Impacts of climate change on lake ecosystems in the Swedish arctic

PROJECT SUMMARY

The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere in the world. The Arctic also has a significant proportion of the freshwater and terrestrial organic carbon (C) stocks on the planet. Lakes are hotspots of greenhouse gas (CO₂ and CH₄) emissions and C storage. As a result, the response of lakes to both direct and indirect effects of climate change will strongly influence arctic feedbacks to climate change. A critical knowledge gap lies in our ability to make quantitative predictions of how the aggregated C fluxes of thousands of lakes that vary in size, shape, and landscape context will respond to projected climate change. However, lakes are not integrated into regional and global C cycle models. The aim of the project is to forecast how direct and indirect effects of climate will change regional lake carbon cycling in the Swedish arctic.

Principal Investigators

Cristian Gudasz - Principal Investigator (Umeå University)
Jan Karlsson - Co-investigator (Umeå University)
Stuart Jones - Co-investigator (University of Notre Dame)