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Water clarity governs the health of underwater ecosystems because it impacts the amount of light reaching the plants and animals living underwater. For plants, light is needed for photosynthesis. The clarity of the underwater environment determines the depth ranges where aquatic plants can live.
Connectivity between streams and lakes relates to the landscape drainage density, lake surface area and lake shape. [15] Other types of aquatic systems which fall within the study of limnology are estuaries. Estuaries are bodies of water classified by the interaction of a river and the ocean or sea. [13]
The key difference between the littoral zone and the limnetic zone is the presence of rooted plant growth. [1] The floor under the limnetic zone cannot sustain plant growth due to a lack of sunlight for photosynthesis. In extremely shallow bodies of water, light may penetrate all the way to floor even in the deepest center parts of the lake.
Freshwater invertebrates provide an important link in freshwater food chains, transporting the nutrients and energy from producers such as algae and aquatic plants to higher consumers such as fish and amphibians. [9] Additionally, invertebrates can act as important bio-indicators for ecosystem health. [9]
Lake ecosystems can be divided into zones. One common system divides lakes into three zones. The first, the littoral zone, is the shallow zone near the shore. [5] This is where rooted wetland plants occur.
Finally, there are nekton (animals that can propel themselves, like fish, squids, and crabs), which are the largest and the most obvious animals in the photic zone, but their quantity is the smallest among all the groups. [4] Phytoplankton are microscopic plants living suspended in the water column that have little or no means of motility.
Ocean optics is the study of how light interacts with water and the materials in water. Although research often focuses on the sea, the field broadly includes rivers, lakes, inland waters, coastal waters, and large ocean basins. How light acts in water is critical to how ecosystems function underwater.
Chlorophyll, the most abundant plant pigment, is most efficient in capturing red and blue light. Accessory pigments such as carotenes and xanthophylls harvest some green light and pass it on to the photosynthetic process, but enough of the green wavelengths are reflected to give leaves their characteristic color.