Elsevier

Aquatic Botany

Volume 88, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 77-86
Aquatic Botany

Freshwater macrophyte communities in lakes of variable landscape position and development in northern Wisconsin, U.S.A.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquabot.2007.08.010Get rights and content

Abstract

Using multivariate analyses, we evaluated the roles of landscape position and human development in the presence, composition, and abundance of freshwater macrophyte communities among 60 study lakes located in Vilas County, Wisconsin. These lakes varied in their position in a drainage network and surrounding land use as well as size, maximum depth, chemistry, and clarity. We used non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination, cluster analyses, and classification tree analyses to assess the multivariate relationships among macrophyte communities and environmental variables including an index of human development. Macrophyte communities in lakes high in the landscape were found to be dominated by isoetids while lakes low in the drainage network were dominated by elodeids due to the difference in bicarbonate concentrations. The presence of the human-introduced crayfish, Orconectes rusticus, had a high and significant correlation with the absence of macrophytes. An increase in human development correlated with a decrease in macrophyte abundance.

Introduction

Freshwater macrophytes are the pivot point of interaction between fish, invertebrates, waterfowl, plankton, bacteria, and water and sediment chemistry in lakes. Alterations to aquatic plant community structure will have cumulative effects on the entire lake ecosystem (Carpenter and Lodge, 1986, Wilcox and Meeker, 1992, Jeppesen et al., 1998).

Freshwater macrophyte abundance relies on many limnological factors. These include the temperature and chemistry of the water, the amount of light available to the plants, the substrate in which the plants are growing, the exposure to wave action, groundwater inflow, the extent of herbivory within the lake, and the presence of human development in the watershed and on the lakeshores (Pip, 1979, Barko et al., 1982, Duarte and Kalff, 1986, Lodge et al., 1986, Chambers and Kalff, 1987, Lodge et al., 1989, Rørslett, 1991, Nichols and Lathrop, 1994, Vestergaard and Sand-Jensen, 2000b, Radomski and Goeman, 2001, Egertson et al., 2004, Rasmussen and Anderson, 2005).

Substantial shoreline vegetation alteration by human activity has been documented. In Minnesota, developed lake shorelines have 66% less floating-leaf and emergent vegetative cover than undeveloped shorelines (Radomski and Goeman, 2001). Many lakeshore homeowners remove aquatic vegetation adjacent to their property to create beach conditions. The construction of docks and alteration of shoreline with riprap, concrete, and seawalls can also destroy aquatic macrophytes (Engel and Pederson, 1998). The addition of docks can mean an increase in boating traffic as well. Increased boating activity, including larger boats and personal watercraft, directly damages macrophytes and increases wave disturbance (Liddle and Scorgie, 1980, Murphy and Eaton, 1983, Ostendorp et al., 1995). Native freshwater macrophyte densities can also be reduced significantly by exotic species introduced by humans (e.g., Orconectes rusticus, Myriophyllum spicatum; Lodge and Lorman, 1987, Boylen et al., 1999, Wilson, 2002).

The topographic position of a lake in a hydrological network affects a number of factors that may influence macrophyte communities and their response to human disturbance. Lakes that are low in the drainage network tend to receive a larger proportion of their water budgets from groundwater than lakes higher in the landscape because groundwater flow follows surface water drainage (Brown, 1995). Conductivity, alkalinity, algal abundance, fish species richness, pH, [Ca2+], [Cl], and dissolved silica all may increase lower in the landscape (Kratz et al., 1997, Riera et al., 2000). These environmental variables may then affect aspects of habitat, water quality, and biota within lake ecosystems. Together and separately, human development and landscape position influence many of the variables that constrain macrophyte community composition and structure.

We evaluated the presence and composition of freshwater macrophyte communities on gradients of landscape position and human development. This study examines the changes in this important littoral structure along these two gradients simultaneously. The individual relationships between aquatic macrophytes and environmental variables have been well documented elsewhere (see above); here we assess the relative importance of each variable across a landscape and how those variables differ in importance for distinct macrophyte communities.

Section snippets

Site description

Vilas County is located in north central Wisconsin, sharing a boundary with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It ranges from 469 to 573 m above sea level and has a total area of 263,490 ha of which 17% is water (Natzke and Hvizdak, 1986). Because of its lakes, streams, wetlands, and forests, Vilas County is a popular tourist destination. Lakeshore plots of land have become very popular sites for vacation homes and the human population has more than doubled in Vilas County since the 1970s.

Chemical and physical limnology

Over the course of four summers (2001–2004), we assessed the chemical and physical limnology of each of the 60 study lakes (15 lakes each summer). Measurements were taken at 1 m depth (with the exception of Secchi depth, maximum depth, and the shoreline development factor) at the deepest part of each lake. The variables include conductivity, alkalinity, chlorophyll a concentration, pH, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), total nitrogen unfiltered (N), total

Results

The 60 study lakes had low to moderate alkalinity and conductivity, but differed greatly in light availability, intensity of human land use and crayfish abundance (Table 1). Manicured lawns and docks were the most common landcover types associated with human presence in our 480 study sites (Table 2).

Lake-level environmental factors

The overwhelmingly prominent environmental parameter influencing macrophyte community composition in these lakes is alkalinity. Because lakes that are low in the drainage network tend to receive a larger proportion of their water budgets from groundwater than lakes higher in the landscape (Brown, 1995), alkalinity often increases in lakes lower in the landscape (Kratz et al., 1997, Riera et al., 2000). Macrophyte species groups 2 and 3 were found predominantly in low alkalinity, high landscape

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to S. Van Egeren, L. Zeglin, K. Werner, A. Marburg, A. Fowler, J. Hansen, K. Wagner, A. Newman, J. Jakubowski, T. Aschkenase, A. Rea, G. Pledger, and T. Bland who helped with data collection. We thank B. Benson for helpful discussions on statistical analyses. This work was funded by the NSF under Cooperative Agreement #DEB-0083545 (Biocomplexity).

References (59)

  • B. Rørslett

    Principal determinants of aquatic macrophyte richness in northern Europe

    Aquat. Bot.

    (1991)
  • O. Vestergaard et al.

    Alkalinity and trophic state regulate aquatic plant distribution in Danish lakes

    Aquat. Bot.

    (2000)
  • Anderson, J., 1996. Vilas County planning and zoning office annual report. Vilas County Planning and Zoning Office,...
  • J. Attig

    The Pleistocene Geology of Vilas County, Wisconsin

    (1984)
  • J.W. Barko et al.

    Effects of organic matter additions to the sediments on the growth of aquatic plants

    J. Ecol.

    (1983)
  • J.W. Barko et al.

    Growth and morphology of submersed freshwater macrophytes in relation to light and temperature

    Can. J. Bot.

    (1982)
  • G.C. Becker

    Fishes of Wisconsin

    (1983)
  • S. Borman et al.

    Through the Looking Glass—A Field Guide to Aquatic Plants

    (1997)
  • C.W. Boylen et al.

    Loss of native aquatic plant species in a community dominated by Eurasian watermilfoil

    Hydrobiologia

    (1999)
  • A.G. Brown

    Geomorphology and Groundwater

    (1995)
  • G.M. Capelli et al.

    Morphoedaphic and biogeographical analysis of crayfish distribution in northern Wisconsin

    J. Crustacean Biol.

    (1983)
  • P.A. Chambers et al.

    Light and nutrients in the control of aquatic plant community structure

    J. Ecol.

    (1987)
  • H. Cyr

    Effects of wave disturbance and substrate slope on sediment characteristics in the littoral zone of small lakes

    Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci.

    (1998)
  • G. De’ath et al.

    Classification and regression trees: a powerful yet simple technique for ecological data analysis

    Ecology

    (2000)
  • C.M. Duarte et al.

    Littoral slope as a predictor of the maximum biomass of submerged macrophyte communities

    Limnol. Oceanogr.

    (1986)
  • M. Dufrene et al.

    Species assemblages and indicator species: the need for a flexible asymmetrical approach

    Ecol. Monogr.

    (1997)
  • C.J. Egertson et al.

    A century of change in macrophyte abundance and composition in response to agricultural eutrophication

    Hydrobiologia

    (2004)
  • S. Engel et al.

    The Construction, Aestethetics, and Effects of Lakeshore Development: A Literature Review

    (1998)
  • S.M. Haslam

    River Plants.

    (1978)
  • Cited by (35)

    • Spatial and seasonal variation of water parameters, sediment properties, and submerged macrophytes after ecological restoration in a long-term (6 year) study in Hangzhou west lake in China: Submerged macrophyte distribution influenced by environmental variables

      2020, Water Research
      Citation Excerpt :

      The growth, distribution and species composition of the macrophyte vegetation was more closely related to the current velocity and water depth than the chemical factors in the river or stream owing to anthropic impact (Steffen et al., 2014), and also the physical and chemical properties of the sediment, including density, pH, and total nitrogen (TN) (Antunes et al., 2012). Due to overdevelopment of lake basins and excessive pollutants inputs (Guo, 2007), any alteration of submerged macrophytes community could have a large effect on the ecosystem processes and functions (Alexander et al., 2008; Beck et al., 2010). The interaction among water parameters, sediment properties and submerged macrophytes plays a vital role in regulating ecosystem structure and maintaining the water quality level (Scheffer et al., 2001; Bornette et al., 2011).

    • Development of an integrated stress index to determine multiple anthropogenic stresses on macrophyte biomass and richness in ponds

      2016, Ecological Engineering
      Citation Excerpt :

      The dominant submerged species in slightly disturbed ponds were U. vulgaris, V. spiralis, and Chara spp. Among of them, U. vulgaris and V. spiralis often present fragile root systems; hence, they are easily affected by increasing anthropogenic stress (del Pozo et al., 2010); moreover, Chara spp. are generally regarded as clear water indicators and often constrained by light attenuation caused by increasing anthropogenic stress (Kimber et al., 1995; Alexander et al., 2008). These characteristics result in the disappearance of the above species in moderately disturbed ponds.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    1

    Present address: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Rhinelander, WI 54501, USA.

    View full text