SETAC Europe 27th Annual Meeting Session: Big data analysis of monitoring data: what questions can be addressed?

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Compilation and analysis of monitoring
data from eutrophied lakes across Europe:
experiences from EU projects
Jannicke Moe, Anne Lyche Solheim, Kari Austnes
(Norwegian Institute for Water Research);
Niina Kotamäki (Finnish Environment Institute)
SETAC Europe 27th Annual Meeting
Session: Big data analysis of monitoring data:
what questions can be addressed?

2. The session description states ...
• Unfortunately the use of monitoring data is often limited to
the purpose of which they are collected.
• ... difficulties in causally linking stressors with observed
differences in ecosystem structure and functioning [...]
because both natural processes and the influence of
stressors are highly variable in both space and time.
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From national lake monitoring data
to European research questions
• National
regulations
• Monitoring,
assessment
• Dose-response
relationships
• Ecological status
classification systems
• Intercalibration
• Multiple stressors
• Climate change
• Biodiversity
• Ecosystem functions
• Ecosystem services
The Water Framework
Directive (WFD) required ...
New research programmes
require ...

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5. From national monitoring data
to European management targets:
example for lake phytoplankton
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Data
compilation
Dose-
response
relationships
Boundaries
of ecological
status
classes
Management
target for EU:
Good-Moderate
boundary
Biological
indicators
(Lyche Solheim et al. 2008)

6. Compiling big ecological datasets:
some challenges
• Standardisation of taxonomy (species names etc.)
• Standardisation of lake codes
• Intellectual property rights
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7. New research questions: effects of
multiple stressors on lake ecosystems
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MARS approach:
Common stressor combination
across multiple scales
Lake level European levelCatchment level

8. How does climate & nutrients stress affect
phytoplankton in Northern-European lakes?
Opportunities: Extensive databases
• WISER phytoplankton (Moe et al. 2013)
• 1100 lakes
• Species, nutrients, etc.
• Climate (EU Joint Researche Centre)
• 25 km x 25 km
• MARS Geodatabase (Globevnik et al. 2017)
• Geology, geography, catchment info, etc.
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9. How does climate & nutrients stress affect
phytoplankton in Northern-European lakes?
Challenges: variation in many dimensions
1. Taxonomic
• >250 species
2. Geographic
• Confounding gradients
3. Temporal
• Seasonal
• Long-term
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10. 1. Handling taxonomic variation:
The Phytoplankton Trophic Index (PTI)
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• Indicator score based on total phosphorus preference of
each genus, weighted by the genus’ biomass (Phillips et al. 2013)
• Higher PTI value indicates higher nutrient stress

11. 2. Handling geographic variation:
New European broad lake types
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ETC/ICM, 2015. European Freshwater Ecosystem Assessment: Cross-walk between the Water
Framework Directive and Habitats Directive types, status and pressures

12. 2. Handling geographic variation:
New European broad lake types
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MARS Geodatabase:
59,000 lakes
assigned to
broad lake type
(Globevnik et al. 2016)

13. 3. Handling temporal variation:
hierarchical regression analyis
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For each lake type, PTI can a have different resonse to ...
• effects of total phosphours (TP) and nitrogen (TN)
• effects of temperature and precipitation
• interaction effect TP * temperature
Higherrelevance,
higheraccuracy
Largerdataset,
higherprecision
9 lake types
1100 lakes
4600 samples
(lake-months)

14. Combined effects of nutrients and temperature
on PTI are quantified for each lake type
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Temperature Total P Temperature * Total P
• Siliceous (soft-water) lake types have stronger interaction of
temperature and total P
• Can we use this to answer questions about climate change?
European lake types Parameter estimates

15. Extrapolating into future climate
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Nutrient
concentrations
Phytoplankton
trophic index
WISER data
Statistical
model
Temperature
Precipitation
Climate data
HISTORICAL DATA
(1988-2009)
Nutrient
concentrations
Phytoplankton
trophic index
Temperature
Precipitation
MARS climate scenarios
FUTURE
SCENARIOS
(2010, 2030, 2090)
"What if" scenarios
WISER data
Predictive
model
Parameter
estimates

16. Future climate scenarios
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2010 2030 2090
Climate Scenario 2010 2030 2090
RCP 8.5 15.9 17.4 21.3
Mean projected summer air temperature (°C)• Climate model: IPSL-CMSA-LR
• Spatial resolution: 0.5 x 0.5° grid
• Temporal resolution: daily
• More info: MARS fact sheet #03

17. How will phytoplankton communities
respond to combined future climate and
nutrient scenarios?
For current nutrient stress:
• PTI will increase due to warming
in the far future (2090)
For higher nutrient stress (+50%):
• PTI will increase due to warming
even in the near future (2030)
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TP scenario: current
TP scenario: + 50%
PTIPTI
Year
Year

18. Big data analysis of monitoring data:
our experiences
What we found most useful:
1. Data in the highest possible resolution
• Taxonomic: species abundance data
• Temporal: individual samples
2. Metadatabase for original datasets
• Intellectual property rights
• www.wiser.eu/results/meta-database
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19. Big data analysis of monitoring data:
our experiences
3. Smart ways to distill information
• Biological indicators of community responses
• European lake types
• Hierarchical regression method
4. Links to other big data sources
• MARS geodatabase
• MARS future climate projections
• www.mars-project.eu
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20. References
ETC/ICM, 2015. European Freshwater Ecosystem Assessment: Cross-walk between the Water Framework
Directive and Habitats Directive types, status and pressures, ETC/ICM Technical Report 2/2015,
Magdeburg: European Topic Centre on inland, coastal and marine waters, 95 pp. plus Annexes.
Moe, S. J., A. Schmidt-Kloiber, B. J. Dudley & D. Hering, 2013. The WISER way of organising ecological data from
European rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters. Hydrobiologia 704:11-28.
Phillips, G., A. Lyche-Solheim, B. Skjelbred, U. Mischke, S. Drakare, G. Free, M. Järvinen, C. Hoyos, G. Morabito,
S. Poikane & L. Carvalho, 2013. A phytoplankton trophic index to assess the status of lakes for the Water
Framework Directive. Hydrobiologia 704:75-95.
Lyche Solheim A, Rekolainen S, Moe SJ, Carvalho L, Phillips G, Ptacnik R, et al. 2008. Ecological threshold
responses in European lakes and their applicability for the Water Framework Directive (WFD)
implementation: synthesis of lakes results from the REBECCA project. Aquatic Ecology 42: 317-334.
Globevnik L, Koprivšek M, Snoj L. 2016. Reports on stressor classification and effects at the European scale: EU-
wide multi-stressors classification and large scale causal analysis. MARS deliverable 5.1-1.
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