EAGER: Collaborative Research: Synchronization Across Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems

Aquatic ecosystems are closely connected to their surrounding watersheds through the flux of water, nutrients, and organic carbon. Similarly, the flux of exogenous carbon from the landscape causes lakes to be substantial sources of greenhouse gases as well as sinks for organic carbon buried in the sediment. There are also important fluxes from inland waters to the terrestrial ecosystems.

Despite the recognition of the importance of terrestrial-aquatic coupling, synchronization (persistent relatedness) of dynamics between these ecosystems has not been broadly investigated. Employing data reuse techniques to use data from Lake Multiscaled Geospatial and Temporal Database (LAGOS) and Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) databases, the PIs will apply new analysis tools to answer questions related to the synchrony of lakes and their surrounding watersheds.

To quantify synchronization between terrestrial and aquatic habitats wavelet coherence will be used to measure the strength of synchronization between terrestrial and lake ecosystems, as well as phase relationships, describing time lags. Time lags are hypothesized to reflect mechanisms of synchrony and may be related to lake size, water residence time, trophic status, and watershed area.

These factors are hypothesized to affect the degree of aquatic-terrestrial synchrony. Random forest regression will be applied to test this idea, leveraging the range of lake and watershed properties. Multiple regression for wavelet transforms will be used to determine the fraction of aquatic-terrestrial synchrony that can be explained by climate drivers and assess synchrony between terrestrial ecosystems and lake nutrient fluctuations for improved inference into non-climate mechanisms of synchrony.

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation?s Public Access Initiative which is managed by the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure on behalf of the Foundation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.