The Great Salt Lake Ecosystem (Utah, USA): long term data and a structural equation approach

By G. Belovsky, D. Stephens, C. Perschon, P. Birdsey, Don S. Paul, D. Naftz, R. Baskin, Chad A. Larson, Chad Mellison, John Luft and 4 more. 2011

133 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Great Salt Lake (Utah, USA) is one of the world's largest hypersaline lakes, supporting many of the western U.S.'s migratory waterbirds. This unique ecosystem is threatened, but it and other large hypersaline lakes are not well understood. The ecosystem consists of two weakly linked food webs: one phytoplankton-based, the other organic particle/benthic algae-based. Seventeen years of data on the phytoplankton-based food web are presented: abundances of nutrients (N and P), phytoplankton (Chlorophyta, Bacillariophyta, Cyanophyta), brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana), corixids (Trichocorixa verticalis), and Eared Grebes (Podiceps nigricollis). Abundances of less common species, as well as brine fly larvae (Ephydra cinerea and hians) from the organic particle/benthic algae-based food web are also presented. Abiotic parameters were monitored: lake elevation, temperature, salinity, PAR, light penetration, and DO. We use these data to test hypotheses about the phytoplankton-based food web and its weak linkage with the organic particle/benthic algae-based food web via structural equation modeling. Counter to common perceptions, the phytoplankton-based food web is not limited by high salinity, but principally through phytoplankton production, which is limited by N and grazing by brine shrimp. Annual N abundance is highly variable and depends on lake volume, complex mixing given thermo- and chemo-clines, and recycling by brine shrimp. Brine shrimp are food-limited, and predation by corixids and Eared Grebes does not depress their numbers. Eared Grebe numbers appear to be limited by brine shrimp abundance. Finally, there is little interaction of brine fly larvae with brine shrimp through competition, or with corixids or grebes through predation, indicating that the lake's two food webs are weakly connected. Results are used to examine some general concepts regarding food web structure and dynamics, as well as the lake's future given expected anthropogenic impacts.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1df52af3dc67259eb6a5bf4105d91309a035ee5d

How researchers see this paper

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

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Guidelines for a graph-theoretic implementation of structural equation modeling (2012, background): “…(e.g., Bowker et al. 2010), animal populations (e.g., Janssen et al. 2011, Gimenez et al. 2012), animal communities, (e.g., Anderson et al. 2011, Belovsky et al. 2011, Forister et al. 2011), ecosystem processes (e.g., Keeley et al. 2008, Jonsson and Wardle 2010, Riseng et al. 2010),…”