Carsten Meyer-Jacob

Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue · Forest Research Institute (IRF)

The lead‑zinc smelter at Trail (British Columbia, Canada) has operated continuously for ∼125 years, with long-standing concerns that transboundary metal(loid) and sulphur emissions have contaminated water bodies in both western Canada and Washington (WA), USA. To assess aquatic ecosystems affected by over a century of industrial contamination requi...

For over a century, the copper and nickel mining centre of Sudbury in northeastern Ontario (Canada) was a major source of sulphur dioxide and other pollutants, degrading terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the surrounding region. In the 1970s, emissions were drastically reduced due to concerns over widespread environmental damage. Killarney Provi...

Spectra in the visible and infrared region provide a wealth of information on sediment composition. This enables a wide array of applications that allow quantitative, semi-quantitative, and qualitative characterization of inorganic and organic sub- stances in sediments. Because analyses can be performed in situ or require only small sample quantiti...

Atmospheric acid deposition disrupted terrestrial-aquatic carbon cycling by drastically lowering dissolved organic carbon (DOC) loads in many lakes across NE North America and northern Europe during the 20th century. However, little is known about how acid deposition has altered the role of lakes as long-term carbon sinks. We present contemporary (...

The organic matter composition of lake sediments influences important in-lake biogeochemical processes and stores information on environmental changes. Extracting this information is notoriously difficult because of the complexity of the organic matter matrix, which routinely imposes trade-offs between high temporal and analytical detail in the sel...

Smelting activities have strongly affected the Sudbury (Ontario, Canada) region since the late-nineteenth century, leading to acidification and metal contamination of local ecosystems. Regulations restricting acid deposition were enacted in the 1970s, after which many lakes exhibited increasing pH and decreasing metal concentrations. Given the docu...

underwater light availability and exposure of ultraviolet radiation (UV) in mountain lakes is mainly controlled by dissolved organic matter and ice-cover. However, both of these factors are affected by climate warming and other anthropogenic pressures. Still, little is known of the impacts of long-term fluctuations in underwater light conditions on...

Ruth-Roy Lake (Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada) is an ultra-oligotrophic, naturally acidic waterbody. Lakes in Killarney Provincial Park were impacted by long-range transportation of contaminants from copper–nickel smelting operations in nearby Sudbury, but recent lake monitoring indicates that Ruth-Roy Lake has been less acidic than inf...

Acidification and eutrophication are common limnological stressors impacting many water bodies across the globe. While the negative impacts of these stressors on limnetic communities are generally known, their influence on the accumulation of specific sediment constituents, such as metals, remains unclear. Benefitting from past research and long-te...

Algal communities act as sensitive indicators of past and present climate effects on northern lakes, but their responses can vary considerably between ecosystems. Functional trait-based approaches may help us better understand the nature of the diverse biotic responses and their underlying ecosystem changes. We explored patterns in diatom (Bacillar...

Mining and smelting activities have strongly influenced the Sudbury region (Ontario, Canada) since the late 19th century, leading to acidification and metal contamination in many local ecosystems. Regulations on restricting acidic emissions were enacted in the 1970s, after which a considerable volume of paleolimnological work was completed to study...

Seabird population size is intimately linked to the physical, chemical, and biological processes of the oceans. Yet, the overall effects of long‐term changes in ocean dynamics on seabird colonies are difficult to quantify. Here, we used dated lake sediments to reconstruct ~10,000‐years of seabird dynamics in the Northwest Atlantic to determine the...

Peninsula Lake, Ontario, Canada, is a Precambrian Shield lake that has experienced many environmental stressors since European settlement of the watershed in the mid-1800s, including forest clearance, water-level management, sewage inputs, and land-use changes. The deterioration of water quality by the 1970s prompted mitigation efforts intended to...

The copper-zinc smelter at Flin Flon (Manitoba) operated between 1930 and 2010 and emitted large amounts of metal(loid)s and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, damaging the surrounding terrestrial landscapes and depositing airborne industrial pollutants into aquatic ecosystems. However, the extent of biological impairment in regional lakes is lar...

Global environmental change alters the production, terrestrial export, and photodegradation of organic carbon in northern lakes. Sedimentary biogeochemical records can provide a unique means to understand the nature of these changes over long time scales, where observational data fall short. We deployed in situ experiments on two shallow subarctic...

Monitoring of surface waters in the boreal region over the last decades shows that waters are becoming browner. This timeframe may not, however, be sufficient to capture underlying trajectories and driving mechanisms of lake‐water quality, important for prediction of future trajectories. Here we synthesize data from seven lakes in the Swedish borea...

Recent warming in the Andes is affecting the region’s water resources including glaciers and lakes, which supply water to tens of millions of people downstream. High-elevation wetlands, known locally as “bofedales”, are an understudied Andean ecosystem despite their key role in carbon sequestration, maintenance of biodiversity, and regulation of wa...

Sediment cores from 12 locations throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes basin were analyzed for geochemical indicators of primary production. Sediment analytes included organic and inorganic contents, carbonates, sediment accumulation rates, total organic carbon and nitrogen concentrations, carbon and nitrogen isotope composition, and trends in spec...

We investigated a Holocene (since ∼10 500 cal yr BP) sediment core from a high-altitude, UV-sensitive tundra lake in northwestern Finnish Lapland to disentangle long-term dynamics in underwater UV exposure, lake-catchment coupling processes, and aquatic community development under changing climate. We analyzed biogeochemical and paleobiological pro...

Land-use and climate changes have been repeatedly identified as important factors affecting terrestrial carbon budgets, however little is known about how deforestation and catchment development affect aquatic systems in carbonate-rich regions. Multi-proxy analyses of 210Pb-dated sediment cores from two hard-water lakes with different land-use histo...

Thousands of lakes in a ~ 17,000 km2 area around Sudbury (Ontario) acidified (pH < 6) and became metal contaminated as a result of local smelting activities that have taken place since the 1880s. Middle Lake, an urban lake located in Sudbury, acidified to pH ~ 4.3, and was subsequently limed and fertilized in the 1970s and 1980s as part of experime...

Since the implementation of large-scale lake monitoring in the ~1980s, water color and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations have increased in many northern lakes (i.e., lake browning), impacting the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. In regions that formerly experienced high levels of acid deposition, this browning trend has been largely a...

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations and water colour are increasing in many inland waters across northern Europe and northeastern North America. This inland-water “browning” has profound physical, chemical and biological repercussions for aquatic ecosystems affecting water quality, biological community structures and aquatic productivity....

Nelligan C, Jeziorski A, Rühland KM, Paterson AM, Meyer-Jacob C, Smol JP. A multibasin comparison of historical water quality trends in Lake Manitou, Ontario, a provincially significant lake trout lake. Lake Reserv Manage. XX:XX–XX. Lake Manitou, on Manitoulin Island (Ontario, Canada), is a two-basin lake that supports a natural lake trout populati...

The history of mining and smelting and the associated pollution have been documented using lake sediments for decades, but the broader ecological implications are not well studied. We analyzed sediment profiles covering the past ~10,000 years from three lakes associated with an iron blast furnace in central Sweden, as an example of the many small-s...

We conducted a multidisciplinary study to provide the stratigraphic and palaeoclimatic context of monsoonal rainfall dynamics and their responses to orbital forcing for the Bay of Bengal. Using sediment lightness we established an age model at orbital resolution for International Ocean Discovery Programme (IODP) Core U1452C-1H that covers the last...

Changing lake-water total organic carbon (TOC) concentrations are of concern for lake management because of corresponding effects on aquatic ecosystem functioning, drinking water resources and carbon cycling between land and sea. Understanding the importance of human activities on TOC changes requires knowledge of past concentrations; however, wate...

Understanding the response of sensitive Arctic and subarctic landscapes to climate change is essential to determine the risks of ongoing and projected climate warming. However, these responses will not be uniform in terms of timing and magnitude across the landscape because of site-specific differences in ecosystem susceptibility to climate forcing...

Organic matter (OM) is a key component of lake sediments, affecting carbon, nutrient, and trace metal cycling at local and global scales. Yet little is known about long-term (millennial) changes in OM composition due to the inherent chemical complexity arising from multiple OM sources and from secondary transformations. In this study we explore how...

The composition of sediment organic matter (OM) exerts a strong control on biogeochemical processes in lakes, such as those involved in the fate of carbon, nutrients and trace metals. While between-lake spatial variability of OM quality is increasingly investigated, we explored in this study how the molecular composition of sediment OM varies spati...

The composition of organic matter (OM) exerts a strong control on biogeochemical processes in lakes, such as for carbon, nutrients and trace metals. While between-lake spatial variability of OM quality is increasingly investigated, we explored in this study how the molecular composition of sediment OM varies spatially within a single lake, and rela...

Increased erosion triggered by land-use changes is a major process that influences lake sedimentation. We explored the record of erosion intensity in annually laminated sediments of Lake Żabińskie, northeast Poland. A 1000-year-long, annually resolved suite of sedimentological (varve thickness, sediment accumulation rate) and geochemical data (scan...

Pollen, charcoal and geochemical investigations were carried out on annually laminated sediments of Lake Żabińskie (54°07′54.5″N; 21°59′01.1″E) and the results were combined with historical and climate data to better understand the mechanism behind plant cover transformations. A millennium-long record of environmental history at 6-years time resolu...

Due to the major role played by diatoms in the marine biological pump, opal/biogenic silica (bSi) has a strong potential as a proxy for paleoproduction reconstructions. Here, we present a detailed evaluation of the independent Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS) calibration introduced by Meyer-Jacob et al. (2014a), which is based on syn...

Variations in the sediment input to the Namaqualand mudbelt during the Holocene are assessed using an integrative terrestrial to marine, source to sink approach. Geochemical and Sr and Nd isotopic signatures are used to distinguish fluvial sediment source areas. Relative to the sediments of the Olifants River, craton outcrops in the northern Orange...

Variations in the sediment input to the Namaqualand mudbelt during the Holocene are assessed using an integrative terrestrial to marine, source to sink approach. Geochemical and Sr and Nd isotopic signatures are used to distinguish fluvial sediment source areas. Relative to the sediments of the Olifants River, craton outcrops in the northern Orange...

Significance Monitoring programs have recorded increases in organic carbon concentrations in northern lakes, which have important implications for water quality and ecosystem functioning. Current hypotheses interpret this trend in light of recent environmental changes such as acidification and climate but do not include an examination of long-term...

We present an independent calibration model for the determination of biogenic silica (BSi) in sediments, developed from analysis of synthetic sediment mixtures and application of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS) and partial least squares regression (PLSR) modeling. In contrast to current FTIRS applications for quantifying BSi, this n...

A number of studies have shown that Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS) can be applied to quantitatively assess lacustrine sediment constituents. In this study, we developed calibration models based on FTIRS for the quantitative determination of biogenic silica (BSi; n = 420; gradient: 0.9–56.5%), total organic carbon (TOC; n = 309; gra...

Here we present a detailed multi-proxy record of the climate and environmental evolution at Lake El'gygytgyn, Far East Russian Arctic during the period 430-395 ka covering the marine isotope stage (MIS) 12/11 transition and the thermal maximum of super interglacial MIS 11c. The MIS 12/11 transition at Lake El'gygytgyn is characterized by initial wa...

A number of studies have shown that Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) can be applied to quantitatively assess lacustrine sediment constituents. In this study, we developed calibration models based on FTIR for the quantitative determination of biogenic silica (BSi; n = 420; gradient: 0.9-56.5%), total organic carbon (TOC; n = 309; gradi...

A 318-metre-long sedimentary profile drilled by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) at Site 5011-1 in Lake El'gygytgyn, Far East Russian Arctic, has been analysed for its sedimentologic response to global climate modes by chronostratigraphic methods. The 12 km wide lake is sited off-centre in an 18 km large crater that...

Here we present a detailed multi-proxy record of the climate and environmental evolution at Lake El’gygytgyn, Far East Russian Arctic during the period 430–395 ka covering the marine isotope stage (MIS) 12/11 transition and the thermal maximum of super interglacial MIS 11c. The MIS 12/11 transition at Lake El’gygytgyn is characterized by initial wa...

Understanding the evolution of Arctic polar climate from the protracted warmth of the middle Pliocene into the earliest glacial cycles in the Northern Hemisphere has been hindered by the lack of continuous, highly resolved Arctic time series. Evidence from Lake El’gygytgyn, in northeast (NE) Arctic Russia, shows that 3.6 to 3.4 million years ago, s...

A number of studies have shown that Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS) can be applied to quantitatively assess lacustrine sediment constituents. In this study, we developed calibration models based on FTIRS for the quantitative determination of biogenic silica (BSi; n = 420; gradient: 0.9-56.5%), total organic carbon (TOC; n = 309; gra...

Here we present a detailed multiproxy record of the climate and environmental evolution at Lake El'gygytgyn/Far East Russian Arctic during the period 430–395 ka covering the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12/11 transition and the thermal maximum of super interglacial MIS 11. The MIS 12/11 transition at Lake El'gygytgyn is characterized by initial warmi...

In 2003 sediment core Lz1024 was drilled at Lake El'gygytgyn, far east Russian Arctic, in an area of the Northern Hemisphere which has not been glaciated for the last 3.6 Ma. Biogenic silica was used for analysing the oxygen isotope composition (δ18Odiatom) in the upper 13 m long section dating back about 250 ka with samples dominated by one taxa i...

In 2003 sediment core Lz1024 was drilled at Lake El'gygytgyn, far east Russian Arctic, in an area of the Northern Hemisphere which has not been glaciated for the last 3.6 Ma. Biogenic silica was used for analysing the oxygen isotope composition (δ¹⁸O_diatom) in the upper 13 m long section dating back about 250 ka with samples d...

High arctic Lake El`gygytgyn (67°30' N, 172°05' E) is a 3.6 Ma old meteorite crater lake located in Chukotka/NE Siberia, 100 km to the north of the Arctic Circle. With its continuous and undisturbed sequence since the Pliocene, the lake comprises the most long-lasting climate archive of the terrestrial Arctic. In spring 2009, the ICDP El`gygytgyn D...