Meromictic lake

[1] In ordinary, holomictic lakes, at least once each year, there is a physical mixing of the surface and the deep waters.

[2] The term meromictic was coined by the Austrian Ingo Findenegg in 1935, apparently based on the older word holomictic.

The concepts and terminology used in describing meromictic lakes were essentially complete following some additions by G. Evelyn Hutchinson in 1937.

In meromictic lakes, the layers of water can remain unmixed for years, decades, or centuries.

These bacteria, commonly found at the top of the monimolimnion in such lakes, use sulfur compounds such as sulfides in photosynthesis.

[13][14] As salt is flushed into aquatic systems at high concentrations in late winter/early spring, it accumulates in the deepest layer of lakes leading to incomplete mixing.

[1] The layers of sediment at the bottom of a meromictic lake remain relatively undisturbed because there is little physical mixing and few living organisms to agitate them.

Occasionally, carbon dioxide, methane, or other dissolved gases can build up relatively undisturbed in the lower layers of a meromictic lake.

[15][16][17] In the following decades after this disaster, active research and management has been done to mitigate gas buildup in the future through the Nyos Organ Pipes Program (NOPP).

Some management strategies have suggested taking a different approach, moving gases from the monimolimnion to the mixolimnion, rather than degassing to the atmosphere through organ pipes.