Time, ageing and environmental change
Abstract: Aquatic ecosystems are undergoing rapid change in the 21st century due to a wide range of environmental drivers, not only climate. Defining the rates and mechanisms of ecological change is vital from both a management perspective and restoration perspectives. While experimental approaches can provide critical mechanistic understanding of the processes driving ecological change, a temporal perspective is implicit and can be approached via modelling, palaeolimnolgoical methods and long-term monitoring, all have their limitations. I will illustrate the benefits and problems associated with palaeolimnology and the generation of contemporary, long-term datasets by reference to carbon burial in lakes and the fate of the dissolved organic carbon pool in SW Greenland lakes.