Climate change is impacting the timing, frequency, intensity and duration of extreme storms worldwide, and the susceptibility of lake ecosystem resistance and resilience to changing storm dynamics is mostly unknown. The development of a systematic, standardized and quantitative methodology for synthesizing resistance and resilience following storms could be useful for predicting future impacts of extreme storms. Furthermore, the development of such methodology could perhaps help identify management strategies that work in conjunction with lakes to optimize physiographic specific processes which enhance resistance and or resilience following extreme storms. Therefore, the central goal of this thesis was to develop a systematic, standardized and quantitative methodology (i.e. Chapter 1) that allowed for the synthesis of resistance and resilience of multiple ecosystems (i.e. Chapter 2) relative to long-term (non-transitory) and short-term (transitory) lake and storm conditions. We developed an approach which incorporates high frequency limnological and meteorological data into boosted regression tree models to determine the hierarchical importance and partial dependency of lake characteristics and storm conditions in shaping lake ecosystem resistance and resilience. The results presented in this thesis provide a comprehensive view of the methodology we developed to disentangle and determine the critical lake processes that shape lake ecosystem resistance and resilience following extreme storms.
