This study provides insights into factors that influence the water balance of selected European lakes, mainly in Central Europe, and their implications for water quality. An analysis of isotopic, chemical and land use data using statistical and artificial intelligence models showed that climate, particularly air temperature and precipitation, played a key role in intensifying evaporation losses from the lakes. Water balance was also affected by catchment factors, notably groundwater table depth. The study shows that lakes at lower altitudes with shallow depths and catchments dominated by urban or crop cover were more sensitive to water balance changes. These lakes had higher evaporation-to-inflow ratios and increased concentrations of total nitrogen in the water. On the other hand, lakes at higher elevations with deeper depths and prevailing forest cover in the catchment were less sensitive to water balance changes. These lakes, which are often of glacial origin, were characterized by lower evaporation losses and thus better water quality in terms of total nitrogen concentrations. Understanding connections between water balance and water quality is crucial for effective lake management and the preservation of freshwater ecosystems.

Biology Centre Institute of Hydrobiology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Na Sádkách 7 37005 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR 6134 SPE 20250 Corte France

Département d'Hydrogéologie Université de Corse Pascal Paoli BP52 20250 Corte France

Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Branišovská 1760 370 05 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Raskin, P., Gleick, P., Kirshen, P., Pontius, G. & Strzepek, K. Comprehensive assessment of the freshwater resources of the world. Water futures: assessment of long-range patterns and problems. (1997).

Flörke M, et al. Domestic and industrial water uses of the past 60 years as a mirror of socio-economic development: A global simulation study. Glob. Environ. Chang. 2013;23:144–156.

Veldkamp TIE, et al. Water scarcity hotspots travel downstream due to human interventions in the 20th and 21st century. Nat. Commun. 2017;8:1–12. PubMed PMC

Schewe J, et al. Multimodel assessment of water scarcity under climate change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2014;111:3245–3250. PubMed PMC

Kummu M, et al. The world’s road to water scarcity: Shortage and stress in the 20th century and pathways towards sustainability. Sci. Rep. 2016;6:1–16. PubMed PMC

Gosling SN, Arnell NW. A global assessment of the impact of climate change on water scarcity. Clim. Change. 2013;134:371–385.

Gampe D, Nikulin G, Ludwig R. Using an ensemble of regional climate models to assess climate change impacts on water scarcity in European river basins. Sci. Total Environ. 2016;573:1503–1518. PubMed

Vystavna Y, Harjung A, Monteiro LR, Matiatos I, Wassenaar LI. Stable isotopes in global lakes integrate catchment and climatic controls on evaporation. Nat. Commun. 2021;12:1–7. PubMed PMC

Adrian R, et al. Lakes as sentinels of climate change. Limnol. Oceanogr. 2009;54:2283–2297. PubMed PMC

Woolway RI, et al. Global lake responses to climate change. Nat. Rev. Earth Environ. 2020;1:388–403.

Vystavna Y, Hejzlar J, Kopáček J. Long-term trends of phosphorus concentrations in an artificial lake: Socio-economic and climate drivers. PLoS One. 2017;12:e0186917. PubMed PMC

Carvalho L, et al. Chlorophyll reference conditions for European lake types used for intercalibration of ecological status. Aquat. Ecol. 2008;42:203–211.

Poikane S, et al. Defining chlorophyll-a reference conditions in European Lakes. Environ. Manage. 2010;45:1286–1298. PubMed PMC

Gibson JJ, Birks SJ, Yi Y. Stable isotope mass balance of lakes: a contemporary perspective. Quat. Sci. Rev. 2016;131:316–328.

Craig, H. & Gordon, L. I. Deuterium and oxygen 18 variations in the ocean and the marine atmosphere. 277–374 https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=3c68a140-4141-41c0-be2e-90f1e228e8a7 (1965).

Horita J, Wesolowski DJ. Liquid-vapor fractionation of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes of water from the freezing to the critical temperature. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta. 1994;58:3425–3437.

Gibson JJ, Edwards TWD. Regional water balance trends and evaporation-transpiration partitioning from a stable isotope survey of lakes in northern Canada. Global Biogeochem. Cycles. 2002;16:10–11.

Gibson JJ, Birks SJ, Yi Y, Moncur MC, McEachern PM. Stable isotope mass balance of fifty lakes in central Alberta: Assessing the role of water balance parameters in determining trophic status and lake level. J. Hydrol. Reg. Stud. 2016;6:13–25.

Wu Z, et al. Imbalance of global nutrient cycles exacerbated by the greater retention of phosphorus over nitrogen in lakes. Nat. Geosci. 2022;15:464–468.

Big Data and Machine Learning in Water Sciences: Recent Progress and Their Use in Advancing Science: Water Resources Research. 10.1002/(ISSN)1944-7973.MACHINELEARN.

Breiman L. Random forests. Mach. Learn. 2001;45:5–32.

Lehner B, Grill G. Global river hydrography and network routing: baseline data and new approaches to study the world’s large river systems. Hydrol. Process. 2013;27:2171–2186.

Kottek M, Grieser J, Beck C, Rudolf B, Rubel F. World Map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification updated. Meteorol. Zeitschrift. 2006;15:259–263.

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). ArcGIS Desktop 10.6.1. Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute (https://www.esri.com/) (2018).

Schulz S, Darehshouri S, Hassanzadeh E, Tajrishy M, Schüth C. Climate change or irrigated agriculture—what drives the water level decline of Lake Urmia. Sci. Rep. 2020;10:1–10. PubMed PMC

Zhao G, Li Y, Zhou L, Gao H. Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes. Nat. Commun. 2022;13:1–10. PubMed PMC

Ogega OM, et al. Extreme climatic events to intensify over the Lake Victoria Basin under global warming. Sci. Rep. 2023;13:1–9. PubMed PMC

Pöschke F, Nützmann G, Engesgaard P, Lewandowski J. How does the groundwater influence the water balance of a lowland lake? A field study from Lake Stechlin, north-eastern Germany. Limnologica. 2018;68:17–25.

Kaiser K, et al. Detection and attribution of lake-level dynamics in north-eastern central Europe in recent decades. Reg. Environ. Chang. 2014;14:1587–1600.

Seebach A, Dietz S, Lessmann D, Knoeller K. Estimation of lake water—groundwater interactions in meromictic mining lakes by modelling isotope signatures of lake water. Isotopes Environ. Health Stud. 2008;44:99–110. PubMed

Vystavna Y, et al. Small-scale chemical and isotopic variability of hydrological pathways in a mountain lake catchment. J. Hydrol. 2020;585:124834.

Riedel T, Weber TKD. Review: The influence of global change on Europe’s water cycle and groundwater recharge. Hydrogeol. J. 2020;28:1939–1959.

Hiscock, K. M. (Kevin, M. & Bense, V. F. (Victor F. Hydrogeology : principles and practice. (John Wiley & Sons, 2014).

Diouf OC, et al. Modelling groundwater evapotranspiration in a shallow aquifer in a semi-arid environment. J. Hydrol. 2020;587:124967.

Gu B, et al. Cost-effective mitigation of nitrogen pollution from global croplands. Nature. 2023;613:77–84. PubMed PMC

Matiatos I, Wassenaar LI, Monteiro LR, Terzer-Wassmuth S, Douence C. Isotopic composition (δ15N, δ18O) of nitrate in high-frequency precipitation events differentiate atmospheric processes and anthropogenic NOx emissions. Atmos. Res. 2022;267:105971.

Monteiro LR, Terzer-Wassmuth S, Matiatos I, Douence C, Wassenaar LI. Distinguishing in-cloud and below-cloud short and distal N-sources from high-temporal resolution seasonal nitrate and ammonium deposition in Vienna. Austria. Atmos. Environ. 2021;266:118740.

Lehner, B., Verdin, K. & Jarvis, A. New global hydrography derived from spaceborne elevation data. Eos, Trans. Am. Geophys. Union89, 93–94 (2008).

Terzer-Wassmuth S, Wassenaar LI, Welker JM, Araguás-Araguás LJ. Improved high-resolution global and regionalized isoscapes of δ18O, δ2H and d-excess in precipitation. Hydrol. Process. 2021;35:e14254.

Gibson JJ, Birks SJ, Edwards TWD. Global prediction of δA and δ2H-δ18O evaporation slopes for lakes and soil water accounting for seasonality. Global Biogeochem. Cycles. 2008;22:2031.

Gonfiantini R. Environmental isotopes in lake studies. Terr. Environ. B. 1986;1:113–168.

Ferguson PR, Veizer J. Coupling of water and carbon fluxes via the terrestrial biosphere and its significance to the Earth’s climate system. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 2007;112:24–30.

Vystavna Y, et al. Isotopic response of run-off to forest disturbance in small mountain catchments. Hydrol. Process. 2018;32:3650–3661.

Team, R. D. C. A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.r-project.org/ (2021).

Liaw A, Wiener M. Classification and regression by randomForest. R J. 2002;2:18–22.