image: Lake Mendota Buoy, WI
Credit: Bennett McAfee
With $2.3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is leading the creation of the first large-scale public collection of lake metabolism data. The open-access database, called the Global LAke Metabolism Repository (GLAMR), will help scientists better understand trends in lake health across the world. Cary is receiving $1 million of the award, with the remaining funds supporting project partners at the University of Colorado Boulder, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“We’re assembling a database of hundreds of millions of observations of water quality from lakes around the globe,” explained Cary aquatic ecologist Christopher Solomon, who leads the effort. “It is going to let us ask questions about lake ecosystems that we haven’t been able to ask before, and improve our understanding of how these systems work.”
Lake metabolism refers to the balance between how much carbon a lake takes up (via photosynthesis in plants and algae), versus how much carbon it releases when its inhabitants break down food into energy and carbon dioxide (known as respiration).
“The processes that we’re quantifying — primary production and respiration — play a huge role in determining the suitability of lakes for a wide variety of human uses, including drinking water, recreation, and fisheries,” said Solomon.
Why lake metabolism matters
The balance of energy into and out of ecosystems fuels food webs, shapes global carbon balances, and powers biogeochemical cycles.
Different ecosystems have different patterns of metabolism over the course of the year. For example, temperate deciduous forests like those in the US Northeast tend to have lots of photosynthesis during the summer, but photosynthesis plummets and respiration dominates during leafless, snowy winters. By contrast, in Mediterranean forests with very different seasonality, photosynthesis remains higher than respiration throughout the year and depends more on spring and autumn rains.
These metabolic patterns are well known for the majority of ecosystem types, including forests, grasslands, croplands, and the ocean. But scientists know surprisingly little about the metabolic patterns of lakes, ponds, and reservoirs.
“This lack of understanding limits our ability to quantify the role of lakes in the carbon cycle and the earth system in general, or predict how lakes will respond to global change,” said Solomon.
Assembling the repository
GLAMR is bringing together daily metabolism data — including dissolved oxygen, temperature, wind speed, and other variables — from at least 300 lakes all around the planet. Some of the information exists already, but is scattered across hundreds of published and unpublished sources. GLAMR will organize and harmonize these datasets.
“The most challenging part of the project will be building the data infrastructure to pull together hundreds of millions of data points published by hundreds of different researchers,” said Solomon. “We have a great start on this already, thanks to our funding from Cary Institute’s Science Innovation Funds and Grand Valley State University, but it’s a big and ambitious undertaking.”
New data will be collected by collaborators around the world, including many who are affiliated with the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), an international grassroots network of scientists, students, educators, policy makers, and citizens who study and monitor lake ecosystems across the world.
“GLAMR is very much an outgrowth of GLEON,” said Cary Institute ecologist Kathleen Weathers, who co-created GLEON and is a GLAMR collaborator. “I’m excited to play a role in guiding and participating in GLAMR’s extension and expansion of networked lake science.”
Weathers will lead a training program for GLEON graduate fellows that guides budding scientists in conducting GLAMR-enabled research. Data in the repository will be published and available to other interested scientists as well.
Once the repository is assembled, Solomon and colleagues will begin analyzing the data to define the various lake metabolism archetypes, understand why they differ in time and space, and predict how they might change in the future.
PIs: Christopher Solomon, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies (Lead PI); Isabella Oleksy, University of Colorado Boulder; Stuart Jones, Grand Valley State University; and Paul Hanson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Senior personnel: Kathleen Weathers, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Learn more about GLAMR: The Global LAke Metabolism Repository.
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is an independent nonprofit center for environmental research. Since 1983, our scientists have been investigating the complex interactions that govern the natural world and the impacts of climate change on these systems. Our findings lead to more effective resource management, policy actions, and environmental literacy. Staff are global experts in the ecology of: forests, soils, freshwater, disease, and cities.