Climate warming and species change in the world’s largest lake – Lake Baikal, Siberia

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Lake Baikal—the world’s oldest and deepest great lake, holding 1/5th of the world’s freshwater—is typically very cold. Ice covers it for four to five months each year, yet this lake harbors more animal species than any other lake on Earth. And, more than 50 percent of the lake’s plants and animals are found nowhere else. These unique species, including the world’s only freshwater seal, the Baikal seal, require cold water and even ice cover for both survival and growth.

A team of scientists from Russia and the USA have now shown that summer surface waters warmed 2°C during the period 1977-2003 in the first lakewide, long-term study of physical and biological factors in this cold-water ecosystem. Furthermore, two widespread groups of animal plankton, which are common in much warmer lakes, increased between 2- and 12-fold. Although nutrient enrichment might contribute to such changes, no evidence suggests that widespread offshore nutrient enrichment contributed to the changes observed.

“We now know that surface waters are warming across the entire lake and widespread species commonly found in warmer waters are increasing in abundance,” said corresponding author Marianne V. Moore, Frost Professor in Environmental Science and Professor of Biological Sciences, at Wellesley College. The question now is: “Will Lake Baikal’s unique cold-water species adapt and persist in a changing climate or will they be replaced by non-native species?” If replacement occurs, energy transfer up the food chain is likely to decline resulting in fewer fish and seals.

Original Publication Information

Results of this study, "Lake-wide physical and biological trends associated with warming in Lake Baikal," are reported by Izmest'eva et al in Volume 42, Issue 1 of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, published by Elsevier, 2016.

Contacts

For more information about the study, contact Marianne V. Moore, Frost Professor in Environmental Science & Professor of Biological Sciences, 106 Central Street, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA 0248; [email protected].Eugene Silow (Evgeny Zilov), Scientific Research Institute of Biology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk-3, Lenin str.3, PO Box 24, Irkutsk, 664003, Russian Federation ; [email protected].

For information about the Journal of Great Lakes Research, contact Stephanie Guildford, Scientific Co-Editor, Large Lakes Observatory, University Minnesota Duluth, 2205 East Fifth Street, Duluth, Minnesota, 55812-2401; [email protected]; (218) 726-8064.