Search

Climate change is affecting the global hydrological cycle and is causing drastic changes in the freshwater hydrological regime. Water level (WL) reduction caused by drought tends to increase the concentration of nutrients favoring the dominance of cyanobacteria. We hypothesized that the WL reduction favors the dominance of cyanobacteria at regular dry conditions, but at extremely dry events mixotrophic algae would thrive because of light limitation due to increased resuspension of sediments on the water column. To test our hypothesis, we compared phytoplankton traits and water quality variables between two sets of reservoirs located in two watersheds with contrasting precipitation regimes within the Brazilian semi-arid. The reservoirs were compared in a dry period and in an extremely dry period to evaluate the response of the variables to an extreme drought. Drought intensification decreased the reservoirs' WL and water transparency and increased the total phosphorous. Cyanobacteria dominated in the dry period, and the contribution of mixotrophic algae increased in the extremely dry period. Thus, phytoplankton with mixotrophic potential was favored by the extreme drought. This result suggests that this can be one possible scenario for phytoplankton communities in reservoirs of semi-arid regions if extreme droughts become more frequent because of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical reservoirs are main carbon sources to the atmosphere, and bacterial metabolism is a key process in these emissions. Here, we explored the drivers of bacterial metabolism in four tropical cascading reservoirs forming a trophic state gradient, and compared them with those found in the literature (mainly from temperate regions). Bacterial production (BP) and growth efficiency (BGE) responded to trophic state-related variables, while bacterial respiration (BR) was weakly and negatively correlated to dissolved organic carbon (DOC). BP and BGE were higher in reservoirs with higher primary production, while BR (high throughout the whole study period) was greater in less productive reservoirs, where planktonic communities were often limited by phosphorus. The high BR and low BGE observed in less productive downstream reservoirs (i.e., less nutrients and organic matter availability) may be explained by increasing nutrient limitation and proportion of recalcitrant DOC along the cascade. Despite the lower productivity, oligotrophic reservoirs may be more important in terms of carbon biogeochemistry, considering that microbes in those systems mineralize more carbon than upstream productive reservoirs. Moreover, the drivers of bacterial metabolism may act differently according to latitude, as seasonality in the tropics is determined mainly by rainfall rather than temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]