Publication Date:
2012-06-16
Description:
Excessive nutrient loading is a major threat to aquatic ecosystems worldwide that leads to profound changes in aquatic biodiversity and biogeochemical processes. Systematic quantitative assessment of functional ecosystem measures for river networks is, however, lacking, especially at continental scales. Here, we narrow this gap by means of a pan-European field experiment on a fundamental ecosystem process--leaf-litter breakdown--in 100 streams across a greater than 1000-fold nutrient gradient. Dramatically slowed breakdown at both extremes of the gradient indicated strong nutrient limitation in unaffected systems, potential for strong stimulation in moderately altered systems, and inhibition in highly polluted streams. This large-scale response pattern emphasizes the need to complement established structural approaches (such as water chemistry, hydrogeomorphology, and biological diversity metrics) with functional measures (such as litter-breakdown rate, whole-system metabolism, and nutrient spiraling) for assessing ecosystem health.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Woodward, Guy -- Gessner, Mark O -- Giller, Paul S -- Gulis, Vladislav -- Hladyz, Sally -- Lecerf, Antoine -- Malmqvist, Bjorn -- McKie, Brendan G -- Tiegs, Scott D -- Cariss, Helen -- Dobson, Mike -- Elosegi, Arturo -- Ferreira, Veronica -- Graca, Manuel A S -- Fleituch, Tadeusz -- Lacoursiere, Jean O -- Nistorescu, Marius -- Pozo, Jesus -- Risnoveanu, Geta -- Schindler, Markus -- Vadineanu, Angheluta -- Vought, Lena B-M -- Chauvet, Eric -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Jun 15;336(6087):1438-40. doi: 10.1126/science.1219534.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Zoology, Ecology and Plant Science, University College Cork, National University of Ireland, Cork, Enterprise Centre, Distillery Fields, Cork, Ireland. g.woodward@qmul.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22700929" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Biodiversity
;
Biomass
;
*Ecosystem
;
Europe
;
Eutrophication
;
Ilex
;
Invertebrates/*metabolism
;
*Plant Leaves
;
Quercus
;
*Rivers/microbiology
;
*Water Pollution, Chemical
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
