TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS
Interest in climate change research has taken on new relevance with the realization that human activities, such as the accelerated release of the so‐called greenhouse gases, may be altering the thermal properties of our atmosphere. Important social, economic, and scientific questions include the fol...
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crwiley:10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x 2024-06-02T08:02:41+00:00 TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS Smol, John P. Cumming, Brian F. 2000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1046%2Fj.1529-8817.2000.00049.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x en eng Wiley http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor Journal of Phycology volume 36, issue 6, page 986-1011 ISSN 0022-3646 1529-8817 journal-article 2000 crwiley https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x 2024-05-06T07:01:07Z Interest in climate change research has taken on new relevance with the realization that human activities, such as the accelerated release of the so‐called greenhouse gases, may be altering the thermal properties of our atmosphere. Important social, economic, and scientific questions include the following. Is climate changing? If so, can these changes be related to human activities? Are episodes of extreme weather, such as droughts or hurricanes, increasing in frequency? Long‐term meteorological data, on broad spatial and temporal scales, are needed to answer these questions. Unfortunately, such data were never gathered; therefore, indirect proxy methods must be used to infer past climatic trends. A relatively untapped source of paleoclimate data is based on hindcasting past climatic trends using the environmental optima and tolerances of algae (especially diatoms) preserved in lake sediment profiles. Paleophycologists have used two approaches. Although still controversial, attempts have been made to directly infer climatic variables, such as temperature, from past algal assemblages. The main assumption with these types of analyses is that species composition is either directly related to temperature or that algal assemblages are related to some variable linearly related to temperature. The second more commonly used approach is to infer a limnological variable (e.g. water chemistry, lake ice cover, etc.) that is related to climate. Although paleolimnological approaches are broadly similar across climatic regions, the environmental gradients that paleophycologists track can be very different. For example, climatic inferences in polar regions have focused on past lake ice conditions, whereas in lakes near arctic treeline ecotones, paleophycologists have developed methods to infer past lakewater‐dissolved organic carbon, because this variable has been linked to the density of coniferous trees in a drainage basin. In closed‐basin lakes in arid and semiarid regions, past lakewater salinity, which can be robustly ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Climate change Wiley Online Library Arctic Journal of Phycology 36 6 986 1011 |
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Wiley Online Library |
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crwiley |
language |
English |
description |
Interest in climate change research has taken on new relevance with the realization that human activities, such as the accelerated release of the so‐called greenhouse gases, may be altering the thermal properties of our atmosphere. Important social, economic, and scientific questions include the following. Is climate changing? If so, can these changes be related to human activities? Are episodes of extreme weather, such as droughts or hurricanes, increasing in frequency? Long‐term meteorological data, on broad spatial and temporal scales, are needed to answer these questions. Unfortunately, such data were never gathered; therefore, indirect proxy methods must be used to infer past climatic trends. A relatively untapped source of paleoclimate data is based on hindcasting past climatic trends using the environmental optima and tolerances of algae (especially diatoms) preserved in lake sediment profiles. Paleophycologists have used two approaches. Although still controversial, attempts have been made to directly infer climatic variables, such as temperature, from past algal assemblages. The main assumption with these types of analyses is that species composition is either directly related to temperature or that algal assemblages are related to some variable linearly related to temperature. The second more commonly used approach is to infer a limnological variable (e.g. water chemistry, lake ice cover, etc.) that is related to climate. Although paleolimnological approaches are broadly similar across climatic regions, the environmental gradients that paleophycologists track can be very different. For example, climatic inferences in polar regions have focused on past lake ice conditions, whereas in lakes near arctic treeline ecotones, paleophycologists have developed methods to infer past lakewater‐dissolved organic carbon, because this variable has been linked to the density of coniferous trees in a drainage basin. In closed‐basin lakes in arid and semiarid regions, past lakewater salinity, which can be robustly ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Smol, John P. Cumming, Brian F. |
spellingShingle |
Smol, John P. Cumming, Brian F. TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS |
author_facet |
Smol, John P. Cumming, Brian F. |
author_sort |
Smol, John P. |
title |
TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS |
title_short |
TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS |
title_full |
TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS |
title_fullStr |
TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS |
title_full_unstemmed |
TRACKING LONG‐TERM CHANGES IN CLIMATE USING ALGAL INDICATORS IN LAKE SEDIMENTS |
title_sort |
tracking long‐term changes in climate using algal indicators in lake sediments |
publisher |
Wiley |
publishDate |
2000 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1046%2Fj.1529-8817.2000.00049.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Climate change |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change |
op_source |
Journal of Phycology volume 36, issue 6, page 986-1011 ISSN 0022-3646 1529-8817 |
op_rights |
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1529-8817.2000.00049.x |
container_title |
Journal of Phycology |
container_volume |
36 |
container_issue |
6 |
container_start_page |
986 |
op_container_end_page |
1011 |
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1800747163835170816 |