User:Czesz003/Meromictic lake

Characteristics
A meromictic lake may form because the basin is unusually deep and steep-sided compared to the lake's surface area, or because the lower layer of the lake is highly saline and denser than the upper layers of water. However, human influence can lead to cultural meromixis occurring. The increased use of road salt as a deicing strategy, particularly in northern latitude regions, can disturb the natural mixing cycles in lakes by inhibiting mixing. 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.

Occasionally, carbon dioxide, methane, or other dissolved gases can build up relatively undisturbed in the lower layers of a meromictic lake. When the stratification is disturbed, as could happen from an earthquake, a limnic eruption may result. In 1986, a notable event of this type took place at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, causing nearly 1,800 deaths. 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). The NOPP program placed large organ pipes into Lake Nyos, to reach the monimolimnion where harmful dissolved gases built up, that allow for gas release to the atmosphere, effectively degassing the monimolimnion. Since 2019, Lake Nyos has successfully been degassed to a nonhazardous concentration of dissolved gas. Paralleling Lake Nyos, Lake Kivu is another lake that poses a potentially fatal threat to the community. 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.