Arctic Warming Triggers Abrupt Ecosystem Shift in North America’s Deepest Lake

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https://eos.org/articles/arctic-warming-triggers-abrupt-ecosystem-shift-in-north-americas-deepest-lake

By Cheryl Katz, Eos/AGU.

Excerpt: Great Slave Lake looks like a giant goose winging across Canada’s Northwest Territories. Spanning an area the size of Belgium and reaching depths of up to 614 meters, it’s the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world and North America’s deepest. Its huge mass of cold water helped shield Great Slave Lake from the climate impacts that have upended the ecosystems of shallower lakes in high northern latitudes. But no longer, according to a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Spurred by accelerating Arctic warming, the microscopic algae, or phytoplankton, at the foundation of this massive lake’s food web have made a radical regime shift since the turn of the century. ...Great Slave Lake’s abrupt transformation corresponds to accelerating Arctic climate change, said the study’s lead author, Queen’s University paleolimnologist Kathleen Rühland. The region is now warming several times faster than the global average....

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