologia.ugr.es/, http://www.ugr.es/~iagua/, and https://www.gvsu.edu/wri/).
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