The dilemma of controlling cultural eutrophication of lakes

By D. Schindler. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences, 2012

689 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The management of eutrophication has been impeded by reliance on short-term experimental additions of nutrients to bottles and mesocosms. These measures of proximate nutrient limitation fail to account for the gradual changes in biogeochemical nutrient cycles and nutrient fluxes from sediments, and succession of communities that are important components of whole-ecosystem responses. Erroneous assumptions about ecosystem processes and lack of accounting for hysteresis during lake recovery have further confused management of eutrophication. I conclude that long-term, whole-ecosystem experiments and case histories of lake recovery provide the only reliable evidence for policies to reduce eutrophication. The only method that has had proven success in reducing the eutrophication of lakes is reducing input of phosphorus. There are no case histories or long-term ecosystem-scale experiments to support recent claims that to reduce eutrophication of lakes, nitrogen must be controlled instead of or in addition to phosphorus. Before expensive policies to reduce nitrogen input are implemented, they require ecosystem-scale verification. The recent claim that the ‘phosphorus paradigm’ for recovering lakes from eutrophication has been ‘eroded’ has no basis. Instead, the case for phosphorus control has been strengthened by numerous case histories and large-scale experiments spanning several decades.

Subfields: Ecology, Environmental Chemistry, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0b80edb1ecea10c7409991a7c6e50ac33f4dc151

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. Steven W. Wilhelm
2. Steven C. Chapra
3. S. Higgins
4. A. Dove
5. Hans W. Paerl
6. J. Wehr
7. B. Whitton
8. Y. Souchon

In Environmental Chemistry

1. Hans W. Paerl
2. G. Boyer
3. Steven W. Wilhelm
4. B. Brooks
5. P. Souchu
6. Steven C. Chapra
7. A. Dove
8. J. Wehr

In Oceanography

1. Hans W. Paerl
2. G. Boyer
3. B. Whitton
4. J. Wehr
5. S. Higgins
6. B. Brooks
7. Steven W. Wilhelm
8. P. Souchu

Citations in the corpus

• Harmful Algal Blooms (2015, background): “:P ratio), although this relationship is widely debated (Smith et al., 1999; Elser et al., 2007; Downing et al., 2001; Conley et al., 2009; Schindler, 2012).”
• Status, causes and controls of cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Erie (2014, background): “important in highly P-enriched systems, although contradictory evidence has been reported (Debruyn et al. 2004; Dolman et al. 2012; Schindler 2012).”
• Eutrophication: A new wine in an old bottle? (2019, background): “, 2016), even though schematically, the controlling factor highly debated in the scientific literature (Blomqvist et al., 2004; Conley et al., 2009a; Conley et al., 2009b; Elser et al., 2007; Howarth and Marino, 2006; Schindler, 2012) globally shifts from phosphorus in freshwater to nitrogen in mari”
• Long‐term trends of nutrients and trophic response variables for the Great Lakes (2015, background): “As eloquently argued by several experts (e.g., Schindler et al. 2008; Schelske 2009; Schindler and Hecky 2009; Schindler 2012) and supported by our study of the Great Lakes, universally adopting such a strategy for all freshwater systems would be an ineffective and costly strategy for mitigating…”
• Guiding principles for the development and application of solid-phase phosphorus adsorbents for freshwater ecosystems (2016, neutral): “Several subsequent publications have reinforced this viewpoint (Carpenter 2008; Patterson et al. 2011; Schindler 2012).”