Freshwater lake ecosystem shift caused by social-economic transitions inYangtze River Basin over the past century

Abstract

Global lake systems have undergone rapid degradation over the past century. Scientists and managers are struggling to manage the highly degraded lake systems to cope with escalating anthropogenic pressures. Improved knowledge of how lakes and social systems co-evolved up to the present is vital for understanding, modeling, and anticipating the current and future ecological status of lakes. Here, by integrating paleoenvironmental, instrumental and historical documentary resources at multi-decadal scales, we demonstrate how a typical shallow lake system evolved over the last century in the Yangtze River Basin, an urbanized region containing thousands of shallow lakes. We find abrupt ecological..