Elsevier

Aquatic Botany

Volume 85, Issue 3, October 2006, Pages 224-232
Aquatic Botany

Long-term changes in aquatic plant species composition in North-eastern European Russia and Finnish Lapland, as evidenced by plant macrofossil analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquabot.2006.05.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Three lake sediment sequences from North-eastern European Russia and one from Finnish Lapland were studied for aquatic plant macrofossils. Ages of sediment sequences varied between 12 800 and ca. 10 500 radiocarbon years. Historical records showed distinct changes in the diversity and abundances of aquatic plant remains in each lake's history. Despite the studied lakes being located in different vegetation and climate zones, the records showed a similar long-term pattern of the early Holocene immigration of aquatics, a subsequent maximum in aquatic species richness, and a decline or disappearance after the mid Holocene. It seems that the warming temperature together with sufficient nutrient status enabled establishment of aquatic plant communities during the early Holocene. Afterwards the presence of the limnophytes was probably mainly controlled by the length of the open-water season (i.e. temperature), with changes in nutrient status and water level possibly being additional minor factors. Climate-driven change is supported by the fact that currently aquatic macrophytes are often absent from the lakes beyond tree lines, which are characterized by a short growing season.

Introduction

The high abundance and relative diversity of remains of aquatic macrophytes in northern lakes during the early Holocene is a known phenomenon (e.g., Birks and Mathewes, 1978, Fredskild, 1992, Birks, 2000; see also Iversen, 1954). Holocene records also often show a change in aquatic species assemblages towards the later Holocene, with remains disappearing, becoming scarce or only vegetative remains persisting (Fredskild, 1992, Bennike, 2000). This raises the question: what is the driving mechanism behind these changes?

Taken into account how fundamental an element limnophytes are in aquatic ecosystems (Sculthorpe, 1985, Carpenter and Lodge, 1986, Birks, 2000, Van Donk and Van de Bund, 2002, and references therein), i.e. by providing habitats for several key components of subarctic food webs (Carvalho and Kirika, 2003, Coops et al., 2003) and playing an essential role in carbon and nutrient cycling (Rooney and Kalff, 2000), studies on the historical, post-glacial, dynamics of aquatic vegetation, are amazingly scarce. Most work is from temperate or boreal zones, and these records have often concentrated on the late glacial/early Holocene transition (before and after ca. 11 500 cal yr BP = before present), with many studies only extending into the middle Holocene, i.e. until ca. 5000 cal yr BP (e.g., Birks and Mathewes, 1978, Liedberg Jönsson, 1988, Bennike and Böcher, 1994, Gaillard and Lemdahl, 1994, Birks, 2000). The few studies that cover the entire Holocene period are from Greenland (e.g., Fredskild, 1983, Fredskild, 1992, Eisner et al., 1995, Bennike, 2000).

The Russian study sites presented here were initially analysed to examine Holocene-time tree line movements (Kultti et al., 2003, Kultti et al., 2004, Sarmaja-Korjonen et al., 2004, Väliranta et al., 2006). As an offshoot, the analyses also revealed a certain pattern in aquatic vegetation dynamics, but these results have not been elaborated previously. The present paper offers a long-term reconstruction of aquatic vegetation abundance and aims to elucidate the major drivers of the observed pattern of change.

Section snippets

Study sites

This study covers four study sites. Three of the sites are located in the Pechora area, North-eastern European Russia and one is in eastern Finnish Lapland (Fig. 1). Lakes Llet-Ti, Mezhgornoe and Tumbulovaty are situated in the Usa River basin, the Usa River being a tributary of the Pechora River.

The bedrock in the Pechora area consists mainly of a Lower Paleozoic platform, but Ordovician sedimentary rocks can also be found (Khain, 1985). In lowland areas, the bedrock is covered by thick

Methods

All sites were analysed for plant macrofossils, pollen, lithology, and loss-on-ignition. In addition, Lake Mezhgornoe was analysed for Cladocera and diatom remains, and Lake Njargajavri for Cladocera, diatoms, chironomids, grain size, and C/N. This article presents the records of aquatic plant macrofossils, and merely refers to the other proxy results, that were published in Kultti et al., 2003, Kultti et al., 2004, Väliranta et al., 2005, Väliranta et al., 2006 and Sarmaja-Korjonen et al.

Chronology

All the Russian sites were at first dated using bulk sediment. The number of dated depths was: Llet-Ti with five, Mezhgornoe with five, and Tumbulovaty with three. Pollen stratigraphical comparisons with the existing regional pollen records indicated that the obtained bottom ages for Lakes Mezhgornoe (12 700 cal yr BP) and Llet-Ti (13 800 cal yr BP) were excessively old, most likely due to the influence of old carbon. This is possible since the bedrock in the area partly consists of Ordovician

Discussion

The following discussion aims to speculate which possible factors may have been involved in the detected changes in the aquatic macrophyte records. Many factors may be responsible: changes in climate (especially temperature), water-level fluctuations, nutrient supply, pH, light conditions, competition, and exposure to wave action (Spence, 1967, Pip, 1989, Rørslett, 1991, Fredskild, 1992, Srivastava et al., 1995, Taylor and Helwig, 1995, Hannon and Gaillard, 1997, Middelboe and Markager, 1997,

Conclusions

Macrophyte data derived from four northern lakes suggest that the climatic cooling starting ca. 5000 years ago, which resulted in the shortening of the open-water season, had a significant impact on aquatic macrophyte communities. However, since changes in nutrient status and water level are partly climate-dependent as well, these may have possibly been additional factors. Because the studied sites are few only, my conclusions require caution. If climate proves to have been the major factor in

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge two anonymous referees and the co-editor-in-chief, whose comments considerably improved the text. The original studies were funded by TUNDRA and ARCTICA projects. TUNDRA (TUNdra Degradation in the Russian Arctic) was funded by the European Comission 4th Framework ‘Environment and Climate’ Programme, Section Climatology and Natural Hazards (Contract no. ENV4-CT97-0522) and ARCTICA (grant 47095) was funded by the Academy of Finland. Paul Leeson revised the English language.

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