Victor Frossard

High-resolution paleolimnology opens new management perspectives for lakes adaptation to climate warming

Varved lake sediments provide opportunities for high-resolution paleolimnological investigations that may extend monitoring surveys in order to target priority management actions under climate warming. This paper provides the synthesis of an international research program relying on >150 years-long, varved records for three managed perialpine lakes in Europe (Lakes Geneva, Annecy and Bourget). The dynamics of the dominant, local human pressures, as well as the ecological responses in the pelagic, benthic and littoral habitats were reconstructed using classical and newly developed paleo-proxies. Statistical modelling achieved the hierarchization of the drivers of their ecological trajectories. All three lakes underwent different levels of eutrophication in the first half of the XXth century, followed by re-oligotrophication. Climate warming came along with a 2°C increase in air temperature over the last century, to which lakes were unequally thermally vulnerable. Unsurprisingly, phosphorous concentration has been the dominant ecological driver over the last century. Yet, other human-influenced, local environmental drivers (fisheries management practices, river regulations) have also significantly inflected ecological trajectories. Climate change has been impacting all habitats at rates that, in some cases, exceeded those of local factors. The amplitude and ecological responses to similar climate change varied between lakes, but, at least for pelagic habitats, rather depended on the intensity of local human pressures than on the thermal effect of climate change. Deep habitats yet showed higher sensitivity to climate change but substantial influence of river flows. As a consequence, adapted local management strategies, fully integrating nutrient inputs, fisheries management and hydrological regulations, may enable mitigating the deleterious consequences of ongoing climate change on these ecosystems.

What is the robustness of early warning signals to temporal aggregation

A number of methods have recently been developed to identify early warning signals (EWSs) within time-series structure typically characteristic of the rise of critical transitions. Inherent technical constraints often limit the possibility to obtain from sediment both regular and high-resolution time series rather most palaeoecological time series obtained from sediment records represent time-aggregated ecological signals. In this study, the robustness of EWS detection to temporal aggregation was addressed using simulated time series mimicking ecological dynamics. Using a stochastic differential equation based on a deterministic model exhibiting a critical transition between two stable equilibria, two different scenarios were simulated using different combinations of forcing and noise intensities (critical slowing-down and driver-mediated flickering scenarios). The temporal resolution of each simulated time series was progressively decreased by averaging the data from 1t = 1 up to 1t = 10 time-unit intervals. EWSs [standard deviation, autocorrelation at lag-1 (AR(1)), skewness and kurtosis] were applied to all time series. Robustness of EWSs to data aggregation was assessed through a block-based approach using Kendall rank correlation Tau. Standard deviation appeared to be robust to data aggregation up to 1t = 10 for the slowing-down scenario and up to 1t = 5 for the driver-mediated flickering scenario while autocorrelation remained robust up to 1t = 2 for the slowing-down scenario and did not support data aggregation for the driver-mediated scenario. Skewness and kurtosis performed poorly for the two scenarios and were not considered as robust EWSs even for the original simulated time series using the block-based approach. Our results suggest that high-resolution palaeoecological time series could be in a large extent suitable to support EWS analyses.

Quantification of Saprolegnia parasitica in river water using real-time quantitative PCR: from massive fish mortality to tap drinking water

Abstract Since 2010, the Loue River (Franche-Comté, East of France) has been suffering from massive fish kills infested by Saprolegnia parasitica. The river supplies inhabitants of the city of Besançon in drinking water, raising the question of a potential risk through both water consumption and use. We developed a real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) to quantify S. parasitica in the Loue River as well as in the drinking water. A weak spatial trend is suggested with greater quantities of S. parasitica observed at the sampling station close to the main pumping station. No S. parasitica DNA was detected in the tap water connected to pumping stations. The use of qPCR, which combines specificity, practicality, speed and reliability, appears to be an effective tool to monitor the spatial and temporal dynamics of this oomycete and identify the risk period for wild salmonid populations in the field, for fishery management or in aquaculture.