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Using contemporary and past winter lake monitoring to identify the impact of warmer winter temperatures on lake diatom communities
Previous research has indicated that lake diatom communities in both the water column and sediment records may be strongly influenced by winter conditions and may provide a proxy of past winter climate. Winters in the northeastern United States and Sweden are highly variable and changing rapidly, making them useful sites to test this hypothesis. To assess the effects of warmer winter air temperatures on lake diatom communities across the northern hemisphere, many biological, chemical, and physical catchment and in-lake drivers must be studied in space and time. Long term monitoring studies for different lake types with different mixing regimes are useful to identify effects of warmer and colder winters but often do not include critical parameters such as ice thickness, under ice light quality as they are difficult and dangerous to measure and are rarely included in standardized winter sampling. A combined approach of long-term monitoring programs in Vermont paired with observations of local community members, state employees, farmers, and fishermen will help to generate a more comprehensive view on the importance of different drivers, and particularly their timing for a potential change in lake productivity due to warmer winter air temperatures.