WHOLE‐LAKE FERTILIZATION EFFECTS ON DISTRIBUTION OF PRIMARY PRODUCTION BETWEEN BENTHIC AND PELAGIC HABITATS

By Y. Vadeboncoeur, David M. Lodge, Stephen R. Carpenter. 2001

277 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The perception that primary production in lakes is positively related to phos- phorus loading is based almost entirely on studies of phytoplankton. This is partly because benthic and pelagic habitats in lakes are often treated as separate ecosystems, the processes of which can be evaluated independently. However, light and nutrients often limit primary producers in both benthic and pelagic habitats. We tested the hypothesis that reductions in light associated with increases in phytoplankton could cause compensatory decreases in benthic algal (periphyton) primary production. We monitored production of periphyton on sediments (epipelon), periphyton on wood (epixylon), and phytoplankton in four lakes in upper Michigan, USA, from 1991 to 1995. During the summers of 1993-1995, we stimulated phytoplankton production in three of the lakes by fertilizing with nitrogen and phosphorus (N:P ' 25 by atoms) at rates between 0.3 and 2.0 mg P m-3-d-l. The response of periphyton to fertilization was substratum specific: epixylon increased with fertilization, but epipelon decreased. However, when area-specific production was extrapolated to the whole-lake scale, epixylon never constituted >4% of benthic primary production. Thus, the decline in epipelic production dominated the benthic response to fertilization. We also estimated whole-lake (epipelon + phytoplankton) primary production. Epipelic algae constituted 50- 80% of whole-lake primary production at ambient nutrient levels. However, only 10-40% of primary production was benthic at the highest fertilization rates. The increase in whole- lake primary production caused by water column fertilization was greatly overestimated when we did not include the compensatory decline in epipelic algae as they were shaded by increases in phytoplankton concentrations.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0a4fe6807b9c2cbb86d13ae8a66fcf8cb9d018a6

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Citations in the corpus

Depth-integrated, continuous estimates of metabolism in a clear-water lake (2008, background): “Recently, there has been an increased focus on measuring the relative importance of littoral habitats as contributors to whole-lake processes, including primary production (Lodge et al. 1998; Vadeboncoeur et al. 2001, 2002).”
Spatial patterns of autochthonous and allochthonous resources in aquatic food webs (2008, background): “In smaller and shallower lakes (mean depth \5 m), benthic microalgal production comprises over half of the primary production of entire lake food webs (Vadeboncoeur et al. 2001, 2006, 2008).”
Habitat coupling in lake ecosystems (2002, background): “1991) (14)(Cáceres 1997) (4)(Vadeboncoeur et al. 2001b) (5)(MacIsaac et al.”
Attached Algae: The Cryptic Base of Inverted Trophic Pyramids in Freshwaters (2017, background): “However, attached algal assemblages also persist in low light environments deep in lakes (Vadeboncoeur et al. 2001) and in headwater streams heavily shaded by riparian vegetation (Mayer & Likens 1987).”