| Abstract: | Lake Zigetang is located on the central Tibetan Plateau(TP) and represents a rare but typical meromictic lake in China.The lake's stable meromixis sustains microflora communities, and changes in these communities are relatively independent of climate. Therefore, these communities can be used as paleoclimate proxies. In this paper, the stratification properties and their relationships with the microflora of Lake Zigetang were analyzed. We found that water depth and climate conditions were two important factors for maintaining meromixis in Lake Zigetang. Generally, stratification was enhanced during warm periods, while temperature differences between the mixolimnion and monimolimnion were decreased during cold periods. The presence of anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria(APB) was demonstrated by the discovery of bacteriopheophytin-a(Bph-a) in the sediments.This bacterial community is mainly concentrated at the bottom of the chemocline and the top of the monimolimnion, where it forms a thin APB layer. Moreover, total APB productivity is mainly affected by the light intensity penetrating to the APB layer,which exponentially increases as the thermocline becomes shallow. Therefore, high Bph-a values in the lake corresponded to a shallow thermocline and warm periods, low Bph-a values corresponded to cold periods, and zero changes indicated that the water was completely mixed and reflected an extreme cold climate or low lake level period. Thus, Bph-a can be used as a climate proxy to reconstruct the history of lake stratification and climate changes. |
