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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.
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.
The term limnology was coined by François-Alphonse Forel (1841–1912) who established the field with his studies of Lake Geneva.Interest in the discipline rapidly expanded, and in 1922 August Thienemann (a German zoologist) and Einar Naumann (a Swedish botanist) co-founded the International Society of Limnology (SIL, from Societas Internationalis Limnologiae).
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 stratification is the tendency of lakes to form separate and distinct thermal layers during warm weather. Typically stratified lakes show three distinct layers: the epilimnion, comprising the top warm layer; the thermocline (or metalimnion), the middle layer, whose depth may change throughout the day; and the colder hypolimnion, extending to the floor of the lake.
Algae grow very quickly and communities may represent fast changes in environmental conditions. [ 35 ] In addition to community structure, responses to freshwater stressors are investigated by experimental studies that measure organism behavioural changes, altered rates of growth, reproduction or mortality. [ 6 ]
A lake is considered to be highly acidic if its pH drops below 5.5, leading to biological consequences. Such lakes include: acidic pit lakes occupying abandoned mines and excavations; naturally acidic lakes of igneous and metamorphic landscapes; peat bogs in northern regions; crater lakes of active and dormant volcanoes; and lakes acidified by ...
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.