Long-term trends in study duration of lakes and reservoirs over recent decades

Long-term trends in study duration of lakes and reservoirs over recent decades

Owing to increased awareness of the value of long-term ecological studies, there have been numerous calls for long-term data. Natural lakes and reservoirs provide ecosystem services and serve as sentinels of change but differ in origin, water movement, and location. We conducted a meta-analysis of s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Hydrobiologia Vol. 851; no. 17; pp. 4285 - 4292
Main Authors: Detmer, T. M., Collins, S. F., Wahl, D. H.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01-10-2024
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Duration
Ecological studies
Ecology
Ecosystem services
Freshwater & Marine Ecology
Lakes
Life Sciences
Limnologists
Phytoplankton
Primary Research Paper
Quantiles
Reservoir construction
Reservoirs
Trends
Vertebrates
Zoology
Zooplankton
Lakes and reservoirs
Limnology
Ecology
Evolution in study design
Study duration
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Summary:Owing to increased awareness of the value of long-term ecological studies, there have been numerous calls for long-term data. Natural lakes and reservoirs provide ecosystem services and serve as sentinels of change but differ in origin, water movement, and location. We conducted a meta-analysis of study duration for lake and reservoir studies from 1975 to 2015 (6362 studies were initially identified, and 801 met study criteria). Study duration increased among longer studies (> 0.5 quantile) with increases of 20 years for the highest (0.9) quantile, and there were no changes among short-term studies. Increased study duration was inversely related to number of focal areas or metrics (e.g., phytoplankton, zooplankton, vertebrates) with few focal areas or metrics (< 2 metrics) indicating few focal areas for long-term studies. Surprisingly, despite continued construction of reservoirs, the ratio of studies of lakes to reservoirs was 5 to 1 with no change over time, with the dearth of data on reservoirs making it difficult to characterize long-term trends. Increased duration in high quantiles concurrent with static duration of short-term studies suggests limnologists have fundamentally altered the way they approach questions that are influenced by study duration, but also that gaps remain in multifaceted studies and in reservoir studies.
ISSN:0018-8158
1573-5117
DOI:10.1007/s10750-024-05584-5