Global Observatory of Lake Responses to Environmental Change (GloboLakes): Overview and Update
Tyler, Andrew¹; Hunter, Peter¹; Spyrakos, Evangelos¹; Maberly, Stephen²; Carvalho, Laurence²; Alex, Elliot²; Groom, Steve³; Dall'Olmo, Gavin³; Tilstone, Giorgio³; Marinez Vincente, Victor¹; Cutler, Mark⁴; Rowan, John⁴; Politi, Eirini⁴; Dawson, Terry⁴; Merchant, Christopher⁵; MacCallum, Stuart⁶; Miller, Claire⁷; Scott, Marian^7
1University of Stirling, UNITED KINGDOM; ²NERC, UNITED KINGDOM; ³Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UNITED KINGDOM; ⁴University of Dundee, UNITED KINGDOM; ⁵University of Reading, UNITED KINGDOM; ⁶University of Edinburgh, UNITED KINGDOM; ⁷University of Glasgow, UNITED KINGDOM

There are around 304 million lakes globally, which provide essential ecosystem services and goods and are an important component of global biogeochemical cycles. However, lakes are also fragile systems that are sensitive to multiple pressures including nutrient enrichment, climate change and hydrological modification, making them important 'sentinels' of environmental perturbation. However, traditional monitoring techniques coupled with the sheer number of lakes, militating against systematic monitoring, has resulted in a limited understanding of a tiny fraction of the global population of lakes. Disentangling the causes of change requires consistently-produced data from a large number of lakes, along with measurements of possible causes of change.

GloboLakes is a five-year NERC funded research programme investigating the state of lakes and their response to climatic and other environmental drivers of change through the realization of a near-real time satellite based observatory (Sentinel 3) with archive data processing (MERIS, SeaWiFS) to produce a ~20-year time series of observed ecological parameters and lake temperature for over 1000 lakes globally. This will be supported by linked auxiliary data on catchment land-use and meteorological forcing. These data will facilitate a paradigm shift in our ability to detect and attribute the causes of changes in lakes world-wide. The Earth Observation component of Globolakes will focus on the retrieval of: (i) surface water temperature, as this has a fundamental effect on lake ecology; (ii) the concentration of coloured dissolved organic matter; (iii) suspended solids that derive largely from the catchment; (iv) the abundance of phytoplankton (chlorophyll a); and (v) the abundance of cyanobacteria (C-Phycocyanin) that can potentially be toxic.

To achieve these ambitious aims, and in addition to characterising the bio-optical properties of a range of UK and European lakes, GloboLakes has developed a network of partners around the world, all contributing to the LIMNADES (Lake Bio-optical Measurements and Matchup Data for Remote Sensing) database and is collaborating with other projects such as the ESA funded DIVERSITY II project. This talk will present the GloboLakes project, its science programme and outline how others may engage with the project.