We analyzed multiple variables in recent sediments from 18 tropical, karst lakes in “Lagunas de Montebello” National Park, a Mexican Protected Natural Area and Ramsar site, to explore relationships between sediment characteristics and lake attributes: topography/location (mountain, surface-water-dominated vs. plateau, groundwater-dominated), morphometry (shallow vs. deep), and human activities (ur

The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the “Water Tower of Asia” because of its function as a water storage and supply region, responds dramatically to modern climate changes. Paleoecological shifts inferred from lake sediment archives provide essential insights into past climate changes, and the processes that drove those shifts. This is especially true for studies of lakes in endorheic basins on the

We reconstructed the Holocene climate in the study area using data from a BZ section in the Baiyangdian paleo-lake. Samples were analyzed for multiple proxies for climate conditions, including grain size, magnetic susceptibility (MS), and carbonate content, which were combined with accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C data. The results show that from 10.0 to 6.3 kyr BP, the study area experienced

The oxygen isotope composition (δ18O) of aquatic cellulose extracted from lake sediment cores has long been used to reconstruct past hydrological responses to climate variation and anthropogenic (e.g. mining, agriculture, forestry) disturbance. Application of this method depends upon a constant oxygen isotope fractionation factor between aquatic cellulose and lake water, often reported as α18Ocell-lw = 1

We identified a suite of steroid biomarkers in sediments and surface soils around Lake Ximencuo, a typical glacial lake in the Nianbaoyeze region, eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). Various sterols, stanols, sterones, and sterenes appear in the sediments and surface soil samples. Among these steroids, plant-derived β-sitosterol and the 5α-stigmastanol that is derived from it exhibit high relative

Since the beginning of the Anthropocene, lacustrine biodiversity has been influenced by climate change and human activities. These factors advance the spread of harmful cyanobacteria in lakes around the world, which affects water quality and impairs the aquatic food chain. In this study, we assessed changes in cyanobacterial community dynamics via sedimentary DNA (sedaDNA) from well-dated lake sediments

We used waterborne Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) for mapping stratigraphic boundaries, sedimentation environments, and specific features of lacustrine sediments of postglacial Lake Polevskoye, which is located in Eastern Fennoscandia, near Lake Onega. The purpose of our study was to examine the spatial structure of the lacustrine sediments including particular facies represented by the thin interbedding

We measured stable isotopes (δ18O and δ13C) in Sphagnum cellulose that was extracted from a long peat core drilled in the ombrotrophic Mohos peat bog, Ciomadul Mountain, Romania. The 10-m-long peat profile spans the period from 11,800 cal yr BP to present. The δ18O and δ13C data indicate there were several cooling events and warm periods in the area of the Mohos peat bog during the Holocene. The 8

Images of sediment cores are often acquired to preserve primary color information, before such profiles are altered by subsequent sampling and destructive analyses. In many cases, however, no post-processing of these images is undertaken to extract information, despite the fact that image processing can be used to describe and measure structures within the sample. Improvements of RGB (Red/Green/Blue)

We developed a portable extruder for precise and accurate high-resolution subsampling of unconsolidated sediment cores. This extruder is capable of producing subsamples at a minimum 1-mm resolution and is designed for easy operation and maintenance in the field. Movement of the threaded extruder rod (½” 8 start acme thread) through the core barrel is driven by a crank wheel graduated in 1-mm increments

Accelerated soil erosion and trace metal pollution in aquatic environments have become a pervasive aspect of global environmental changes during the Anthropocene, threatening food security and ecosystem viability. Long-term records of these processes can promote an improved understanding of their timing, amplitude, and environmental impacts. Here we present a sedimentary record from Lake Jian in Yunnan

The study investigated the influence of maturity, biomass type, and depositional settings on the distribution and relative abundance of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) for lacustrine sediments collected from depths up to 1000 m of Prebreza and Čučale stratigraphic units (the northwest part of the Toplica Basin). A recently proposed benzo[ghi]perylene/(perylene + benzo[ghi]perylene) parameter

The influence of lake restoration efforts on lake bottom-water conditions and varve preservation is not well known. We studied varved sediments deposited during the last 80 years along a water-depth transect in the Enonsaari Deep, a deep-water area of the southernmost Enonselkä Basin, Lake Vesijärvi, southern Finland. For the last few decades, the Enonselkä Basin has been subject to ongoing restoration

This study introduces and discusses inorganic geochemical data from Patos Lagoon, the world’s largest choked coastal lagoon located in southern Brazil. Here, we characterise the sedimentary geochemical environment using different elemental ratios to assess the influence of both anthropogenic activities and the natural hydrological regime on the contemporary geochemical record. Three sediment cores

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-021-00196-8

A multi-proxy analysis, including pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs and plant macrofossil remains was performed to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental history of the Cabeza de Buey shallow lake (36°17′S, 61°10′W) over the last 600 years. We identified the main forcing factors behind changes in the structure and dynamics of the lake communities. Given the relatively low intensity of human activity during

When diatoms undergo vegetative cell division the new siliceous wall components are slightly smaller than those of the parent because they are produced within the confines of the parent wall. Thus, with continued growth the mean size of cells in a population declines. Given this unique feature of diatom cell division, if the growth of a species in a lake increases (decreases) under more (less) favorable

Oxygen-isotope values of invertebrate cuticle preserved in lake sediments have been used in palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, generally with the assumption that fractionation of oxygen isotopes between cuticle and water (\(\upalpha_{\text{cuticle}-\text{H}_{2}\text{O}}\)) is independent of temperature. We cultured chironomid larvae in the laboratory with labelled oxygen-isotope water and across

Application of paleoenvironmental approaches provides insight into the magnitude and timing of responses to climate warming in aquatic-ecosystems of northern Canada. We examined subfossil biological (Diptera:Chironomidae) and geochemical indicators (organic carbon and elemental nitrogen and stable isotope composition) in a sediment core from Buckland Lake, northern Manitoba, to assess the influence

Peatland complexes in the humid highlands of Hawai‘i are vital refuges of biodiversity and freshwater resources. Hawaiian peat deposits are also rare repositories of terrestrial ecosystem archives located in an otherwise vast expanse of ocean. We investigated the potential for researching the paleohydrological history of Hawaiian montane peatlands on Kohala, Hawai‘i Island through analyses of testate

Reconstructing climate change over the last millennium is important for understanding natural climate variability and improving global climatic prediction. Precipitation variations from different records in north-central China, especially in the EASM margin area, are controversial. Here, we present a multi-proxy (grain size, pollen, TOC and TOC/TN ratio) record from Kulun-nuur Lake in east-central

We report organic carbon (OC) accumulation rates in three freshwater ecosystems in southern Brazil, along the largest shallow coastal lagoon ecosystem in the world, the Patos-Mirim-Mangueira. After European colonisation in the seventeenth century, regional wetlands started being replaced by agricultural fields (mostly rice). We used excess 210Pb to develop chronologies for lagoon sediment cores and

The Zhanhua Sag is located in the east-central Jiyang Depression, southern Bohai Bay, northeast China, and is a half-graben, lacustrine basin. Mixed siliciclastic-carbonate sediments are quite common in Eocene deposits of the Zhanhua Sag. We established characteristics of the lithofacies, facies associations, and depositional environments of the upper fourth member of the Eocene Shahejie Formation

Deterioration of aquatic ecosystems, as a consequence of human-induced disturbances, is a critical global concern. To fully understand the responses of aquatic systems to anthropogenic impacts, it is crucial to assess long-term changes in lakes. The water quality of Jili Lake, a large water body in northwest China, has deteriorated recently, owing to the growing impacts of regional warming and human

We conducted year-round, monthly monitoring of the stable isotope composition of DIC and water in hypereutrophic Lake Kierskie, western Poland, along with isotope measures of calcite collected in sediment traps installed at 16 and 30 m water depth in the lake. Isotope data were supplemented by previously published data on physico-chemical variables in the lake water column. We sought to determine how

Stephanodiscus niagarae Ehrenberg is currently restricted to specific regions of central Mexico, however, during the late Pleistocene, it had a wider distribution in the country. This change in distribution is similar to those observed for several organisms that migrated southwards during cold, glacial climates, supporting the hypothesis that central Mexico acted as glacial refugia for these species

We present a ~ 40–year record of environmental change in the Swan Oxbow, Yangtze River, China, inferred from testate amoeba and sedimentary pigment data, combined with remote sensing and analysis of local socio–economic growth. These data indicate there were several distinct phases of aquatic conditions linked to human activities in the region: (1) Between ca. AD 1970 and 1984, there may have been

Lakes located in the Polish and Slovak parts of the Tatra Mountains were included in the Tatra diatom database (POL_SLOV training set). The relationship between the diatoms and the water chemistry in the surface sediments of 33 lakes was the basis for the statistical and numerical techniques for quantitative pH reconstruction. The reconstruction of the past water pH was performed using the alpine (AL:PE)

Seabirds are prominent biovectors whose guano and other wastes are an important source of nutrients that can eutrophy terrestrial and aquatic environments surrounding their breeding and nesting habitats. When these ornithogenically derived nutrients are introduced to waterbodies, they alter aquatic conditions, resulting in shifts in benthic invertebrate communities. In this paleolimnological study

In fault-bounded lacustrine basins, the lake basement may be exposed due to tilting of crustal blocks, forming islands of varying size. Such islands are commonly associated with sandy facies that may serve as important reservoirs for oil and gas accumulation. The present study investigated large sand bodies of Pleistocene-Holocene age on Songmenshan Island in the center of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province

Lake Towuti is located on central Sulawesi/Indonesia, within the Indo Pacific Warm Pool, a globally important region for atmospheric heat and moisture budgets. In 2015 the Towuti Drilling Project recovered more than 1000 m of drill core from the lake, along with downhole geophysical logging data from two drilling sites. The cores constitute the longest continuous lacustrine sediment succession from

Coastal wetlands are essential to the ecosystem health of the Laurentian Great Lakes (North America) watershed. Multiple anthropogenic stressors have been impacting coastal wetlands since European settlement ca. 1850, and remain a concern for wetland health as watershed development intensifies. We used paleolimnological techniques to explore temporal ecosystem dynamics over the last ~ 100 years in

An existing steady state model of lake phosphorus (P) budgets has been adapted to allow reconstruction of long-term average historic lake water total phosphorus (TP) concentrations using lake sediment records of P burial. This model can be applied without site-specific parameterisation, thus potentially having universal application. In principle, it is applicable at any site where there is both a sediment

The perennial and seasonal wetland diversity of the Moroccan Middle Atlas region provides a valuable “test-bed” for understanding the response of different hydrosystems to climatic variations. A multiproxy study, based on sedimentological descriptions, together with mineralogy, carbonate content, XRF core scanning and biological proxies supported by AMS 14C dates, were applied to the 3-m-long core

Regime shifts are major reorganization of ecological processes, creating new sets of mechanisms that drive the new ecological regime. Such rearrangements can affect how and how much the system responds to pressures other than those that created the shift (interactive carryover). Lake Geneva still exhibits high levels of productivity despite reductions in phosphorus to its reference baseline; the continued

Industrialization in the Northern Hemisphere has led to warming and pollution of natural ecosystems. We used paleolimnological methods to explore whether recent climate change and/or pollution had affected a very remote lake ecosystem, i.e. one without nearby direct human influence. We compared sediment samples that date from before and after the onset of industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century

Two cores were recovered from the Lake Magadi and Nasikie Engida Basins in the south Kenya Rift. Core MAG14-2A (194 m) contains a middle Pleistocene to Holocene record, whereas core NAS15/19 (4.36 m) covers only the late Holocene. Surficial sediments from springs and shallow-water sites were sampled in both basins. MAG14-2A rests on trachyte dated at 1.08 Ma. Diatoms are rare in the oldest sediments

The late Holocene lacustrine environmental evolution and paleo-typhoon records are poorly understood around lowland Liyu Lake and mountain Tunlumei Pond in eastern Taiwan. In this study, we use records of diatom populations, magnetic susceptibility, total organic carbon, carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, and δ13C from two lacustrine sediment cores in eastern Taiwan to reconstruct the paleoenvironment and the

The PaleoLake Database contains available information on the lithostratigraphy, biostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy of bottom sediments from numerous lakes located on the East European Plain and nearby regions. The database includes results from more than 70 years of paleolimnological investigations, with information on deposits from 287 water bodies. The compiled data were published mainly in Russian

Reducing excessive external nutrient loading is in principle the first adaptive management against eutrophication, whereas little is known about the recovery time of such intervention, especially in the context of global warming. Here, we use an ensemble approach of paleolimnological records and modeling PCLake to evaluate the recovery time of Lake Taibai, China under diverse combinations of nutrient

Semi-arid areas of northern China are under increasing pressures from anthropogenic activities and climate change. Although wetland areas in these drylands have experienced dramatic, unidirectional shifts in their ecological status in recent centuries, fundamental driving forces are poorly quantified. Here, we examine changes in sedimentary proxies (diatoms, spectrally-inferred chlorophyll-a, stable

Sediment cores from 12 locations throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes basin were analyzed for geochemical indicators of primary production. Sediment analytes included organic and inorganic contents, carbonates, sediment accumulation rates, total organic carbon and nitrogen concentrations, carbon and nitrogen isotope composition, and trends in spectroscopically inferred chlorophyll a (and its main

Norse colonization of North Atlantic islands in the 1st millennium of the Common Era led to drastic prehistoric environmental changes in these previously “pristine” landscapes. In Iceland, Norse settlement is associated with a rapid decline in birch trees and heightened soil erosion, yet the timing of Norse exploration in the North Atlantic coincided with large climate changes that also influenced

Preglacial environments in Lake Ladoga, the largest European lake, located within the limits of the Scandinavian glaciations, are very poorly investigated compared to postglacial ones. They were primarily reconstructed based on the studies of terrestrial boreholes and outcrops, often incomplete and poorly dated. Previous diatom studies established that during the Eemian marine transgression, the Ladoga

We performed geochemical analyses of two lake sediment cores (1.25 and 1.5 m long) from Lago Rogaguado, which is a large (315 km2) and shallow lake in the Llanos de Moxos, Bolivian Amazon, to investigate Holocene environmental changes based on a multi-proxy dataset (XRF, density, grain size, C:N, and macrocharcoal). One of the two cores provides a history of environmental changes in the Llanos de Moxos

A 39-cm sediment core from Castle Lake, California (USA) spans the last ~ 450 years and was analyzed for diatoms and organic geochemistry (δ15N, δ13C, and C:N), with the goal of determining sensitivity to natural climate variation and twentieth century anthropogenic effects. Castle Lake is a subalpine, nitrogen-limited lake with ~ 5 months of annual ice cover. Human impacts include light recreational

Rwenzori Mountains National Park, which straddles the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, has experienced rapid glacier loss since the beginning of the twentieth century, yet there has been little investigation of aquatic biodiversity change in the park. This study presents a paleolimnological analysis from Lake Mahoma (2990 m asl), which is situated in the bamboo-forest transition

The late John Glew contributed valuable equipment to the paleolimnology community for successful collection and processing of cores of sediment from aquatic ecosystems. Unfortunately, tubes that fit his hammer-gravity corer design are no longer conveniently available for purchase and, with his sudden passing, Glew gravity and coring equipment is difficult or impossible to access. In some field-sampling

Glacier-fed lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) have undergone rapid expansions since the late 1990s, concurrent with the changing climate. However, the dominant cause(s) of lake area increases is still debated. To identify the drivers of lake expansion, we studied Aweng Co, a glacier-fed lake in the western TP, where surface area has increased (0.74 km 2 year −1 ) since the late 1970s and most rapidly

Nitrogen (N) is often a limiting nutrient in lacustrine systems, and bulk organic matter stable isotope ratios of N (δ 15 N) are widely used in lake sediment studies to interpret N source inputs and lake trophic status. Although records of lacustrine sedimentary δ 15 N can provide critical information relating to past environmental change, often productivity interpretations from δ 15 N and lacustrine

Chlorophyll is frequently used as a proxy for autochthonous production in lakes. This use of chlorophyll concentrations in sediments to infer historical changes in lake primary production relies heavily on the assumption that preservation is sufficient to reflect the productivity in a meaningful way. In this study, we use a series of freeze cores from a lake with annually laminated sediments to assess

Wetland carbon storage is an important and environmentally sensitive ecosystem service. Carbon burial in the floodplain lakes of the Pantanal (tropical South America) appears to have varied during the late Quaternary, but several paleolimnological studies have recorded unusually high sediment organic carbon content from ~ 7.3 to 6.0 cal kyr BP in lakes connected to the Upper Paraguay River. We conducted

We conducted a systematic review of 89 paleolimnological studies applied to archeological questions. Where we discuss the physical, chemical and biological sediment variables used in these studies in terms of their advantages and disadvantages as paleolimnological proxies for archeological studies. We make four key observations: (1) This field is rapidly growing, (2) More research is needed, (3) More

A multi-proxy study on a sediment core from Pedro Palo Lake, a mid-altitude endorheic Andean Lake in northern South America, was carried out to understand the effects of human activities and climate variability on tropical mountain freshwater ecosystems. Results indicate that between ~ 7980 and 4110 cal year BP the lake maintained well-mixed, mesotrophic conditions, within which a diverse planktonic

Peri-urban lakes offer many valued ecosystem services, but their vulnerability to climate change and anthropogenic disturbances increases with increasing human populations the effects and interactions of multiple stressors on lakes can lead to unexpected outcomes, affecting societal and ecological values, it is necessary to evaluate ecosystem trajectories and respective drivers in peri-urban lakes

A 9.3-m-long lake sediment core from dune-impounded Lake Kai Iwi in Northland, New Zealand provides a nearly continuous record of environmental changes from multi-proxy organic, physical index, and µ-XRF elemental data sets. The chronology for the upper 3 m of the core was established by 210 Pb, 14 C and tephrochronology and includes Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 1 (Holocene), MIS 2 and late MIS 3. From

Sediment cores retrieved from rivers, lakes, and coastal marine environment have been widely utilized to reconstruct historical variations of anthropogenic pollutants. A sediment core was collected in the Kizilirmak River, Turkey during 2014 and analyzed for a suite of metals (Cu, Pb, Zn, Ag, Ni, Co, Mn, As, Cd, Sb, V, Cr, Hg and Se) to reconstruct their temporal variations. Chronology was attempted

We collected a sediment core from the 6th (6J) Triglav Lake, a remote mountain lake in NW Slovenia, and analysed it for 25 elements, using k 0 -instrumental neutron activation analysis ( k 0 -INAA). For Hg, we used cold vapour atomic absorption spectrometry (CVAAS). Data were analysed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA indicated several distinct groups of elements and sediment core samples

n- Alkanes are biomarkers that are widely used as paleoenvironmental reconstruction proxies in lacustrine sediments. However, studies on their sedimentation and factors affecting sedimentation in large lakes remain relatively scarce. In this study, 120 surface sediments collected from Selin Co, central Tibetan Plateau, were used to analyze the spatial distribution of n -alkanes in a modern sedimentary

Diatom communities are composed of three distinct water-depth-associated assemblages: a nearshore benthic assemblage, a deep-water benthic assemblage, and a primarily planktonic assemblage. Light attenuation with depth has been hypothesized to be the factor that controls benthic-to-planktonic (B:P) assemblage transitions. Previous studies, however, could not distinguish between the individual effects