Data Descriptor : A European Multi Lake Survey dataset of environmental variables, phytoplankton pigments and cyanotoxins

Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-change induced stressors, like poor transparency, increased water temperature and enhanced stratification. Consistency in data collection and analysis methods is necessary to achieve fully comparable datasets and for statistical validity, avoiding issues linked to disparate data sources. The European Multi Lake Survey (EMLS) in summer 2015 was an initiative among scientists from 27 countries to collect and analyse lake physical, chemical and biological variables in a fully standardized manner. This database includes in-situ lake variables along with nutrient, pigment and cyanotoxin data of 369 lakes in Europe, which were centrally analysed in dedicated laboratories. Publishing the EMLS methods and dataset might inspire similar initiatives to study across large geographic areas that will contribute to better understanding lake responses in a changing environment.Peer reviewe

AZO thin film-based UV sensors: effects of RF power on the films

Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films of thickness 150 nm were deposited on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering method under various RF powers in the range of 25-100 W. Structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of the films were investigated by X-ray diffractometer, atomic force microscope, UV-Vis spectrometer and Hall effect measurement system. All the obtained films had a highly preferred orientation along [002] direction of the c-axis perpendicular to the flexible PET substrate and had a high-quality surface. The energy band gap (E-g) values of the films varied in the range of 3.30-3.43 eV. The minimum resistivity of 1.84 x 10(-4) Omega cm was obtained at a 50 W RF power. The small changes in the RF power had a critical important role on the structural, optical and electrical properties of the sputtered AZO thin films on flexible PET substrate. In addition, UV sensing of the fabricated AZO thin film-based sensors was explored by using current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. The sensors were sensitive in the UV region of the electromagnetic spectrum

Modeling the effects of climatic and land use changes on phytoplankton and water quality of the largest Turkish freshwater lake: Lake Beysehir

Climate change and intense land use practices are the main threats to ecosystem structure and services of Mediterranean lakes. Therefore, it is essential to predict the future changes and develop mitigation measures to combat such pressures. In this study, Lake Beysehir, the largest freshwater lake in the Mediterranean basin, was selected to study the impacts of climate change and various land use scenarios on the ecosystem dynamics of Mediterranean freshwater ecosystems and the services that they provide. For this purpose, we linked catchment model outputs to the two different processed-based lake models: PCLake and GLM-AED, and tested the scenarios of five General Circulation Models, two Representation Concentration Pathways and three different land use scenarios, which enable us to consider the various sources of uncertainty. Climate change and land use scenarios generally predicted strong future decreases in hydraulic and nutrient loads from the catchment to the lake. These changes in loads translated into alterations in water level as well as minor changes in chlorophyll a (Chl-a) concentrations. We also observed an increased abundance of cyanobacteria in both lake models. Total phosphorus, temperature and hydraulic loading were found to be the most important variables determining cyanobacteria biomass. As the future scenarios revealed only minor changes in Chl-a due to the significant decrease in nutrient loads, our results highlight that reduced nutrient loading in a warming world may play a crucial role in offsetting the effects of temperature on phytoplankton growth. However, our results also showed increased abundance of cyanobacteria in the future may threaten ecosystem integrity and may limit drinking water ecosystem services. In addition, extended periods of decreased hydraulic loads from the catchment and increased evaporation may lead to water level reductions and may diminish the ecosystem services of the lake as a water supply for irrigation and drinking water

The influence of water level on macrophyte growth and trophic interactions in eutrophic Mediterranean shallow lakes: a mesocosm experiment with and without fish

1. Water-level fluctuations are typical of lakes located in the semi-arid Mediterranean region, which is characterised by warm rainy winters and hot dry summers. Ongoing climate change may exacerbate fluctuations and lead to more severe episodes of drought, so information on the effects of water level on the functioning of lake ecosystems in such regions is crucial. 2. In eutrophic Lake Eymir, Turkey, we conducted a 4-month (summer) field experiment using cylindrical 0.8-m- (low-water-level) and 1.6-m-deep (high-water-level) mesocosms (kept open to the sediment and atmosphere). Fish (tench, Tinca tinca, and bleak, Alburnus escherichii) were added to half of the mesocosms, while the rest were kept fishless. Ten shoots of Potamogeton pectinatus were transplanted to each mesocosm. 3. Sampling for physicochemical variables, chlorophyll a (chl-a), zooplankton and per cent plant volume inhabited (PVI%) by macrophytes was conducted weekly during the first 5 weeks, and subsequently biweekly. Macrophytes were harvested on the last sampling date. During the course of the experiment, the water level decreased by 0.41 +/- 0.06 m. 4. Throughout the experiment, fish affected zooplankton abundance (-), nutrient concentrations (+), chl-a (+) and water clarity (-) most strongly in the low-water-level mesocosms and the zooplankton community shifted towards dominance of small-sized forms. The fishless mesocosms had a higher zooplankton/phytoplankton ratio, suggesting higher grazing. 5. Greatest macrophyte growth was observed in the low-water-level fishless mesocosms. However, despite high nutrient concentrations and low water clarity, macrophytes were also abundant in the fish mesocosms and particularly increased following a water-level decrease from midsummer onwards. Macrophyte growth was poor in the high-water-level mesocosms, even in the fishless ones with high water clarity. This was ascribed to extensive periphyton development reducing light availability for the macrophytes. 6. Our results indicate that a reduction in water level during summer may help maintain the growth of macrophytes in Mediterranean eutrophic shallow lakes, despite a strong negative effect of fish predation on water clarity. It is therefore probable that an expected negative effect of global climate change on water clarity because of eutrophication and enhanced top-down control of fish may be, at least partly, counteracted by reduced water level, provided that physical disturbance is not severe

Impact of alternating wet and dry periods on long-term seasonal phosphorus and nitrogen budgets of two shallow Mediterranean lakes

The water balance, with large seasonal and annual water level fluctuations, has a critical influence on the nitrogen and phosphorus dynamics of shallow lakes in the semi-arid climate zone. We constructed seasonal water and nutrient budgets for two connected shallow lakes, Lakes Mogan and Eymir, located in Central Anatolia, Turkey. The study period covered 20 years with alternations between dry and wet years as well as restoration efforts including sewage effluent diversion and biomanipulations in Lake Eymir. Both lakes experienced a 1-2 m water level drop during a drought period and a subsequent increase during the wet period, with seasonal water level fluctuations of 0.60 to 0.70 m. During wet years with high water levels, small seasonal differences were observed with a nutrient peak in spring caused by external loading and nutrient loss via retention during summer. During years with low water levels, nutrient concentrations increased due to internal and external loading, exacerbated by evaporative water loss. In Lake Eymir, a shift to eutrophic conditions with turbid water occurred under low water level conditions and consequent internal loading of P from the sediment, causing high nutrient concentrations in summer. Our results indicate a threat of lakes drying out in the semi-arid climate zone if evaporation increases and precipitation decreases as anticipated from the global climate change predictions. In addition, our results show the influence of the water balance on the eutrophication of shallow lakes in the Mediterranean climate zone and highlight the ultimate consequences for lake management

Diminutives as pioneers of derivational and inflectional development – a cross-linguistic perspective

Although diminutives are commonly viewed as being typical of child speech and childdirected speech, their acquisition has so far neither been studied in a cross-linguistic perspective nor been related to recent theoretical developments in the study of diminutives and of the associated evaluative classes of augmentatives and pejoratives (Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi, 1994, 2001; Jurafsky, 1996). However, the cross-linguistic study of the development of diminutives is apt to shed light on much debated theoretical issues in the acquisition of morphology and on the impact of language typology on acquisition. We expect productivity, morphological transparency and salience in the input language to favour diminutive acquisition, which, in turn, may even facilitate the development of inflectional morphology. Our paper is meant to address these issues based on extensive longitudinal child data from typologically different languages. The data are transcribed and morphologically coded according to CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) within the “Cross-linguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition”. The main languages to be considered in this paper are the Indo-European inflecting-fusional languages Lithuanian, Croatian, Greek and German, as well as the agglutinating languages Turkish and HungarianVytauto Didžiojo universiteta