Environmental, phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish community data from Swedish lakes for food web analysis
Data files
Sep 03, 2025 version files 194 KB
-
fish_air.xlsx
21.93 KB
-
FP_air.xlsx
27.38 KB
-
phyto_air.xlsx
26.98 KB
-
README.md
5.04 KB
-
trend_fish.xlsx
18.84 KB
-
trend_FP.xlsx
25.72 KB
-
trend_FZ.xlsx
16.93 KB
-
trend_phyto.xlsx
19.53 KB
-
trend_zoo.xlsx
14.46 KB
-
trend_ZP.xlsx
17.19 KB
Abstract
This dataset compiles environmental and biological measurements from lakes distributed along a latitudinal gradient across Sweden. Data on water chemistry, phytoplankton, and zooplankton were sourced from the Miljödata MVM database. Information on lake physical characteristics, Secchi depth, and fish was obtained from the Swedish National Register of Survey Test-Fishing (NORS). Modelled air temperature and irradiance data were acquired from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). Community data in phytoplankton and fish were used to run Detrended Correspondence Analyses (DCA) to test differences in community composition in each lake. Lake physical properties, Secchi depth, and irradiance were used to model the ratio of benthic to whole-lake gross primary production (BP ratio) for each lake, using the approach described in Norman et al. (2022; Table A2). This dataset enables analyses of aquatic food web biomass distributions in relation to spatial and temporal variations in temperature and nutrient concentrations across Swedish lakes.
This dataset supports the findings of the paper "Warmer Lakes Support Phytoplankton Over Fish" by Mooney et al. It includes ecological and environmental data collected from Swedish lakes for spatial and temporal analyses of lake food webs and primary production across a gradient of temperature.
The data are divided into spatial analysis data (average values per lake from all samples taken between 2004-2023) and trend lake analysis (mean values per lake per year from 10 intensively monitored Swedish lakes).
Data for Spatial Analysis:
- phyto_air.xlsx
- fish_air.xlsx
- FP_air.xlsx
Data for Trend Lake Analysis:
- trend_phyto.xlsx
- trend_zoo.xlsx
- trend_fish.xlsx
- trend_ZP.xlsx
- trend_FZ.xlsx
- trend_FP.xlsx
The data frames contain the following variables:
| Column name | Description |
|---|---|
| EU.ID | EU wide lake identifier |
| lake_name | Name of lake, in Swedish |
| year | Year of sampling |
| coordinate_x | Northing coordinate, in SWEREF 99 TM (EPSG:3006) |
| coordinate_y | Easting coordinate, in SWEREF 99 TM (EPSG:3006) |
| total_phos | Total phosphorus concentration (mg L^-1) |
| total_nitrogen | Total nitrogen concentration (mg L^-1) |
| air_temp | The average growth season (May to September) air temperature (°C) |
| BP_ratio | The modelled fraction of whole system primary production of benthic/ epilithic algae to pelagic phytoplankton |
| phyto_c_mass | The carbon mass of the entire phytoplankton community (mg L^-1) |
| zoo_c_mass | The carbon mass of the entire zooplankton community (mg L^-1) |
| CPUE_c_mean | The carbon mass of fish per unit effort (g m^-2) |
| CPUE_c_mean_lag1 | The carbon mass of fish per unit effort (g m^-2) from the previous year |
| DCA1_phyto | The first axis of a detrended correspondence analyis of phytoplankton family composition |
| DCA2_phyto | The second axis of a detrended correspondence analyis of phytoplankton family composition |
| DCA1_fish | The first axis of a detrended correspondence analyis of fish species composition |
| DCA2_fish | The second axis of a detrended correspondence analyis of fish species composition |
| edibility | Edibility factors of phytoplankton families |
| FP_ratio | Calculated as CPUE_c_mass / phytoplankton_c_mass (in the trend dataset, CPUE_c_mass_lag1 is used) |
| ZP_ratio | Calculated as zooplankton_c_mass / phytoplankton_c_mass |
| FZ_ratio | Calculated as CPUE_c_mean_lag1 / zooplankton_c_mass |
Data Processing and Conversion Factors:
Biomass/ biovolume to carbon mass conversions:
- Phytoplankton (Blomqvist et al., 1995). Cyanobacteria x 0.22, Chlorophytes x 0.16, Other x 0.11
- Zooplankton x 0.1 (Postel et al., 2000)
- Fish x 0.1 (Czamanski et al., 2011)
- BP_ratio Calculation (as per Norman et al., 2022), based on lake morphometry, light attenuation and light availability
- Light Extinction Coefficient (as per Seekell et al., 2015), on absorbance measurements
Data sources:
- Water Chemistry and Plankton: Miljödata MVM database (https://miljodata.slu.se/MVM/), accessed on 2024-04-01.
- Fish and Lake Morphometry: Swedish National Register of Survey Test Fishing (NORS, https://www.slu.se/sjoprovfiskedatabasen/), accessed on 2024-04-01.
- Air Temperature: SMHI’s PTHBV model (https://www.smhi.se/data/nederbord-och-fuktighet/nederbord/griddad-nederbord--och-temperaturdata), accessed on 2024-04-01.
- Light Availability: SMHI STRÅNG model (https://opendata.smhi.se/apidocs/strang/), accessed on 2024-04-01.
All data handling and statistical analyses were performed using R version 4.2.2 (R Core Team, 2022). Data visualization was conducted using the ggplot2 package (Wickham, 2016).