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Continental‐scale variation in controls of summer CO 2 in United States lakes
Author(s) -
Lapierre JeanFrancois,
Seekell David A.,
Filstrup Christopher T.,
Collins Sarah M.,
Emi Fergus C.,
Soranno Patricia A.,
Cheruvelil Kendra S.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: biogeosciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8961
pISSN - 2169-8953
DOI - 10.1002/2016jg003525
Subject(s) - co occurrence , climate change , scale (ratio) , physical geography , spatial variability , environmental science , spatial ecology , global change , ecology , geography , biology , cartography , statistics , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science
Abstract Understanding the broad‐scale response of lake CO 2 dynamics to global change is challenging because the relative importance of different controls of surface water CO 2 is not known across broad geographic extents. Using geostatistical analyses of 1080 lakes in the conterminous United States, we found that lake partial pressure of CO 2 ( p CO 2 ) was controlled by different chemical and biological factors related to inputs and losses of CO 2 along climate, topography, geomorphology, and land use gradients. Despite weak spatial patterns in p CO 2 across the study extent, there were strong regional patterns in the p CO 2 driver‐response relationships, i.e., in p CO 2 “regulation.” Because relationships between lake CO 2 and its predictors varied spatially, global models performed poorly in explaining the variability in CO 2 for U.S. lakes. The geographically varying driver‐response relationships of lake p CO 2 reflected major landscape gradients across the study extent and pointed to the importance of regional‐scale variation in p CO 2 regulation. These results indicate a higher level of organization for these physically disconnected systems than previously thought and suggest that changes in climate and land use could induce shifts in the main pathways that determine the role of lakes as sources and sinks of atmospheric CO 2 .