WG2 - Aquatic proxies

The Aquatic proxies working group aims at synthesizing palaeoecological proxy data with a strong focus on freshwater ecosystems and their biota. Freshwater habitats have undergone the largest declines in both biodiversity and habitat extent (by 85% since 1970). As aquatic biota may respond to both local (i.e., lake internal nutrient cycling) and regional climate and landscape changes, this group will mobilize datasets from a range of different organism groups (e.g., chironomids, diatoms, cladocera, ostracods, aquatic vertebrates) that are sensitive to different environmental variables (nutrients, temperature, lake-level variations, ionic content). Aquatic paleoecological proxy datasets are generally less available and/or scattered across openly available databases.

• Leader: Dr Stefan Engels
• Co-leader: Dr Xavier Benito

Objectives and key activities

1. to establish harmonized taxonomies and agreed-upon systematic nomenclature enabling data uploading.
2. to mobilise the community and to collectively and collaboratively make aquatic proxy-datasets available upholding OPEN and FAIR data-principles.
3. co-create scientific questions with the terrestrial proxies working group (WG1) exploring ecosystem-wide temporal dynamics, including but not limited to, aquatic-terrestrial interactions, time lagged effects following climate change, and trajectories of changes of different groups of proxies.

The focus of the activities is mainly shared with the Terrestrial Proxies working group.