Life in Lakes and Rivers. T. Macan T.

      Fig. 11 Penetration of light into three Lake District lakes

      Work on cores, started just before the war, had as its original aim the elucidation of the history of the lakes, but, like many another new line in research, an essentially opportunist activity, it proved most fruitful in a line other than the one aimed at and it revealed more about the land than about the water. However, as a lake is strongly influenced by events in the drainage area, the findings are relevant. Most animals disappear completely, but the shells of some waterfleas (Cladocera) and the heads of some chironomids do not decompose and persist in the cores. Similarly many algae leave no trace, but the siliceous skeletons of diatoms (e.g. Asterionella) that have lain in the mud for thousands of years are still identifiable. In contrast the pollen of nearly every plant that produces any does not decompose and, since that of almost all species is distinct, an examination of cores gives a picture of what the land flora was like when the particular layer of mud under examination was deposited. Research on pollen in cores from bogs and other places where soil has been accumulating since the Ice Age was in vogue all over Europe at the time, which was fortunate, because events in the lake cores could be related to events elsewhere, and some of these had been dated by one means or another. Chemical analysis of cores also yielded a large amount of information about the past.

      The lower part of a core from Windermere consists of clay which, on examination, proves to be made up of alternating layers of very fine and coarser particles; it is accordingly referred to as laminated clay by Dr Winifred Pennington, who has described the cores. Above the laminated clay, which is pink, lies a grey layer and above that more pink clay, which may or may not be laminated. On top of this is a thick column of brown mud which extends nearly to the surface; it is capped by a fourth kind of soil, a black deposit which Pennington refers to as ooze.

      The laminated clay contains very little organic matter and few remains of plants, and was almost certainly formed towards the end of a glacial period, for similar deposits are being laid down today in certain glacier-fed lakes. During the summer both coarse and very fine particles are washed into the lake. The coarse particles sink almost immediately but the fine particles remain in suspension for a long time. When winter comes the inflowing streams freeze, and so no particulate matter is brought into the lake, but fine particles left over from the summer are still settling. The result is a summer layer of coarse and fine particles and a winter layer of fine particles only.

      The low organic content of this deposit and the scarcity of plant remains indicate that there was little life in the lake when the laminated clay was being laid down. In contrast the grey mud contains the remains of animals and plants, and the lake was evidently more densely populated during the period when it was being laid down. These organisms were associated with an improvement in the climate, which is known as the Allerød period, because it was first discovered near the place of that name. It was followed by a return of glacial conditions when the pink clay with few remains of organisms was laid down again. Professor H. Godwin has had dated by means of the C¹⁴ method, a technique which will no doubt be more widely used when facilities for it are more widely and more easily available, a sample from the Allerød layer and found it to be some 12,000 years old. The ooze at the top in which Asterion-ella suddenly becomes common obviously represents enrichment of some kind. Today the effluents from the sewage works are probably the main sources of enrichment, but this is recent. The population, particularly the holiday-making one, has been increasing since the railway came to Windermere in 1847, but the transition from earth closets to running water sanitation has been slower, and it is doubtful if the lake was being seriously enriched from this source a century ago. If mud is being deposited on the bottom of Windermere at a rate that has been constant over the last few hundred years, whatever caused Asterionella to appear happened about two centuries ago. It therefore probably antedates the tourist completely, and is to be sought in improved agricultural practice of which there is some evidence early in the eighteenth century.

      Mackereth’s conclusions from chemical analyses upset certain ideas of long standing. The lakes were richest chemically in their earliest days, when the land was covered with rock fragmented by the ice and exposing a great area of surface from which the rain could leach nutrient salts. Esthwaite was eutrophic at an early stage and presumably, therefore, the lakes were richest biologically when they were richest chemically. Some of the algal species identified in the cores support this view. The rocks are hard and when a fresh surface has been leached for a time water dissolves little from it. The lakes slowly became less productive. A climatic change and the arrival of man, who started to fell trees, resulted in more erosion and enriched the lakes, but as more stable conditions were established production fell again. A thousand years ago the Norsemen arrived, and since then man has been the most important agent affecting the lakes. The increased production in some lakes on account of their situation has already been described.