
Eleanor JenningsDundalk Institute of Technology | DIT · Department of Applied Sciences
Eleanor Jennings
PhD; B.A. Mod Nat.Sc.
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142
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (142)
Lakes represent a vital source of freshwater, accounting for 87% of the Earth’s accessible surface freshwater resources and providing a range of ecosystem services, including water for human consumption. As climate change continues to unfold, understanding the potential evaporative water losses from lakes becomes crucial for effective water managem...
Headwater streams can constitute up to 80% of river channel length and are vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures due to their high connectivity to adjacent land, large relative catchment size and low dilution capacity. In these environments, unrestricted cattle access is a potentially significant cause of water quality deterioration, resulting from...
Turbulent and radiative energy exchanges between lakes and the atmosphere play an important role in determining the process of lake‐mixing and stratification, including how lakes respond to climate and to climate change. Here we used a one‐dimensional hydrodynamic lake model to assess seasonal impacts of climate change on individual surface heat fl...
Despite high potential benefits, the development of seasonal forecasting tools in the water sector has been slower than in other sectors. Here we assess the skill of seasonal forecasting tools for lakes and reservoirs set up at four sites in Australia and Europe. These tools consist of coupled hydrological catchment and lake models forced with seas...
Lakes play a key role in the global carbon cycle, transporting, processing and storing organic carbon (OC) along the land‐ocean aquatic continuum. There are, however, surprisingly few complete lake OC budgets, particularly for certain lake types and geographical areas. An OC budget for Lough Feeagh (Ireland), an oligotrophic, peatland lake in a tem...
Unrestricted cattle access can have negative impacts on aquatic systems, including increases in stream water turbidity and suspended sediment levels. Many agri-environmental policies require the exclusion of livestock from waterbodies; however, data that quantify these impacts are scarce. This study used sensors measuring turbidity, a proxy for sus...
Recent developments in impact modelling of global warming on lakes have resulted in a greater understanding of how these vital ecosystems are likely to respond. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of this in an Irish context, despite the importance of lakes in the island's landscape. Here, we explore the impact of global warming on...
Small streams dominate the hydrological network within Europe. In many regions, these waterbodies drain large areas of agricultural land and are vulnerable to pressures linked to livestock management, which can include direct livestock access. This study investigated the impacts of cattle access to watercourses on the contamination of streambed sed...
Turbulent and radiative energy exchanges between lakes and the atmosphere play an important role in determining the process of lake-mixing and stratification, including how lakes respond to climate and to climate change. Here we use a one-dimensional hydrodynamic lake model to assess seasonal impacts of climate change on individual surface heat flu...
Lake evaporation plays an important role in the water budget of lakes. Predicting lake evaporation responses to climate change is thus of paramount importance for the planning of mitigation and adaption strategies. However, most studies that have simulated climate change impacts on lake evaporation have typically utilised a single mechanistic model...
The recent development of the Copernicus programme in Europe has ushered in a new generation of operational earth observing satellites. Field-based investigations and monitoring programmes are costly, time consuming and can be logistically challenging in remote or inaccessible locations. The advantages of in situ data monitoring are that they have...
Despite high potential benefits, the development of seasonal forecasting tools in the water sector has been slower than in other sectors. Here we assess the skill of seasonal forecasting tools for lake and reservoir set up at four sites in Australia and Europe. These tools, as previously presented, consist of coupled hydrological catchment and lake...
Empirical evidence demonstrates that lakes and reservoirs are warming across the globe. Consequently, there is an increased need to project future changes in lake thermal structure and resulting changes in lake biogeochemistry in order to plan for the likely impacts. Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on lakes have often relied on a...
Lakes are significant emitters of methane to the atmosphere, and thus are important components of the global methane budget. Methane is typically produced in lake sediments, with the rate of methane production being strongly temperature dependent. Local and regional studies highlight the risk of increasing methane production under future climate ch...
Empirical evidence demonstrates that lakes and reservoirs are warming across the globe. Consequently, there is an increased need to project future changes in lake thermal structure and resulting changes in lake biogeochemistry in order to plan for the likely impacts. Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on lakes have often relied on a...
Until recent decades, most monitoring of surface waters relied exclusively on samples analysed in the laboratory for ecologically and management-relevant parameters. It is now possible, however, to automatically monitor many parameters using in-situ sensors and to provide remote web-based access to these data. Such data are typically provided at fr...
Extreme precipitation is occurring with greater frequency and intensity as a result of climate change. Such events boost the transport of allochthonous organic matter (allo-OM) to freshwater ecosystems, yet little is known about the impacts on dissolved organic matter (DOM) quality and seston elemental stoichiometry, especially for lakes in warm cl...
Freshwater lakes are dynamic ecosystems and provide multiple ecosystem services to humans. Sudden changes in lake environmental conditions such as cyanobacterial blooms can negatively impact lake usage. Automated high-frequency monitoring (AHFM) systems allow the detection of short-lived extreme and unpredictable events and enable lake managers to...
One of the most important physical characteristics driving lifecycle events in lakes is stratification. Already subtle variations in the timing of stratification onset and break-up (phenology) are known to have major ecological effects, mainly by determining the availability of light, nutrients, carbon and oxygen to organisms. Despite its ecologica...
Humic lakes play a key role in the processing of organic carbon (OC) mobilised from their catchments, but knowledge of OC dynamics in lakes within maritime temperate climates is limited. Climate exerts a significant influence on mechanisms of OC capture, storage, and processing on the wet and cloudy west coast of Ireland. We examined a high-frequen...
The Earth is facing a major change in climate due to ongoing global warming, and as a result of this warming, the occurrence of more extreme weather is also expected to in-crease. Accordingly, the impacts of extreme climatic events on lakes have been receiving more and more attention in recent years. Furthermore, advances in real-time high-resoluti...
Lake ecosystems, and the organisms that live within them, are vulnerable to temperature change1–5, including the increased occurrence of thermal extremes⁶. However, very little is known about lake heatwaves—periods of extreme warm lake surface water temperature—and how they may change under global warming. Here we use satellite observations and a n...
Lake ecosystems are sensitive to local weather conditions, and especially to extremes such as storms and heatwaves. Here we provide an overview of the shorter and longer term effects on lake physics, chemistry and biology. Use of high frequency data from in situ sensors to monitor lakes has provided new insights into these impacts. Many knowledge g...
The epilimnion is the surface layer of a lake typically characterised as well mixed and is decoupled from the metalimnion due to a steep change in density. The concept of the epilimnion (and, more widely, the three-layered structure of a stratified lake) is fundamental in limnology, and calculating the depth of the epilimnion is essential to unders...
As the global climate warms, the fate of lacustrine fish is of huge concern, especially given their sensitivity as ectotherms to changes in water temperature. The Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus L.) is a salmonid with a Holarctic distribution, with peripheral populations persisting at temperate latitudes, where it is found only in sufficiently col...
The concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in freshwater catchments has implications for carbon availability in downstream lakes and for water supplies. The links between catchment hydrology and stream and lake DOC concentrations are, however, still not fully understood. Much of the literature has been from catchments with organo-mineral s...
Extreme weather events are projected to increase in frequency and intensity as climate change continues. Heterotrophic bacteria play a critical role in lake ecosystems, yet little research has been done to determine how they are affected by such extremes. The purpose of this study was to use high-throughput sequencing to explore the bacterial commu...
The impacts of changes in climate are often most readily observed through the effects of extremes in local weather, effects that often propagate through multiple ecosystem levels. Precise effects of any extreme weather event depend not only on the type of event and its timing, but also on the ecosystem affected. Here the cascade of effects followin...
The “epilimnion” is the surface layer of a lake typically characterised as well-mixed and is decoupled from the “metalimnion” due to a rapid change in density. The concept of the epilimnion, and more widely, the three-layered structure of a stratified lake, is fundamental in limnology and calculating the depth of the epilimnion is essential to unde...
Between May and July 2018, Ireland experienced an exceptional heat wave, which broke long-term temperature and drought records. These calm, stable conditions were abruptly interrupted by a second extreme weather event, Atlantic Storm Hector, in late June. Using high-frequency monitoring data, coupled with fortnightly biological sampling, we show th...
Through Remote Sensing of Irish Surface Water (INFER) project, we are validating the algorithms to measure the water quality using Sentinel 2 imagery, which comprises of two European Space Agency (ESA) terrestrial satellites with combined temporal resolution of 5 days. The project is focused on selection of optimal algorithms that will be applicabl...
In 2018, Europe experienced the warmest May–October (Northern Hemisphere warm season) since air temperature records began. In this study, we ran model simulations for 46 557 lakes across Europe to investigate the influence of this heatwave on surface water temperature. We validated the model with satellite-derived lake surface temperatures for 115...
While winter storms are generally common in western Europe, the rarer summer storms may result in more pronounced impacts on lake physics. Using long-term, high frequency datasets of weather and lake thermal structure from the west of Ireland (2005 to 2017), we quantified the effects of storms on the physical conditions in a monomictic, deep lake c...
Peatlands are being degraded by the combined impacts of land use and climate change. Carbon stored in peat is a key constituent of aquatic food webs in rivers and lakes of humic catchments, and changes in the downstream transport of this allochthonous carbon may have considerable implications for the production of Atlantic salmon and brown trout. U...
The hyporheic zone is an important ecotone occupying the interface between surface and ground water bodies, providing a range of important ecosystem services such as biochemical cycling, temperature regulation and downstream flood attenuation. Despite its importance in freshwater ecosystems in terms of services provided, the hyporheic zone has ofte...
We report the first application of CRISPR‐Cas technology to single species detection from environmental DNA (eDNA). Organisms shed and excrete DNA into their environment such as in skin cells and faeces, referred to as environmental DNA (eDNA). Utilising eDNA allows non‐invasive monitoring with increased specificity and sensitivity. Current methods...
With the recent development in technology and wide coverage of the earth through numerous satellites, the monitoring of the natural resources has been easier than ever before. Remote sensing offers numerous benefits that range from regional scale monitoring to accessibility to historical archival data at any point in time. The frequent field-based...
Use of earth observation data for inland water quality monitoring.
Fresh water is a limited resource under anthropogenic threat. Europeans are using an average of 3550 L per capita per day and this amount is increasing steadily as incomes rise. Water saving options are being actively promoted, but these intensified measures do not yet come close to saving enough water to prevent water shortages that may seriously...
Poster Presentation
Streams draining upland catchments carry large quantities of carbon from terrestrial stocks to downstream freshwater and marine ecosystems. Here it either enters long-term storage in sediments or enters the atmosphere as gaseous carbon through a combination of biotic and abiotic processes. There are, however, increasing concerns over the long-term...
The degradation of freshwater resources and loss of freshwater biodiversity by anthropogenic activities, including agriculture, are of major global concern. Together with diffuse pollutants, point sources, such as where cattle have direct access to riparian margins and watercourses, can potentially present significant environmental challenges. Thes...
River ecosystems receive and process vast quantities of terrestrial organic carbon, the fate of which depends strongly on microbial activity. Variation in and controls of processing rates, however, are poorly characterized at the global scale. In response, we used a peer-sourced research network and a highly standardized carbon processing assay to...
River ecosystems receive and process vast quantities of terrestrial organic carbon, the fate of which depends strongly on microbial activity. Variation in and controls of processing rates, however, are poorly characterized at the global scale. In response, we used a peer-sourced research network and a highly standardized carbon processing
assay to...
River ecosystems receive and process vast quantities of terrestrial organic carbon, the fate of which depends strongly on microbial activity. Variation in and controls of processing rates, however, are poorly characterized at the global scale. In response, we used a peer-sourced research network and a highly standardized carbon processing assay to...
River ecosystems receive and process vast quantities of terrestrial organic carbon, the fate of which depends strongly on microbial activity. Variation in and controls of processing rates, however, are poorly characterized at the global scale. In response, we used a peer-sourced research network and a highly standardized carbon processing assay to...
Cattle access to streams has been linked globally with degradation of stream water quality, driven largely by bank erosion and resultant instream, fine sediment deposition. The majority of evidence on such effects is however based in arid and semiarid regions of the United States and Australia, with few studies relating to cool temperate climates s...
With the recent development in technology and wide coverage of the earth through numerous satellites, monitoring of natural resources is now easier than ever before. The primary benefits of using satellites for environmental monitoring are the availability of detailed spatial information, the regional scale monitoring capability and the accessibili...
The frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events (ECEs) is expected to increase with climate change (IPCC, 2014). We are interested in how this affects lake ecosystems. For instance, storms induce mixing events and indirectly influence ecological relevant processes, such as deep-water oxygen concentration and nutrient upwelling.
Numerical l...
Litter decomposition is a vital part of the global carbon cycle as it determines not only the amount of carbon to be sequestered, but also how fast carbon re-enters the cycle. Freshwater systems play an active role in the carbon cycle as it receives, and decomposes, terrestrial litter material alongside decomposing aquatic plant litter. Decompositi...
Coastal lagoons are a dynamic habitat, with varying marine and freshwater inputs determining the presence and extent of stratification, and the physical and chemical environment of the epi- and hypolimnion. As a result, the biotic assemblages that thrive in such environments are a diverse mix of species, with wide ranges of tolerances. While annual...
Phytoplankton biomass and production regulates key aspects of freshwater ecosystems yet its variability and subsequent predictability is poorly understood. We estimated within‐lake variation in biomass using high‐frequency chlorophyll fluorescence data from 18 globally distributed lakes. We tested how variation in fluorescence at monthly, daily, an...
Streams draining upland catchments mobilise significant loads of carbon from terrestrial reservoirs to downstream freshwater and marine aquatic ecosystems and ultimately, via a range of biotic and abiotic processes, to the atmosphere. There are increasing concerns over the long-term stability of terrestrial carbon stores in blanket peatland catchme...
Sharing data is a keystone of collaborative science. A fundamental barrier, however, can be a lack of knowledge on what is being collected, where, and by whom. The aim of NETLAKE (COST Action ES1201) was to build a network of sites and individuals to support development and deployment of automatic sensor-based systems on lakes and reservoirs in Eur...
Invasive Alien Species (IAS) are a growing threat to Europe's biodiversity. The implementation of European Union Regulation on IAS can benefit from the involvement of the public in IAS recording and management through Citizen Science (CS) initiatives. Aiming to tackle issues related with the use of CS projects on IAS topics, a dedicated workshop ti...