Rafael Marcé

Blanes Centre for Advanced Studies (CEAB-CSIC)

Most lakes and reservoirs have surface CO2 concentrations that are supersaturated relative to the atmosphere1. The resulting CO2 emissions from lakes represent a substantial contribution to the continental carbon balance2, 3, 4. Thus, the drivers of CO2 supersaturation in lakes need to be understood to constrain the sensitivity of the land carbon c...

Carbon dioxide efflux during the flooding phase of temporary ponds Small water bodies, such as temporary ponds, have a high carbon processing potential. Nevertheless, despite the global occurrence of these systems, the carbon effluxes from such water bodies have been largely overlooked. In this study, we examined the intra-and intersystem variabili...

Temporary watercourses that naturally cease to flow and run dry comprise a notable fraction of the world’s river networks, yet estimates of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from watercourses do not consider emissions from these systems when they are dry. Using data from a sampling campaign in a Mediterranean river during the summer drought per...

Nutrients are conveyed from terrestrial and upstream sources through drainage networks. Streams and rivers contribute to regulate the material exported downstream by means of transformation, storage, and removal of nutrients. It has been recently suggested that the efficiency of process rates relative to available nutrient concentration in streams...

Climate warming is causing more extreme weather conditions, with both larger and more intense precipitation events as well as extended periods of drought in many regions of the world. The consequence is an alteration of the hydrological regime of streams and rivers, with an increase in the probability of extreme hydrological conditions. Mediterrane...

The issue of water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change and demographic increase, has become a growing concern in many regions throughout the world. Understanding hydrological behaviour to promote resilient and sustainable water management is paramount. Hydrological models that integrate natural processes and anthropogenic alterations of the bas...

For most of the last century, traditional limnological research has heavily relied on fieldwork, with a relatively small fraction of lakes subjected to extensive, in-depth investigations. High temporal resolution and long-term in-situ observations, often combined with well-calibrated and validated models, have so far provided detailed knowledge of...

More than half of the world’s rivers experience occasional, seasonal, or permanent drying, and this may increase because of climate change. Drying, i.e. severe reduction in water flow even leading to streambed desiccation, can have a profound impact on the available aquatic habitat, biodiversity, and functions of rivers. Yet, to date, it is unclear...

The world's 1.4 million lakes (≥10 ha) provide many ecosystem services that are essential for human well‐being; however, only if their health status is good. Here, we reviewed common lake health issues and classified them using a simple human health‐based approach to outline that lakes are living systems that are in need of oxygen, clean water and...

1. Trait-based approaches have received increasing interest among freshwater scientists given their capacity to predict community structure and biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning. However, the inconsistent development and use of trait concepts and terms across freshwater scientific disciplines may have limited realisation of the potentia...

This paper describes the rationale and the protocol of the first component of the third simulation round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a, http://www.isimip.org, last access: 2 November 2023) and the associated set of climate-related and direct human forcing data (CRF and DHF, respectively). The observation-based...

The issue of water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change and demographic increase, has become a growing concern in many regions throughout the world. Understanding hydrological behaviour to promote resilient and sustainable water management is paramount. Hydrological models that integrate natural processes and anthropogenic alterations of the bas...

Climate change leads to more frequently occurring extreme weather events including heavy precipitations, storms and floods. Such events, also including droughts when followed by flooding, leads to increased transport of both nutrients and colored dissolved organic material (cDOM) into lakes, which in turn may impact greenhouse gas (GHG) exchange me...

Healthy freshwater ecosystems can provide vital ecosystem services (ESs), and this capacity may be hampered due to water quality deterioration and climate change. In the currently available ES modeling tools, ecosystem processes are either absent or oversimplified, hindering the evaluation of impacts of restoration measures on ES provisioning. I...

Global assessments evaluating greenhouse gas emissions and climate benefits of hydropower rely on life cycle assessments (LCAs). However, small hydropower plants (i.e., installations with less than 10 MW; SHPs), are largely underrepresented in such schemes, despite their widespread proliferation and well known ecological concerns. Here we quantifie...

Agricultural intensification is a process that is still undergoing in many emergent economies. In the Pampas (Central Argen-tina), the former low-external-input farming was replaced by a model based on genetically modified crops and the intensive use of pesticides (mainly glyphosate) in the last decades. Here, we analyzed changes in water chemistry...

Agricultural intensification is a process that is still undergoing in many emergent economies. In the Pampas (central Argentina), the former low-external input farming was replaced by a model based on genetically modified crops and the intensive use of pesticides (mainly glyphosate) in the last decades. Here, we analyzed changes in water chemistry...

Temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration are critical factors affecting the exchange of solutes between sediment and water; both factors will be affected by warming of lakes and thereby influence water quality. Temperature and oxygen responses of single solute fluxes are well known; however, not much is known about the interaction of temperat...

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...

Cuando uno se dispone a escribir el prefacio de un libro, sobre todo si se trata de un libro de ecología, es imposible no tener en cuenta la ilustre referencia del prefacio más famoso de nuestra disciplina: el que escribió Eduardo H. Rapoport para la primera edición de 1975 de su magnífico libro Areografía: estrategias geográficas de las especies,...

This paper describes the rationale and the protocol of the first component of the third simulation round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a, 70 www.isimip.org) and the associated set of climate-related and direct human forcing data (CRF and DHF, respectively). The observation-based climate-related forcings for the...

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...

By perturbing ecosystems, extreme climatic events (ECEs) can impair ecosystems’ resistance and resilience to other pressures, leading to cascading effects on the continued provision of their ecosystem services. In aquatic ecology, most of the studies linking impacts of perturbations on ecosystems are based on controlled experiments and modeling, ra...

Dam decommissioning (DD) is a viable management option for thousands of ageing dams. Reservoirs are large carbon sinks, and reservoir drawdown results in important carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions. We studied the effects of DD on CO2 and CH4 fluxes from impounded water, exposed sediment, and lotic water before, during, and 3–10 mont...

Global change is modifying meteorological and hydrological factors that influence the thermal regime of water bodies. These modifications can lead to longer stratification periods with enlarged hypolimnetic anoxic periods, which can promote heterotrophic anaerobic processes and alter reservoir carbon cycling. Here, we quantified aerobic and anaerob...

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...

Advance warning of seasonal conditions has the potential to assist water management in planning and risk mitigation, with large potential social, economic, and ecological benefits. In this study, we explore the value of seasonal forecasting for decision-making at five case study sites located in extratropical regions. The forecasting tools used int...

Extreme wind events affect lake phytoplankton by deepening the mixed layer and increasing internal nutrient loading. Both increases and decreases in phytoplankton concentration after strong wind events have been observed, but the precise mechanisms driving these responses remain poorly understood or quantified. We coupled a one‐dimensional physical...

Sediment beds from drawdown areas of reservoirs constitute a relevant hotspot for carbon dioxide (CO2) emission to the atmosphere. This CO2 source is especially relevant in the case of Mediterranean reservoirs, where hydrological variability favors the exposure of large sediment areas to air. In spite of this, the role of dry sediments as CO2 emitt...

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...

Increasing hydraulic residence time (HRT) along a chain of interconnected reservoirs enhances the formation potential of carbonaceous disinfection by-products (DBPs) and reduces the formation potential of nitrogenous DBPs, particularly N -nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA).

River networks are among Earth’s most threatened hot-spots of biodiversity and provide key ecosystem services (e.g., supply drinking water and food, climate regulation) essential to sustaining human well-being. Climate change and increased human water use are causing more rivers and streams to dry, with devastating impacts on biodiversity and ecosy...

Lake ecosystems are jeopardized by the impacts of climate change on ice seasonality and water temperatures. Yet historical simulations have not been used to formally attribute changes in lake ice and temperature to anthropogenic drivers. In addition, future projections of these properties are limited to individual lakes or global simulations from s...

Despite substantial advances in quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dry inland waters, existing estimates mainly consist of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, methane (CH4) may also be relevant due to its higher Global Warming Potential (GWP). We report CH4 emissions from dry inland water sediments to i) provide a cross-continenta...

Reservoirs show contrasting chemical and biological spatial gradients due to the strong effect of the inflowing rivers on the whole ecosystem. However, the fate of dissolved organic matter (DOM) input from rivers along the reservoir water body is still unclear. Here, we characterized the composition of DOM in the Ter River–Sau Reservoir system (Spa...

Advance warning of seasonal conditions has potential to assist water management in planning and risk mitigation, with large potential social, economic and ecological benefits. In this study, we explore the value of seasonal forecasting for decision making at five case study sites located in extratropical regions. The forecasting tools used integrat...

Extreme wind events affect lake phytoplankton amongst others by deepening the mixed layer and increasing internal nutrient loading. Both increases and decreases of phytoplankton biomass after storms have been observed, but the precise mechanisms driving these responses remain poorly understood or quantified. In this study, we coupled a one-dimensio...

Freshwater inputs strongly influence oceanographic conditions in coastal systems of northwestern Patagonia (41–45°S). Nevertheless, the influence of freshwater on these systems has weakened in recent decades due to a marked decrease in precipitation. Here we evaluate potential influences of climate and land cover trends on the Puelo River (640 m³s–...

Reservoir drawdown areas—where sediment is exposed to the atmosphere due to water-level fluctuations—are hotspots for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, the global extent of drawdown areas is unknown, precluding an accurate assessment of the carbon budget of reservoirs. Here we show, on the basis of satellite observations of 6,794 reservoirs...

Seasonal climate forecasts produce probabilistic predictions of meteorological variables for subsequent months. This provides a potential resource to predict the influence of seasonal climate anomalies on surface water balance in catchments and hydro-thermodynamics in related water bodies (e.g., lakes or reservoirs). Obtaining seasonal forecasts fo...

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...

Headspace analysis of CO2 frequently has been used to quantify the concentration of CO2 in fresh water. According to basic chemical theory, not considering chemical equilibration of the carbonate system in the sample vials will result in a systematic error. By analysing the potential error for different types of water and experimental conditions, w...

Pelagic calcification shapes the carbon budget of lakes and the sensitivity of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) responses to lake metabolism. This process, being tightly linked to primary production, needs to be understood within the context of summer eutrophication which is increasing due to human stressors and global change. Most lake carbon budg...

Several findings suggest that CO2 emissions in lakes are not always directly linked to changes in metabolism but can be associated with interactions with the dissolved inorganic carbon equilibrium. Alkalinity has been described as a determining factor in regulating the relative contributions of biological and inorganic processes to carbon dynamics...

Human consumption of pharmaceuticals leads to high concentrations of pharmaceuticals in wastewater, which is usually not or insufficiently collected and treated before release into freshwater ecosystems. There, pharmaceuticals may pose a threat to aquatic biota. Unfortunately, occurrence data of pharmaceuticals in freshwaters at the global scale is...

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) composition exerts a direct control on its degradation and subsequent persistence in aquatic ecosystems. Yet, under certain conditions, the degradation patterns of DOM cannot be solely explained by its composition, highlighting the relevance of environmental conditions for DOM degradation. Here, we experimentally asse...

Headspace analysis of CO2 frequently has been used to quantify the concentration of CO2 in freshwater. According to basic chemical theory, not considering chemical equilibration of the carbonate system in the sample vials will result in a systematic error. In this paper we provide a method to quantify the potential error resulting from simple appli...

The origin and reactivity of dissolved organic matter (DOM) have received attention for decades due to the key role DOM plays in global carbon cycling and the ecology of aquatic systems. However, DOM dynamics in river networks remain unresolved, hampered by the lack of data integrating the spatial and temporal dimensions inherent to riverine ecosys...

Heat uptake is a key variable for understanding the Earth system response to greenhouse gas forcing. Despite the importance of this heat budget, heat uptake by inland waters has so far not been quantified. Here we use a unique combination of global‐scale lake models, global hydrological models and Earth system models to quantify global heat uptake...

Many inland waters exhibit complete or partial desiccation, or have vanished due to global change, exposing sediments to the atmosphere. Yet, data on carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions from these sediments are too scarce to upscale emissions for global estimates or to understand their fundamental drivers. Here, we present the results of a global surve...