Changing nutrient cycling in Lake Baikal,the world’s oldest lake

Lake Baikal, lying in a rift zone in southeastern Siberia, is the world''s oldest, deepest, and most voluminous lake that began to form over 30 million years ago. Cited as the “most outstanding example of a freshwater ecosystem” and designated a World Heritage Site in 1996 due to its high level of endemicity, the lake and its ecosystem have become increasingly threatened by both climate change and anthropogenic disturbance. Here, we present a record of nutrient cycling in the lake, derived from the silicon isotope composition of diatoms, which dominate aquatic primary productivity. Using historical records from the region, we assess the extent to which natural and anthropogenic factors have altered biogeochemical cycling in the lake over the last 2,000 y. We show that rates of nutrient supply from deep waters to the photic zone have dramatically increased since the mid-19th century in response to changing wind dynamics, reduced ice cover, and their associated impact on limnological processes in the lake. With stressors linked to untreated sewage and catchment development also now impacting the near-shore region of Lake Baikal, the resilience of the lake’s highly endemic ecosystem to ongoing and future disturbance is increasingly uncertain.

Ancient lakes have long been associated with both high levels of biodiversity and endemicity. However, they are also being threatened by anthropogenic forcings that have led to impacts ranging from the warming of lake waters (1), hydrological modifications (2), increases in aquatic toxicity (3), and declining endemic populations due to introductions of nonnative species (4). With global populations increasingly reliant on large and ancient lakes for ecosystem services, the biodiversity (5) and value of aquatic systems to society (6), particularly in ancient lake systems (7), are at risk. Lake Baikal (Russia) is an exceptional example of an ancient lake (Fig. 1). In addition to containing ∼20% of global surface freshwater, the lake is characterized by its high degree of biodiversity with over 2,500 flora and fauna, the majority of which are endemic (8). This has been attributed to the lake’s age and fully oxygenated water column, driven by seasonal overturning and deep water renewal (9, 10) that sustains an almost completely endemic deep water fauna (8).Open in a separate windowFig. 1.Location of Lake Baikal and its catchment (gray) together with the location of World Meteorological Organization station in Irkutsk, major catchment rivers (brown), coring sites (BAIK13-1, BAIK13-4), and sites providing additional data used in this study (BAIK13-7).Concerns exist over the future health of this unique ecosystem, amid evidence of extensive shoreline eutrophication (11, 12) and climate-induced shifts in primary productivity (13, 14). Together, these changes have impacted organisms ranging from sponges and gastropods to ciliates, flagellates, and algal communities (15). Given the likelihood of future anthropogenic disturbance on Lake Baikal, further disrupting productivity exchanges through the lake’s food web, there is a need to place these contemporary observations into their historical setting. In Lake Baikal, we have evidence that algal communities have undergone rapid multidecadal to multicentennial timescale changes over the last 2,000 y (16). However, there is a need to also gain a clearer insight into how biogeochemical and nutrient cycling has altered over the same timescale, both to contextualize natural and anthropogenic drivers of change and to understand the susceptibility of the lake’s ecosystem to further alteration under different climate states (17). Annual primary productivity in Lake Baikal is ultimately regulated by photic zone nutrient availability, in addition to ice/snow cover, which regulates light availability for photosynthesis (10, 18). Here, by analyzing the silicon isotope composition of diatom silica (δ³⁰Si_diatom), we show that nutrient supply to the surface waters of Lake Baikal has rapidly increased through the 20th and 21st centuries coincident with increased wind-driven Ekman transport and reduced ice cover. These changes in photic zone nutrient availability have the potential to alter resource competition and prey–predator interactions across the lake (15, 19).