Ecology 6th Edition by Charles Krebs

Exercise 7

Freshwater lakes have been suggested to have two alternate stable states, one of clear water dominated by macrophytes and one of murky water with high phytoplankton levels. If this is correct, would you predict that measurement of the clarity of lake water for many lakes would be bimodal with a peak of lakes at the clear end of the spectrum and another peak of lakes at the murky end, with few lakes in between? Why might this prediction be incorrect? Peckham et al. (2006) did this analysis for Wisconsin lakes and discuss the results obtained from satellite measurement of lake transparency.