Researchers map 100 lakes to spot ecosystem stress before irreversible damage

Published in the journal One Ecosystem, the research provides the first systematic assessment of the Southern American Coastal Shallow Subtropical LakesWhat if lakes could warn us about an environmental disaster? These freshwater systems may be giving off subtle biological signals long before the fish start dying off, the algae bloom on the water, or the pollution becomes hazardous. Well, the difficulty has always been how to read them. But, a new international study suggests that a vast chain of shallow lakes stretching more than 1,000 kilometers along the Atlantic coast of southern Brazil and Uruguay could become one of the world's most valuable natural observatories for detecting those warning signs. Watching these connected lakes over time, scientists believe they can see the first sig