Interaction between temperature and nutrients: How does the phytoplankton community cope with climate change?

Abstract

Climate change and increasing nutrient concentrations are two major threats to lake ecosystems. Furthermore, warming is exacerbating the symptoms of eutrophication in freshwaters. Facing both environmental challenges simultaneously is more urgent than ever to preserve and recover water quality and protect the remaining biodiversity. Here, we used long-term observational data to investigate the phytoplankton response to the interaction between temperature and nutrient variations in a deep mesotrophic subalpine lake (L. Iseo, Italy). Despite the existing management programs, we observed a deterioration of the physicochemical status of the lake between 1993 and 2021 in the water column. The average rate of temperature increase was 0.02 °C y−1 across the studied period and accelerated after the last complete mixing events (2005 and 2006), particularly during the last decade (0.08 °C y−1). Water warming caused severe impacts on nutrient cycling, reflected by the overall increase in nutrient concentrations. The direct effect of warming was of great importance for phytoplankton, leading to an increase in total biovolume and a loss of diversity and promoting the dominance of Cyanobacteria. Nutrient variations, especially TN and the DSi:TP ratio, considerably structured the community composition. The modification of physicochemical parameters caused by the last complete mixing events led to a remarkable, long-term taxonomical and functional reorganization of the phytoplankton community. This study illustrates that phytoplankton in deep subalpine lakes will experience severe changes in the upcoming years, and that complete mixing events may constitute a threshold for community transformation. Our results stress the importance of using powerful interpretative models with multifaceted long-term datasets to disentangle the pathways by which temperature and nutrients could regulate the phytoplankton community. Our conclusions will help to integrate climate change into mitigation strategies to preserve ecosystem structure and functions.