Abteilung Oberflächengewässer

Cyanobacteria are ubiquitous aquatic organisms with a remarkable evolutionary history reaching as far as 1.9 Ga. They play a vital role in ecosystems yet also raise concerns due to their association with harmful algal blooms. Understanding the historical patterns and drivers behind these blooms is crucial for effective ecosystem management. Lake-sediment cores are valuable natural environmental archives, recording the histories of such blooms. Among others, phycocyanin, a pigment specific to cyanobacteria, emerges as a promising biomarker for reconstructing past cyanobacterial bloom events. However, due to the physicochemical properties of phycocyanin, there is no validated method available to extract and measure this pigment from complex sediment matrix. This study explores the applicability of hyperspectral imaging (HSI), a non-destructive technique, as a novel approach for high resolution in-situ detection and quantification of phycocyanin in lake sediments. Our experiments show that phycocyanin can be detected by HSI with an absorption trough at 620 nm (relative absorption band depth, RABD₆₂₀). We established a semi-quantitative calibration of the spectral index RABD₆₂₀ by conducting spiking experiments with phycocyanin standard (known phycocyanin mass) on organic-rich and mineral-rich sediments of varying water contents. We also assessed potential interference from chlorophyll a, another photosynthetic pigment, ensuring the reliability of hyperspectral phycocyanin measurements. Our findings demonstrate a significant correlation (R² ranging from 0.37 to 0.997) between the RABD₆₂₀ index and associated phycocyanin amounts in organic-rich and minerogenic sediments. This indicates the potential of the spectral index to directly measure in-situ biomarker concentrations on split sediment cores. Although confounding factors such as water and chlorophyll a content can influence the spectral signal, this method offers a rapid and non-destructive approach for studying historical cyanobacterial blooms in sedimentary records. This opens promising grounds for various applications, including ecosystem-health assessment and environmental change monitoring.

The Arctic is warming several times faster than the rest of the globe. Such Arctic amplification rapidly changes hydrometeorological conditions with consequences for the structuring of cold-adapted terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Arctic ecosystems, which have a relatively small buffering capacity, are particularly susceptible to hydrometeorological regime shifts thus frequently undergo system-scale transitions. Abrupt ecosystem changes are often triggered by disturbances and extreme events that shift the ecosystem state beyond its buffering threshold capacity thus irreversibly changing its functioning (ecosystem tipping). The tipping depends on spatial and temporal scales. At the local scale, feedback between soil organic matter and soil physics could lead to multiple steady states and a tipping from high to low soil carbon storages. On the continental scale, local tipping is smoothed and the changes are rather gradual (no clear tipping threshold). However, due to the centennial timescale of soil carbon and vegetation dynamics, Arctic ecosystems are not in equilibrium with the changing climate, so a tipping could occur at a later time. Earth Observation (EO) is useful for monitoring ongoing changes in permafrost and freshwater systems, in particular extreme events and disturbances, as indicators of a possible tipping point. Lake change observations support gradual rather than abrupt transitions in different permafrost regions until a hydrological tipping point where lake areas start to decline leading to regional drying. Due to floodplain abundance, floodplains should be considered separately when using satellite-derived water extent records to analyse potential tipping behaviour associated with lakes. Reduction in surface water extent, increasing autocorrelation of water level of larger lakes and the impact of extreme events on ground ice can all be observed with satellite data across the Arctic. The analysis of Earth System simulations suggests significant impacts of changes in permafrost hydrology on hydroclimate in the tropics and subtropics, but there is no clear threshold in global temperature for these shifts in hydroclimate.

Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are linked through the reciprocal exchange of materials and organisms. Aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidies are relatively small in most terrestrial ecosystems, but they can provide high contents of limiting resources that increase consumer fitness and ecosystem production. However, they also may carry significant contaminant loads, particularly in anthropogenically impacted watersheds. Global change processes, including land use change, climate change and biodiversity declines, are altering the quantity and quality of aquatic subsidies, potentially shifting the balance of costs and benefits of aquatic subsidies for terrestrial consumers. Many global change processes interact and impact both the bright and dark sides of aquatic subsidies simultaneously, highlighting the need for future integrative research that bridges ecosystem as well as disciplinary boundaries. We identify key research priorities, including increased quantification of the spatiotemporal variability in aquatic subsidies across a range of ecosystems, greater understanding of the landscape-scale extent of aquatic subsidy impacts and deeper exploration of the relative costs and benefits of aquatic subsidies for consumers.