Blenckner 2005

Blenckner T. 2005. A conceptual model of climate-related effects on lake ecosystems. Hydrobiologia 533: 1-14.

This author presents a verbal model of factors that may influence how lake ecosystems react to climate change and climate variation. This verbal model is presented as a hierarchical conceptual framework of lake characteristics that control how a lake might react to a “climate signal”. This paper is too long and highly repetitive. There are three major sections, but the first two (“present the approach” and “apply published findings to the approach”) should have been condensed into one, and the third section is very short and consists mainly of suggestions for future research and some rather weak arguments for water resource conservation by political bodies.

Essentially, the conceptual framework is that a climate signal passes through two filters in influencing a lake ecosystem. The first filter is here named the “landscape filter”, and is composed of the geographical position, catchment characteristics, and morphology of a lake, the second filter is the “internal lake filter”, consisting of the lake’s history and the abiotic and biotic interactions within the lake. These points are made at least three times in this paper, without major differences in the descriptions. There is little, for example, in the way of elaboration on these essential points, and indeed some phrases appear to be repeated through this paper.

While the conceptual framework appears to have been constructed with existing data in mind, the papers that provide strongest support for major suppositions do not get cited until the second section. The first section merely outlines the framework, then the second section fills in a few details with citations, though words like “might” and “may” appear far too often for any of the conclusions to be taken very seriously.

No surprising findings are presented in this paper. This conceptual framework, while perhaps useful for encouraging greater interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of climate change research, does not appear to supply any great novel insights into ecosystems and climates. Some discussions seem contradictory or non-applicable, for example a discussion of winter climate on lake productivity that first describes Lake Constance in Germany and the rarity of ice cover on that lake, followed by a description of the effects of ice and snow cover on phytoplankton, ending with a description of how winter climate (presumably involving little or no ice) did not strongly influence variation in phytoplankton in Lake Constance. Additionally, this paper contains several apparent mistakes, such as the misuse of the word “successional”, “i.e.” when “e.g.” is probably implied, and twice referring to the United States of America as “the US”. This paper is labelled “Opinion”; perhaps Hydrobiologia’s peer-review policies for opinion pieces are not very stringent.