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    Lakes lose harmful amounts of oxygen as a result of the warming climate

    Classic Adirondack Park waters can be found in Herkimer County, New York, at Rondaxe Lake. But during the past 25 years, Rondaxe has been struggling to keep oxygen in its waters, much like thousands of other temperate lakes around the world.

    According to new research from Cornell University and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, global warming is causing extended late-summer weeks of water stratification, which causes oxygen deprivation in the water and has detrimental effects on fish and other species. These conditions include hypoxia (low oxygen) and anoxia (no oxygen).

    According to the lead author, Stephen Jane, a postdoctoral scholar at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, “lakes with dissolved oxygen losses considerably outnumber those with gains.” “As lakes continue to warm, aerobic organisms have less habitat available on a wide scale.” This is especially true for creatures that depend on calm, well-oxygenated lakes to survive heated seasons.

    To determine dissolved oxygen loss, Jane and his colleagues looked at around 25 years’ worth of data for more than 400 lakes, most of which were in the United States. Along with Rondaxe Lake, the committee also investigated the reservoirs at Neversink (Sullivan County), Cannonsville (Delaware County), and Jockeybush and Sagamore lakes in New York (Hamilton County).

    The amount of low-oxygen lake water is growing in temperate climate lakes by an average of 0.9% to 1.7% per decade, and it has increased by more than 50% since three decades ago, according to the study.

    Oxygen depletion in lake water can have a variety of repercussions. For instance, methane, a potent greenhouse gas, may accumulate in the water column’s anoxic regions. Unsettled lake silt may release nutrients like phosphorus from fertilizer, which can enter the water column and increase the likelihood of dangerous algal blooms.

    The average lake surface temperature in July and August is around 70 degrees, while the average lake bottom temperature is about 40 degrees. Water density and temperature are related, as Jane explained. “So it turns into a situation where you basically have oil and vinegar, where high temperature differences in the water between layers produce resistance to mixing, which is stratification.”

    As a result, dissolved oxygen in deep seas cannot be replenished by oxygen from the atmosphere, according to Jane. Seasonal stratification is beginning earlier and finishing later because winter is ending earlier than it did decades ago.

    According to him, these stratification shifts give deep-water habitats more time for deoxygenation, the stoppage of the normal oxygenation process.

    According to co-author Kevin Rose, an associate professor at Troy, New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, “We show here that as warming continues, the duration of time that lakes exhibit stratification is growing, and this leads to increases in the amount of low-oxygen water in lakes.” The bad news is that future increases in the volume of oxygen-depleted water in lakes are anticipated to be substantially more pronounced given forecast warming rates.

    The National Science Foundation and Cornell University both contributed funding.

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