Authors: Michelle McKeown Aaron P Potito
Publish Date: 2015/08/01
Volume: 765, Issue: 1, Pages: 245-263
Abstract
This study assessed the influences of climate warming and human impacts on Irish lakes over the late nineteenth to early twentyfirst centuries Highresolution chironomid Insecta Diptera stratigraphies were developed for two low to midelevation lakes in northwest Ireland to determine if lakes with mildtomoderate human impacts can be used to accurately reconstruct mean July air temperature Application of an Irelandbased chironomidinference model to quantitatively estimate July air temperature r textjack2 = 060 RMSEP = 057°C revealed that chironomids can reflect changes in Irish temperature particularly post1980 when warming accelerated although this signal becomes compromised with intensified human impacts A biotic response to nutrient enrichment and soil erosion from direct human activities was identified through a comparison of chironomid autecology with known catchment changes Redundancy analysis and time series comparisons were used to identify when faunal turnover is a function of local nutrient input erosion versus extraregional climate drivers over the recent past and identify any thresholds of human influence within the catchments This study highlights the importance of careful site selection as moderately impacted sites do not follow a simple scheme as well as multiproxy analysis to assess catchmentbased human activity for longer term chironomidbased temperature reconstructions in IrelandThis research was funded by the Arts Faculty Travel Fund of the National University of Ireland Galway The authors wish to thank Prof Michéal O’Cinneide and Dr David Porinchu for their helpful comments and feedback on content and form We would like to thank Zoe Elliott Xinchun Guo David Scallon Stephen Galvin and Thomás Cooley for their help with the fieldwork portion of this study We would also like to thank Carlos Chique and Craig Woodward for their help and advice in constructing Fig 1
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