Abstract
Eutrophication (nutrient over-enrichment) is the primary worldwide water quality issue often leading to nuisance cyanobacterial blooms. Climate change is predicted to cause further rise of cyanobacteria blooms as cyanobacteria can have a competitive advantage at elevated temperatures. We tested the hypothesis that simultaneous rise in nutrients and temperature will promote cyanobacteria more than a single increase in one of the two drivers. To this end, controlled experiments were run with seston from 39 different urban water bodies varying in trophic state from mesotrophic to hypertrophic. These experiments were carried out at two different temperatures, 20°C (ambient) and 25°C (warming scenario) with or without the addition of a surplus of nutrients (eutrophication scenario). To facilitate comparisons, we quantified the effect size of the different treatments, using cyanobacterial and algal chlorophyll a concentrations as a response variable. Cyanobacterial and algal chlorophyll a concentrations were determined with a PHYTO-PAM phytoplankton analyzer. Warming caused an 18% increase in cyanobacterial chlorophyll-a, while algal chlorophyll-a concentrations were on average 8% higher at 25°C than at 20°C. A nutrient pulse had a much stronger effect on chlorophyll-a concentrations than warming. Cyanobacterial chlorophyll-a concentrations in nutrient enriched incubations at 20 or 25°C were similar and 9 times higher than in the incubations without nutrient pulse. Likewise, algal chlorophyll-a concentrations were 6 times higher. The results of this study confirm that warming alone yields marginally higher cyanobacteria chlorophyll-a concentrations, yet that a pulse of additional nutrients is boosting blooms. The responses of seston originating from mesotrophic waters seemed less strong than those from eutrophic waters, which indicates that nutrient control strategies –catchment as well as in-system measures– could increase the resilience of surface waters to the negative effects of climate change.
Highlights
Over-enrichment of surface waters by nutrients from agricultural, industrial and urban discharges – eutrophication – is a major threat to the quality and beneficial use of freshwater resources (Paerl and Paul, 2012)
The cyanobacterial chlorophyll-a concentration in the various water bodies was positively correlated with turbidity (r = 0.877; p < 0.001), total chlorophyll-a concentrations (r = 0.975; p < 0.001) and with ammonium concentrations (r = 0.365; p = 0.022), but not with water temperature on site during sampling (r = 0.052; p = 0.754) or any of the other water quality variables (Supplementary Table S2)
According to the Dutch Cyanobacteria Protocol, 36% of the urban waters included in this study was at the moment of sampling in the “no risk” category, 31% was in the Alert Level 1 and 33% was in Alert Level 2
Summary
Over-enrichment of surface waters by nutrients from agricultural, industrial and urban discharges – eutrophication – is a major threat to the quality and beneficial use of freshwater resources (Paerl and Paul, 2012). Especially cyanobacteria can reach high densities through excessive cyanobacterial growth and accumulations at the water surface (Watson et al, 1997; Smith et al, 1999; Paerl et al, 2011). These cyanobacterial blooms and surface scums are a threat to human and animal health as many cyanobacteria can produce a suite of potent toxins (Codd et al, 2005; Dittmann and Wiegand, 2006). The incidence and intensity of such cyanobacterial blooms are on the rise (de Figueiredo et al, 2004; Paerl et al, 2011; O’Neil et al, 2012)
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