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. 2023 Apr 7;13(1):5681.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32712-3.

Trophic state resilience to hurricane disturbance of Lake Yojoa, Honduras

J M Fadum  1   2 , M N Waters  3 , E K Hall  4   5
Affiliations

Trophic state resilience to hurricane disturbance of Lake Yojoa, Honduras

J M Fadum et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Cyclones are a poorly described disturbance in tropical lakes, with the potential to alter ecosystems and compromise the services they provide. In November 2020, Hurricanes Eta and Iota made landfall near the Nicaragua-Honduras border, inundating the region with a large amount of late-season precipitation. To understand the impact of these storms on Lake Yojoa, Honduras, we compared 2020 and 2021 conditions using continuous (every 16 days) data collected from five pelagic locations. The storms resulted in increased Secchi depth and decreased algal abundance in December 2020, and January and February 2021, and lower-than-average accumulation of hypolimnetic nutrients from the onset of stratification (April 2021) until mixus in November 2021. Despite the reduced hypolimnetic nutrient concentrations, epilimnetic nutrient concentrations returned to (and in some cases exceeded) pre-hurricane levels following annual water column turnover in 2021. This response suggests that Lake Yojoa's trophic state had only an ephemeral response to the disturbance imposed by the two hurricanes, likely due to internal input of sediment derived nutrients. These aseasonal storms acted as a large-scale experiment that resulted in nutrient dilution and demonstrated the resilience of Lake Yojoa's trophic state to temporary nutrient reductions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sampling locations (water column and surface sediments) in Lake Yojoa and approximate paths of Hurricanes Eta and Iota. Color gradation (dark to light) denotes direction of the cyclones. Map outlines generated using MapChart (www.mapchart.net, 2022; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). Paths based on National Hurricane Center assessments,.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Profiles of monthly. (a) Dissolved oxygen and (b) temperature (minimum, maximum, inter-quartile range with outliers at 2 m intervals).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Statistical significance of differences in mean monthly nutrient concentrations at 1 m, and temperature and dissolved oxygen at (a) 1–2 m (2020 vs. 2021) and (b) 16 m. Arrows indicate direction of change (2020 to 2021) in months where p < 0.05 (i.e., ↑ indicates an increase in 2021 compared to 2020 whereas ↓ indicates a decrease in 2021 compared to 2020). Cell color denotes p value (2020 vs. 2021, ANOVA).
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Secchi depth and (b) Chl-a at five continuously monitored in-lake locations (mean ± SE).
Figure 5
Figure 5
(a) Surface TP, and (b) deep TP at five continuously monitored in-lake locations (mean ± SE).
Figure 6
Figure 6
(a) Surface NH4+, (b) deep NH4+, (c) surface NO3−, and (d) deep NO3− at five continuously monitored in-lake locations (mean ± SE).
Figure 7
Figure 7
(a) Surface DOC, and (b) deep DOC at five continuously monitored in-lake locations (mean ± SE).
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