We used chemical data (3,907 lakes) and phytoplankton biomass (chlorophyll a) data (225 lakes) from Swedish lake monitoring programs to assess the effects of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition on nutrient limitation and phytoplankton biomass in unproductive Swedish lakes. There was a clear north–south gradient of increasing lake concentrations of dissolved inorganic nitrogen, which was related...

Reservoir Eutrophication Reservoirs are water bodies created specifically for the purposes of water management. They differ in many significant ways from natural lakes. Studies have shown, however, that reservoirs have many functional similarities to natural lakes. Furthermore, since much of our limnological understanding stems from the studies of natural lakes (Wetzel, 2001), it is reasonable ...

In much of the northern Great Plains, saline and hypersaline lacustrine brines are the only surface waters present. As a group, the lakes of this region are unique: there is no other area in the world that can match the concentration and diversity of saline lake environments exhibited in the prairie region of Canada and northern United States. The immense number of individual salt lakes and sal...

The impact of acid deposition and tree harvesting on three lakes and their representative sub-catchments in the Muskoka-Haliburton region of south-central Ontario was assessed using a critical loads approach. As nitrogen dynamics in forest soils are complex and poorly understood, for simplicity and to allow comparison among lakes and their catchments, CLs (A) for both lakes and forest soils wer...

We measured chlorate (ClO3 ) and perchlorate (ClO4 ) concentrations in ice covered lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDVs) of Antarctica, to evaluate their role in the ecology and geochemical evolution of the lakes. ClO3 and ClO4 are present throughout the MDV Lakes, streams, and other surface water bodies. ClO3 and ClO4 originate in the atmosphere and are transported to the lakes by surface in...

Data on mercury levels in freshwater fish (mainly pike, perch, trout and char), from Norway, Sweden and Finland have been collected in a common database to assess spatial patterns as well as relationships with environmental factors such as atmospheric mercury deposition. A preliminary evaluation of fish Hg data from >1500 lakes shows that Hg levels referring to a 1-kg pike are highest in low-al...

We sampled chydorids (Branchiopoda, Anomopoda) from 29 Irish lakes between June 1996 and July 1997 in order to assess the usefulness of this group as an indicator of lake ecological quality, as required by the recently published EU Water Framework Directive. The lakes represented a wide range of the physicochemical conditions found in Irish lakes. We identified 31 species of Chydoridae from the...

Species pairs of threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, co-exist in several lakes in the Strait of Georgia, southwestern British Columbia. One species, ‘benthics’ is robust-bodied and is morphologically and behaviourally specialized for benthivory. The other species, ‘limnetics’ is specialized for planktivory in open-water habitats of the lakes. We examined mitochondrial DNA restrictio...

Bacterioplankton community composition was compared across 10 lakes and 14 streams within the catchment of Toolik Lake, a tundra lake in Arctic Alaska, during seven surveys conducted over three years using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of PCR-amplified rDNA. Bacterioplankton communities in streams draining tundra were very different than those in streams draining lakes. Communi...

Safe development of glacierized regions requires a systematic and objective method for assessing the hazard posed by morainedammed lakes. Empirical relations exist for estimating outburst flood magnitude, but, until now, no standardized procedures have been developed for estimating outburst flood probability. To make quick and inexpensive preliminary assessments that are reproducible, we propos...