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. 2021 Jul 30;16(7):e0254257.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254257. eCollection 2021.

Multiple drivers of ecological change in Arctic lakes and ponds

Konrad Gajewski  1
Affiliations

Multiple drivers of ecological change in Arctic lakes and ponds

Konrad Gajewski. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Griffiths et al. (2017) analyzed several ponds and lakes from the Cape Herschel region of Ellesmere Island in order to "…explicitly examine the role of ice cover as the dominant driver of diatom assemblage change…". I reanalyze their data and suggest that their classification scheme, that they propose is due to differences in ice cover seasonality ("warm", "cool", "cold", and "oasis"), is confounded with other morphological and chemical variables that better explain the differences between the groups. The "cold" sites are the deepest (lakes) and differ from the small, shallow ponds that occasionally dry, which would therefore have different diatom assemblages and histories. The "oasis" sites are nutrient enriched and probably have more stable water supplies, thereby enabling an aquatic flora providing habitats for diatoms. A key part of their interpretation is that "warm" sites have responded more rapidly to recent climate change than "cold" or "cool" sites, but their chronologies do not allow for such a conclusion. There is no clear difference between "cool" and "warm" sites, and problems in dating the sequences means inferences about their histories are not supported by data. Their results, which are restricted to the past century, are contradicted by a Holocene sequence from the region.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Dotplot of the data in Griffiths et al. (2017); their document S1 Data.
For each year with data (years 1–12), the ice percentage recorded on the day of sampling is plotted. Note that some sites had more than one observation on a different day of the year. “c” are “cool” sites, “l” are “cold” sites, “o” are “oasis” sites and “w” are “warm” sites as classified by Griffiths et al. (2017).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Temperature measurements from field camps in the Herschel and Sverdrup areas between the years of 1974–1993.
Any measurements from the PCSP database [20] were included; see text for details.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Principal components biplot of the data in Griffiths et al. (2017) Table 2.
Axis 1 explains 60.1% of the variance and axis 2 explains 17.6%.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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