Biomanipulation – Plants

Slide 1: Purpose of plants in biomanipulation

- Serve a key purpose in biomanipulation, but is often indirectly manipulated due to cost
- Crowding out undesirable plants and reducing eutrophication
- Stabilizing microclimate, substrates and physiochemistry
o Temperature modulation, providing shade, oxygenation, reducing erosion
- Altering food webs – providing food for desirable herbivore fish and phytoplankton
- Habitats for zooplankton, daphnia, benthic invertebrates, spawning fish and amphibians
o Protections from piscivore fish and birds

Slide 2: How to use plants in biomanipulation

- Indirectly – adding or removing stocked, non-reproducing fish such as grass carp or reproducing
native species
- Indirectly – manipulating nutrient loading
- Introducing exotic plants
- Promoting the regeneration of native plants from seeds present in the lakebed sediment
- Removal of unwanted plants through introducing herbivory or directly removing them
- Usage can be in stages

Slide 3: Shallow/deep lake eutrophication diagram

- Deep lakes are those with thermoclines and few or no submergent or emergent plants
- Seston refers to fine suspended particulate matter in the water, which includes both organic
materials such as dead detritus, zooplankton and phytoplankton, as well as inorganics such as
clay or silt
- The Redfield ratio refers to a carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus ratio of 106 to 16 to 1 and
describes the typical and optimal stochiometric ratio of elements in ocean phytoplankton and
seawater. We use it to determine what nutrients are limiting in an aquatic ecosystem, although
some of the literature in recent years have challenged this. In lacustrine environments, carbon is
usually not limiting, so we only consider nitrogen and phosphorus. As nitrogen limitation favors
cyanobacteria, departures from this ratio is generally considered to be harmful to ecosystems
and alter food webs towards monocultures of cyanos species
- Take away: to use plants in biomanipulation, we have to simultaneously consider abiotic factors
such as nutrient loading as well as the existing food webs, what plant species are suitable, their
ideal distribution and our ideal final state of the system

Slide 4/5: Photography of Gonghu Bay

- Compare restored area and non-restored area macrophyte coverage (find species names)

Slide 6: Case study: Lake Parkinson – Intro

- Lake Parkinson is a small dune lake on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand,
around 70 km south of Auckland
- It covers a surface area of 1.9 hectares and has a maximum depth of 9 m
- It has no inlets or outlet streams, and is mainly supplied by underwater spring seepage
 - The catchment of the lake is currently pasture, used for cattle farming

Slide 7: Case study: Lake Parkinson – History/Issues

- The more densely populated North Island of New Zealand has scarce water resources, with few
large lakes or rivers and heavily rely on small coastal dune lakes
- By 1975, the water quality of the lake had deteriorated to point where the local ecosystem,
human recreation and drinking water was affected
- This was likely caused by nutrient loading from cattle farming, the introduction of an exotic
macrophyte, Egeria densa in the 1960s, and the introduction of an exotic fish, the common
rudd, a cyprinid species that is also invasive in Ontario, in 1971
- The hypolimnion became deoxygenated and let off corrosive hydrogen sulfide, a situation
similar to my field site in Dog Lake

Slide 8: Case study: Lake Parkinson – Biomanipulation

- The Egeria densa (waterweed) was initially removed by adding grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon
idella, a common fish species used in the earlier steps of biomanipulation. Grass carp was
actually used in the restored wetland that I showed aerial photos of earlier. Carp were chosen
because they require little ongoing management and are cost efficient, although slow. Fish were
stocked incrementally between May 1976 and November 1976 until they reached a density of
44 fish per hectare. The fish initially ate the shallow plants and removed all of the waterweed by
January 1979.
- After the vegetation was stripped away, the next step was to remove both the grass carp and
the common rudd. As the waterbody was small and used for fishing, adding piscivorous fish like
pike to eliminate them was not an option. Thus, the combination of a piscicide, rotenone, and
dip netting was used to remove the fish. This is only possible due to the small size and lack of
inlets and outlets and could only be done once the plants were removed. They applied the
retenone during early spring because this was when the lake was isothermal and fish wouldn’t
have spawned eggs yet
- No additional effort was needed to restore the native plant species of the lake. Sediment coring
revealed high seed densities, and native species that were suppressed by the waterweed
regenerated naturally
- As a final step, the lake was restocked with trout and common bullies, a forager that trout feed
upon
- This case study demonstrated that aquatic plant removal through direct biomanipulation is
effective and doesn’t result in algal domination. Native vegetation will recover naturally once
invasive species are removed.
- Heavy weed coverage can shelter invasive fish, leading to a synergistic effect
- Native plants usually uptake nutrients more completely, improving water quality and diversity

Slide 10: Case study: Lake Zwemlust – Intro

- Lake Zwemlust is a small lake used as a swimming pool in the province of Utrecht in The
Netherlands
- Covers a surface area of 1.5 hectares, has a mean depth of 1.5 m and a maximum depth of 2 m
- No inlets or outlets, groundwater lake fed by seepage
 - Mainly used for recreation, experiencing 100-300 visitors daily in the summer
- Experienced algal blooms in the summer, with a secchi depth of under 0.3 m

Slide 11: Case study: Lake Zwemlust – History/Issues

- In hypereutrophic lakes, submergent macrophyte coverage decreases due to competition from

epiphytes, filamentous algal and algal blooms
- Biomanipulation success and ecosystem function restoration should be closely linked with the
restoration of native submerged plants
- Lake Zwemlust was the subject of an indirect biomanipulation study in 1987
- The lake was drained to remove planktivorous and benthivorous fish
- The aim of this was to increase the population of zooplankton, and bring down the population of
phytoplankton
- After refilling the lake, it was stocked with pike and rudd
- Macrophytes and willow twig stacks were introduced to provide refuge

Slide 12: Case study: Lake Zwemlust – Consequences

- The initial results were good, with secchi depth improving to over 2.5m and low chlorophyll a
concentration, despite high nutrient levels
- However, by 1988, macrophytes and filamentous green algae had dominated the lake to the
point where they inhibited swimming
- Snails overran the lake
- Eventual cycles of good water clarity and high phosphorus in spring and high macrophyte
coverage in summer
- Emphasizes need to balance the use of macrophytes and control of the phytoplankton
community
- Macrophytes can disrupt native phytoplankton to zooplankton to fish food webs through
outcompeting phytopPllankton or by making zooplankton inaccessible to fish

Slide 13: Case study: Lake Zwemlust – Use of plants in this case study

- Factors to consider when using plants:

o Allelopathy against phytoplankton
o Competition with phytoplankton
o Early active growth at low temperatures during phytoplankton dormancy
o Nutrient sequestration through overwintering disrupting turnover
- Function of plants
o Yellow lily roots and charophytes provide refuge for young fish
o Epiphytic plants can achieve very high growth rates and may require careful and
continuous human management for use in biomanipulation

Slide 14: Interesting plant examples

- Broad-leaved arrowhead - Sagittaria latifolia

o Perennial
o White flowers
o 0.2-0.8 m, shallow standing water
- Yellow water lily – Nuphar lutea
o Perennial herb
o Lakes, ponds, shallow and slow-moving rivers
- European frog-bit – Hydrocharis morsus-ranae
o Invasive
o Free floating epiphytes or put down roots up to 50 cm long
o Produces single white flowers
o Leaves 2.5-5 cm wide
- Lesser duckweed – lemna minor
o Epiphyte with 1-4 leaves and a single root
o Leaves are 1-8 mm long and roots are 1-2 cm
o Rapid growth
- Eurasian milfoil – Myrioophyllum spicatum
o Perennial invasive
o Stems up to 250 cm long
o Introduced to north America in 1940s
o Grows in stagnant water