Cladophora reblooming after half a century: effect of climate change-induced increases in the water level of the largest
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SHORT RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION ARTICLE
Cladophora reblooming after half a century: effect of climate change-induced increases in the water level of the largest lake in Tibetan Plateau Huan Zhu 1 & Xiong Xiong 2 & Hongyi Ao 2 & Chenxi Wu 2 & Yubang He 3 & Zhengyu Hu 1,2 & Guoxiang Liu 1 Received: 11 May 2020 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Massive Cladophora growth was reported half a century ago around Birds Island in Qinghai Lake, and in 2015, Cladophora populations have rebloomed and have formed green “meadows,” with areas up to thousands of hectares. The present study investigated the distribution and biomass of Cladophora in Qinghai Lake and found that two key factors contribute to Cladophora blooming. First, recent climate change, especially increased precipitation, has induced the expansion of the lake’s area, and the submerged grassland around Birds Island has provided a plethora of grass stems on which Cladophora can attach and twine. In addition, the submerged grasslands are covered with less than 1 m of water, which allows enough sunlight to support the growth of Cladophora on available substrates. Second, the submerged grassland may function as a key source of nutrients, especially phosphate. A large number of migratory birds live in these area for very long times, which lead to higher phosphorus content due to the accumulated birds dropping. Thus, the high phosphate level further exacerbates the massive growth. Future studies should investigate the functions of Cladophora in the nutrient cycling of submerged areas, and the improvement of methods for removing Cladophora biomass. Keywords Cladophora . Climate change . Algal bloom . Tibetan Plateau . Global warming . Nutrient releasing
Main text Over the past three decades, the Tibetan Plateau has experienced unmistakable changes in climate (Kang et al. 2010), and these climate changes have strongly affected atmospheric and hydrological cycles, thereby reshaping local environments (Qiao et al. 2019). The areas of most lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, for example, have changed noticeably over the past 50 years (Zhang et al. 2013). Indeed, lake size is affected by Responsible Editor: Vitor Manuel Oliveira Vasconcelos * Guoxiang Liu [email protected] 1
Key Laboratory of Algal Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Hydrobiology, Wuhan 430072, People’s Republic of China
2
State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Hydrobiology, Wuhan 430072, People’s Republic of China
3
Qinghai Lake National Nature Reserve Bureau, Xining 810012, People’s Republic of China
both climate change and human activities and, thus, serves as an excellent indicator of climatic and environmental changes (Ma et al. 2010). Over the last century, the size of Qinghai Lake (36° 32′–37°15′ N and 99° 36′–100° 47′ E, Alt. 3194 m), which is the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau, has increased and subsequently decreased since the 1970s (Li et al. 2007). As re
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