Horizontal differences in ecosystem metabolism of a large shallow lake

•Heterotrophy predominated in the lake part affected by the main inflow.•The central part of the lake switched between auto- and heterotrophy.•Free-water technique gives an integrated picture of the ecosystem metabolism.•Occurrence of anomalous metabolic estimates depended on wind directions.•Smoothing daily metabolism results includes a risk of information loss.

SummaryThe causes of horizontal differences in metabolic activities between lake zones are still poorly understood. We carried out a two-year study of lake metabolism in two contrasting parts of a large shallow lake using the open-water technique based on high-frequency measurements of dissolved oxygen concentrations. We expected that the more sheltered and macrophyte-rich southern part of the lake receiving a high hydraulic load from the main inflow will exhibit equal or higher rate of metabolic processes compared to the open pelagic zone, and higher temporal variability, including anomalous metabolic estimates such as negative gross primary production (GPP) or community respiration (CR) due to rapid water exchange. Our results showed that anomalous metabolic estimates occurred at both stations with a similar frequency and were related rather to certain wind directions, which likely contributed to stronger water exchange between the littoral and pelagic zones. Periods of auto- and heterotrophy (daily mean NEP> or <0) had a 50:50 distribution at the Central Station while the proportions were 30:70 at the Southern Station. High areal GPP estimated in our study exceeding nearly twice the long-term average 14C primary production, showed the advantages of the free-water technique in integrating the metabolism of all communities, a large part of which has remained undetected by the traditional bottle or chamber incubation techniques.