Data from: Ice-cover is the principal driver of ecological change in High Arctic lakes and ponds ...

• Main Authors: Griffiths, Katherine, Michelutti, Neal, Sugar, Madeline, Douglas, Marianne S.V., Smol, John P., Douglas, Marianne S. V.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2017
• Subjects: Anthropocene; Ice cover; Paleolimnology; Bacillariophyceae; Arctic; Canada; Ellesmere Island; Nunavut; Pim Island; Climate change
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.g7h7n; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.g7h7n

Recent climate change has been especially pronounced in the High Arctic, however, the responses of aquatic biota, such as diatoms, can be modified by site-specific environmental characteristics. To assess if climate-mediated ice cover changes affect the diatom response to climate, we used paleolimnological techniques to examine shifts in diatom assemblages from ten High Arctic lakes and ponds from Ellesmere Island and nearby Pim Island (Nunavut, Canada). The sites were divided a priori into four groups (“warm”, “cool”, “cold”, and “oasis”) based on local elevation and microclimatic differences that result in differing lengths of the ice-free season, as well as about three decades of personal observations. We characterized the species changes as a shift from Condition 1 (i.e. a generally low diversity, predominantly epipelic and epilithic diatom assemblage) to Condition 2 (i.e. a typically more diverse and ecologically complex assemblage with an increasing proportion of epiphytic species). This shift from ... : Col Broken stickCol Pond plot of broken stick model resultsCol ConissCol Pond plot of CONISS model resultsCol N2Col Pond Hill's N2 and chlorophyll a outputCol PondCol Pond diatom raw count data and relative abundances including basionyms and modern taxonomic designationsElison broken stickElison Lake plot of broken stick model resultsHigh broken stickHigh Lake plot of broken stick model resultsMoraine broken stickMoraine Pond plot of broken stick model resultsParadise Broken stickParadise Pond plot of broken stick model resultsPlateau Pond 2 broken stickPlateau Pond 2 plot of broken stick model resultsProteus broken stickProteus Lake plot of broken stick model resultsSV5 broken stickSV Pond 5 plot of broken stick model resultsSV8 broken stickSV Pond 8 plot of broken stick model resultsWest broken stickWest Lake plot of broken stick model resultsElison conissElison Lake plot of CONISS model resultsHigh conissHigh Lake plot of CONISS model resultsMoraine ConissMoraine Pond plot of CONISS model resultsParadise ...