Article detail · 2021
Salinity shapes food webs of lakes in semiarid climate zones: a stable isotope approach
- Year
- 2021
- Type
- article
Data source split
- YÖKSİS YÖKSİS article record
- YÖKSİS venue Inland Waters
- Catalog match (ISSN) Inland Waters
- OpenAlex OpenAlex enrichment (abstract, citations, topics)
Abstract
OpenAlex · English
In arid and semiarid regions, extreme temperature events and the frequency and duration of drought will increase toward 2050, leading to increased salinisation of inland waters, aggravated by catchment erosion and human activities (e.g., crop irrigation). With salinisation, a decline in biodiversity is expected, with potential negative effects on food web structure and ecosystem dynamics. Our objective was to assess the changes in community and food web structure in 24 lakes along a wide salinity gradient (i.e., subsaline to hypersaline) in a semiarid region in northwest China. Fish, zooplankton, and macroinvertebrate communities were sampled for taxonomic determination, size structure, and stable isotope analysis (SIA; δ13C and δ15N). Based on SIA, we calculated the Layman metrics: nitrogen range, carbon range, total area, standard ellipses area, and the trophic position, for each community and for the entire food web. We found a reduced number of taxa of all analysed communities, and the complexity of the entire food web decreased in most saline lakes. In addition, the trophic diversity and trophic position declined, less so in the larger lakes, but these effects were not significant when studying the community food webs separately. Our results suggest that increasing salinisation with ongoing climate warming will have negative effects on lake ecosystems in arid and semiarid regions, emphasising the need to implement management measures at the watershed level to prevent or mitigate future changes in food web structure and biodiversity due to salinisation.
Topics
Citations
OpenAlex cited_by_count. Not a WoS or Scopus citation count; those sources have no separate column here.
34 citations
OpenAlex cited_by_count (cache / database)
8 publications in the local catalog that cite this work (OpenAlex reference match; not the full global list).
- Increased Water Abstraction and Climate Change Have Substantial Effect on Morphometry, Salinity, and Biotic Communities in Lakes: Examples from the Semi-Arid Burdur Basin (Turkey) 2022
- Increased Water Abstraction and Climate Change Have Substantial Effect on Morphometry, Salinity, and Biotic Communities in Lakes: Examples from the Semi-Arid Burdur Basin (Turkey) 2022
- Increased Water Abstraction and Climate Change Have Substantial Effect on Morphometry, Salinity, and Biotic Communities in Lakes: Examples from the Semi-Arid Burdur Basin (Turkey) 2022
- Increased Water Abstraction and Climate Change Have Substantial Effect on Morphometry, Salinity, and Biotic Communities in Lakes: Examples from the Semi-Arid Burdur Basin (Turkey) 2022
- Increased Water Abstraction and Climate Change Have Substantial Effect on Morphometry, Salinity, and Biotic Communities in Lakes: Examples from the Semi-Arid Burdur Basin (Turkey) 2022
- Fish Size Structure as an Indicator of Fish Diversity: A Study of 40 Lakes in Türkiye 2023
- Assessment of spatial changes in Lake Karataş using remote sensing and GIS: ecological and hydrological transformation 2025
- Assessment of spatial changes in Lake Karataş using remote sensing and GIS: ecological and hydrological transformation 2025