Lakes and reservoirs as sentinels, integrators, and regulators of climate change

Climate change is generating complex responses in both natural and human ecosystems that vary in their geographic distribution, magnitude, and timing across the global landscape. One of the major issues that scientists and policy makers now confront is how to assess such massive changes over multiple scales of space and time. Lakes and reservoirs comprise a geographically distributed network of the lowest points in the surrounding landscape that make them important sentinels of climate change. Their physical, chemical, and biological responses to climate provide a variety of information‐rich signals. Their sediments archive and integrate these signals, enabling paleolimnologists to document changes over years…

• DO
  Division of Environmental Biology