LAKE ECOSYSTEM CHANGE - THE ROLE OF PALAEOLIMNOLOGY

Lake ecosystems vary on many time-scales. The most societally relevant scale is the inter-annual to decadal time-scale that characteristically embraces changes associated with human use and misuse of lake systems. It is necessary therefore to understand lake dynamics on this time-scale by integrating data from past, present and future time domains using a combination of palaeolimnological, neolimnological and modelling approaches to ecosystem change. Palaeolimnological approaches are especially important (i) to identify how ecosystems vary in the absence of anthropogenic stresses, (ii) to guide strategies for lake restoration and (iii) to constrain dynamic models used for catchment planning. In this presentation I will exemplify this approach using data from lake acidication research. The presentation is a contribution to LIMPACS, an IGBP-PAGES Focus 5 activity concerned with human interactions with lake ecosystems (www.geog ucl.ac.uk/ecrc/limpacs).