Climate displaces deposition as dominant driver of dissolved organic carbon concentrations in historically acidified lakes.

ABSTRACT: Climate and atmospheric deposition interact with watershed properties to drive dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations in lakes. Because drivers of DOC concentration are inter-related and interact, it is challenging to assign a single dominant driver to changes in lake DOC concentration across spatiotemporal scales. Leveraging forty years of data across sixteen lakes, we used structural equation modeling to show that the impact of climate, as moderated by watershed characteristics, has become more dominant in recent decades, superseding the influence of sulfate deposition that was observed in the 1980s. An increased percentage of winter precipitation falling as rain was associated with elevated spring DOC concentrations, suggesting a mechanistic coupling between climate and DOC incre

SUBMITTER: Herreid AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11662036 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature