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Phytoplankton biomass and production regulates key aspects of freshwater ecosystems yet its variability and subsequent predictability is poorly understood. We estimated within-lake variation in biomass using high-frequency chlorophyll fluorescence data from 18 globally distributed lakes. We tested how variation in fluorescence at monthly, daily, and hourly scales was related to high-frequency variability of wind, water temperature, and radiation within lakes as well as productivity and physical attributes among lakes. Within lakes, monthly variation dominated, but combined daily and hourly variation were equivalent to that expressed monthly. Among lakes, biomass variability increased with trophic status while, within-lake biomass variation increased with increasing variability in wind speed. Our results highlight the benefits of high-frequency chlorophyll monitoring and suggest that predicted changes associated with climate, as well as ongoing cultural eutrophication, are likely to substantially increase the temporal variability of algal biomass and thus the predictability of the services it provides.
The efficiency of sediment routing from land to the ocean depends on the position of submarine canyon heads with regard to terrestrial sediment sources. We aim to identify the main controls on whether a submarine canyon head remains connected to terrestrial sediment input during Holocene sea-level rise. Globally, we identified 798 canyon heads that are currently located at the 120m-depth contour (the Last Glacial Maximum shoreline) and 183 canyon heads that are connected to the shore (within a distance of 6 km) during the present-day highstand. Regional hotspots of shore-connected canyons are the Mediterranean active margin and the Pacific coast of Central and South America. We used 34 terrestrial and marine predictor variables to predict shore-connected canyon occurrence using Bayesian regression. Our analysis shows that steep and narrow shelves facilitate canyon-head connectivity to the shore. Moreover, shore-connected canyons occur preferentially along active margins characterized by resistant bedrock and high river-water discharge.
The number of people exposed to natural hazards has grown steadily over recent decades, mainly due to increasing exposure in hazard-prone areas. In the future, climate change could further enhance this trend. Still, empirical and comprehensive insights into individual recovery from natural hazards are largely lacking, hampering efforts to increase societal resilience. Drawing from a sample of 710 residents affected by flooding across Germany in June 2013, we empirically explore a wide range of variables possibly influencing self-reported recovery, including flood-event characteristics, the circumstances of the recovery process, socio-economic characteristics, and psychological factors, using multivariate statistics. We found that the amount of damage and other flood-event characteristics such as inundation depth are less important than socio-economic characteristics (e.g., sex or health status) and psychological factors (e.g., risk aversion and emotions). Our results indicate that uniform recovery efforts focusing on areas that were the most affected in terms of physical damage are insufficient to account for the heterogeneity in individual recovery results. To increase societal resilience, aid and recovery efforts should better address the long-term psychological effects of floods.
The functioning of the surface water-groundwater interface as buffer, filter and reactive zone is important for water quality, ecological health and resilience of streams and riparian ecosystems. Solute and heat exchange across this interface is driven by the advection of water. Characterizing the flow conditions in the streambed is challenging as flow patterns are often complex and multidimensional, driven by surface hydraulic gradients and groundwater discharge. This thesis presents the results of an integrated approach of studies, ranging from the acquisition of field data, the development of analytical and numerical approaches to analyse vertical temperature profiles to the detailed, fully-integrated 3D numerical modelling of water and heat flux at the reach scale. All techniques were applied in order to characterize exchange flux between stream and groundwater, hyporheic flow paths and temperature patterns.
The study was conducted at a reach-scale section of the lowland Selke River, characterized by distinctive pool riffle sequences and fluvial islands and gravel bars. Continuous time series of hydraulic heads and temperatures were measured at different depths in the river bank, the hyporheic zone and within the river. The analyses of the measured diurnal temperature variation in riverbed sediments provided detailed information about the exchange flux between river and groundwater. Beyond the one-dimensional vertical water flow in the riverbed sediment, hyporheic and parafluvial flow patterns were identified. Subsurface flow direction and magnitude around fluvial islands and gravel bars at the study site strongly depended on the position around the geomorphological structures and on the river stage. Horizontal water flux in the streambed substantially impacted temperature patterns in the streambed. At locations with substantial horizontal fluxes the penetration depths of daily temperature fluctuations was reduced in comparison to purely vertical exchange conditions.
The calibrated and validated 3D fully-integrated model of reach-scale water and heat fluxes across the river-groundwater interface was able to accurately represent the real system. The magnitude and variations of the simulated temperatures matched the observed ones, with an average mean absolute error of 0.7 °C and an average Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency of 0.87. The simulation results showed that the water and heat exchange at the surface water-groundwater interface is highly variable in space and time with zones of daily temperature oscillations penetrating deep into the sediment and spots of daily constant temperature following the average groundwater temperature. The average hyporheic flow path temperature was found to strongly correlate with the flow path residence time (flow path length) and the temperature gradient between river and groundwater. Despite the complexity of these processes, the simulation results allowed the derivation of a general empirical relationship between the hyporheic residence times and temperature patterns. The presented results improve our understanding of the complex spatial and temporal dynamics of water flux and thermal processes within the shallow streambed. Understanding these links provides a general basis from which to assess hyporheic temperature conditions in river reaches.
Volcano dome deformation processes analysed with high resolution InSAR and camera-based techniques
(2017)
We present a pollen record for last 28 cal kyr BP from the eastern basin of Lake Karakul, the largest lake in Tajikistan, located in the eastern Pamir Mountains at 3915 m asl, a geographically complex region. The pollen record is dominated by Artemisia and Chenopodiaceae, while other taxa, apart from Poaceae, are present in low quantities and rarely exceed 5% in total. Arboreal pollen occur predominantly from similar to 28 to similar to 13 cal kyr BP, but as likely no trees occurred in the high mountain regions of the eastern Pamir during this time due to the high altitude and cold climate, arboreal taxa are attributed to long distance transport, probably by the Westerlies, the dominant atmospheric circulation. Tree pollen influx decreases strongly after similar to 13 cal kyr BP, allowing the pollen spectra to be interpreted as a regional vegetation signal. We infer that from 27.6 to 19.4 cal kyr BP the eastern Pamir was dominated by dry mountain steppe with low vegetation cover, while from 19.0 to 13.6 cal kyr BP Artemisia values increase and Chenopodiaceae, most herb taxa, and inferred far distant input from arboreal taxa decrease. Between 12.9 and 6.7 cal kyr BP open steppe vegetation dominated with maximum values in Ephedra, and while steppe taxa still dominated the spectra from 5.4 to 1 cal kyr BP, meadow taxa start to increase. During the last millennium, alpine steppe and alpine meadows expanded and a weak human influence can be ascertained from the increase of Asteraceae and the occurrence of Plantago pollen in the spectra.