Effect of hydrological variability on diatom distribution in Poyang Lake, China

• Published in: 中国海洋湖沼学报：英文版 2017 (1), p.174-184
• Main Author: 钱奎梅 刘霞 陈宇炜
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0254-4059; 1993-5005

Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China, and it has a seasonal flooding cycle that significantly changes the water level every year. The aim of this paper was to explain how these hydrological changes influence diatom populations in Poyang Lake. The yearly hydrological cycle can be divided into 4 phases: low water-level phase, increasing water-level phase, high water-level phase and decreasing waterlevel phase. Variations in the abundance of planktonic diatoms were studied using quarterly monitoring data collected from January 2009 to October 2013. Generally, diatoms were dominant in Poyang Lake and accounted for more than 50% of the total phytoplankton biomass except in July 2009(26%) and January 2012(35%). Aulacoseira granulata and Surirella robusta were the predominant species in all four phases, and they accounted for 25.02% to 56.89% and 5.07% to 14.78% of the total phytoplankton biomass, respectively. A redundancy analysis(RDA) showed that changes in physico-chemical parameter were related to the water level, and changes in diatom biomass were related to nitrite levels and p H. These results indicate that changes in environmental parameters related to both seasonal variations and water-level fluctuations caused variations in diatom biomass and community composition in Poyang Lake. Furthermore, extreme hydrological events can have different influences on the diatom community composition in the main channel and lentic regions. This research provides data on the diatom variations in Poyang Lake and will be useful for establishing biological indicators of environmental change and protecting Poyang Lake in the future.