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Data for: Lake surface cooling drives littoral-pelagic exchange of dissolved gases
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Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) - view all
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Last updated3 weeks ago
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Overview

The extent of littoral influence on lake gas dynamics remains debated in the aquatic science community due to the lack of direct quantification of lateral gas transport. The prevalent assumption of diffusive horizontal transport in gas budgets fails to explain anomalies observed in pelagic gas concentrations. Here we demonstrate through high-frequency measurements in a eutrophic lake that daily convective horizontal circulation generates littoral-pelagic advective gas fluxes one order of magnitude larger than typical horizontal fluxes used in gas budgets. These lateral fluxes are sufficient to redistribute gases at the basin-scale and generate concentration anomalies reported in other lakes. Our observations also contrast the hypothesis of pure, nocturnal littoral-to-pelagic exchange by showing that convective circulation transports gases like oxygen and methane toward both the pelagic and littoral zones during the daytime. This study challenges the traditional pelagic-centered models of aquatic systems by showing that convective circulation represents a fundamental lateral transport mechanism to be integrated into gas budgets.

differential coolingdissolved gaseshorizontal convective circulationlakelateral transport
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Harvest Object Id43059a26-5dce-437d-852e-4db217b28f31
Harvest Source Idd0230d8d-fb2c-4caf-94e8-8ad52bd38ad9
Harvest Source TitleThe Eawag Research Data Institutional Repository
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