Disentangling the effects of phosphorus loading on food web stability in a large shallow lake

Excessive nutrient loads reduce ecosystem resilience, resulting in fundamental changes in ecosystem structure and function when exceeding a certain threshold. However, quantitative analysis of the processes by which nutrient loading affects ecosystem resilience requires further exploration. Food web stability is at the heart of ecosystem resilience. In this study, we simulated the dynamics of the food web under different phosphorus loads for Lake Baiyangdian using the PCLake model and calculated the food web stability. Our results showed that there was a good correspondence between the food web stability and ecosystem state response to phosphorus loads. This relationship confirmed that food web stability could be regarded as a signal for the state transition in a real lake ecosystem. Moreover, our estimates suggested that food web stability was influenced only by several functional groups and their interaction strength. Diatoms and zooplankton were the key functional groups that affected food web stability. Phosphorus loads alter the distribution of functional group biomass, which in turn affects energy delivery and, ultimately, the stability of the food web. Corresponding to functional groups, the interactions among zooplankton, diatoms and detritus had the greatest impact, and the interaction strength of the three was positively correlated with food web stability. Overall, our study explained that food-web stability was critical to characterize ecosystem resilience response to external disturbances and can be turned into a scientific tool for lake ecosystem management.