MARITIME ANTARCTIC LAKES AS SENTINELS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Remote lakes, such as lakes from the Maritime Antarctica, can be used as sentinels of climate change, because they are mostly free of direct anthropogenic pressures, and they experience climate change as a main stressor capable of modifying the ecosystem structure and function. In this paper, the co...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: A. Justel, M. BaƱon, A. Quesada
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.361.7055
http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/ciencias/ajustel/papers/Camacho et al_2012_IJDNE.pdf
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Summary:Remote lakes, such as lakes from the Maritime Antarctica, can be used as sentinels of climate change, because they are mostly free of direct anthropogenic pressures, and they experience climate change as a main stressor capable of modifying the ecosystem structure and function. In this paper, the content of a lecture that has been presented at the First Conference of Lake Sustainability, which has been centred in our studies on lakes from Byers Peninsula (Maritime Antarctica), are summarized. These included physical, chemical and biological studies of these lakes and other freshwater ecosystems, which highlighted the relevance of biotic interactions for these ecosystems and its sensibility to temperature variations and to biological invasions, which is of relevance given the acute regional warming occurring during the last decades in the area, concomitant with the enhancement of dispersion of alien species linked to the increased presence of humans.