Dr. Yanmin Cao’s article entitled Regime shifts in shallow lake ecosystems along an urban-rural gradient in central Chinawas published in Science of the Total Environment. The article was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation Project.

Using the methodology of Paleolimnology, the research group reconstructed the ecological changes of different shallow lakes on urban-rural gradients in Wuhan during the past 100 years. They emphasized the significant impacts of urban rapid development and expansion on ecological regimes and functions in urban and suburban lakes.

The results illustrated that (1) the differences among lakes in trajectories, timing of critical transition and current ecological status. The timing of regime shift changed along with the distance of lakes from city center; (2) The greatest variance of chironomid compositional changes in both Shahu and Yanxi Lake was captured by anthropogenic pollutants, and analyses show that when these pressures are high they may be further amplified by climate warming. Responses along the urban-rural gradient are exemplified by urban Shahu Lake having shifted to a fragile regime with weak resistance and resilience, while rural Futou Lake has stabilized in a new regime with improved ecological resilience; (3) Suburban Yanxi Lake is still moving toward a new state, and as such is unstable, because the types and magnitudes of external stressors are changing with urbanization in the city. It is suggested that active and precise management strategies for lakes should be established along the urban-rural gradient given their distinct development trajectories, drivers and current status.

vidence of bistability between before and after the tipping points in three lakes. The results are based on (a) Gaussian kernel density estimation and (b) autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model.

Link of the paper via:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720328266?via%3Dihub