Abstract
Scaled chrysophytes in the surface sediments of 58 soft-water northern New England lakes were analyzed to assess their usefulness for inferring pH. The distributions of many taxa are correlated with lakewater pH and associated variables. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) and clustering grouped chrysophyte taxa according to their distributions along the pH gradient. For example, Chrysodidymus synuroideus, Mallomonas hindonii, and M. hamata commonly occur in acidic waters (pH<5.5), whereas M. caudata and M. pseudocoronata are common in circumneutral to alkaline waters. Of the five predictive models developed to infer pH, CCA based calibration had the lowest standard error (0.35 pH units). A CCA based predictive model was also developed to infer total alkalinity. The study provides strong evidence that, in the absence of past measured pH data, stratigraphic studies of sedimentary chrysophyte scales will provide accurate reconstructions of pH in northern New England lakes.
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This is the sixth of a series of papers to be published by this journal which is a contribution of the Paleoecological Investigation of Recent Lake Acidification (PIRLA) project. Drs. D.F. Charles and D.R. Whitehead are guest editors for this series.
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Dixit, S.S., Smol, J.P., Anderson, D.S. et al. Utility of scaled chrysophytes for inferring lakewater pH in northern New England lakes. J Paleolimnol 3, 269–286 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00219462
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00219462