Early Seasonal Increases and Persistence in Relative Abundance of Potentially Toxic Cyanobacteria
Potential protraction and later closure of the vernal window (i.e., spring growing season) because of warming climate may result in significant shifts in hydrological dynamics and nutrient loading associated with spring snowmelt. Here, the proliferation of cyanobacteria in lakes across all seasons and in absence of visual biomass indicators of bloom condition was observed in three oligotrophic lakes of the Turkey Lakes Watershed (TLW) in Ontario, on Canada's Boreal Shield. Cyanobacterial communities were characterized across a depth profile during the summer and a year-long seasonal period in three interconnected temperate, oligotrophic lakes using amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene.