Application of sediment traps in global change research in mountain lakes

Abstract

Representativity of biota in the biosphere also have similar significance in the lithosphere after their death. Recently, taphonomic representation of biota in the lithosphere has been widely used for minimizing the biases in palaeo-environmental reconstructions including global climate change. In September 2001, a sediment trap was installed at the central area of the Loch Coire Fionnaraich (LCFR), a small, oligotrophic mountain loch in northwest Scotland for a taphonomic study of cladoceran zooplankton. The trap was emptied on a seasonal basis, where an average 0.14 g dry material was recovered in each season, January, May and August 2002 respectively. A sediment core was also taken from near the sediment trap location. The top 0.5 cm section, the ‘core’ was used for a comparative study with the trap sediment samples. The planktonic Cladocera consisted of Bosmina coregoni and appeared to have excellent preservation in the trap assemblages. Moreover, some common littoral Cladocera such as Alonella excisa and Alona guttata appear to be less well preserved in the fossil assemblages. Large littoral taxa such as Eurycercus lamellatus and Alona quadrangularis were rare in the trap but relatively common and well preserved in the sediment-water interface. It is suggested that taphonomic processes play a dominant role on deposition of fossil remains of Cladocera and caution should be taken while inferring the past environmental changes whilst using fossil assemblages recovered from the lake centre as a representation of the entire cladoceran community in the lake.