Environmental, phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish community data from Swedish lakes for food web analysis

This dataset compiles environmental and biological measurements from lakes distributed along a latitudinal gradient across Sweden. Data on water chemistry, phytoplankton, and zooplankton were sourced from the Miljödata MVM database. Information on lake physical characteristics, Secchi depth, and fish was obtained from the Swedish National Register of Survey Test-Fishing (NORS). Modelled air temperature and irradiance data were acquired from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). Community data in phytoplankton and fish were used to run Detrended Correspondence Analyses (DCA) to test differences in community composition in each lake. Lake physical properties, Secchi depth, and irradiance were used to model the ratio of benthic to whole-lake gross primary production (BP ratio) for each lake, using the approach described in Norman et al. (2022; Table A2). This dataset enables analyses of aquatic food web biomass distributions in relation to spatial and temporal variations in temperature and nutrient concentrations across Swedish lakes.