Ecology 6th Edition by Charles Krebs

Exercise 4

Shallow lakes may have two alternate stable states depending on nutrient influx, one dominated by phytoplankton in turbid water and another dominated by macrophytes in clear water. Discuss how you might determine the critical nutrient loading that would trigger a transition between these states. Would you expect the transition from phytoplankton to macrophytes to occur at the same nutrient loading as the opposite transition? Janse (1997) discusses this problem.