Do lake diatoms reflect cyclic seasonal climate changes?——Evidence from a four-year modern monitoring on Yunlong Lake

The lack of reliable proxies capturing multi-seasonal interactions limits our understanding of long-term seasonal succession patterns. Lake diatoms, being sensitive to climate changes across different seasons, serve as a potentially important proxy for reconstructing seasonal variations. However, extracting seasonal phenological signals from multi-year sediment records remain challenging. Conducting continuous multi-year monthly-to-seasonal scale modern diatom investigations using sediment traps is a crucial approach to validate their applicability for long-term seasonal reconstruction. Therefore, this study revisited the subtropical alpine Yunlong Lake in the southwestern monsoon domain, conducting two additional years (May 2021 - April 2023) of monthly trap monitoring following prior research (Sep 2013 - Aug 2015). Integrated with concurrent meteorological, hydrological, and hydrochemical data, we systematically analyzed seasonal diatom dynamics and their climatic implications.