Effects of environmental factors in phytoplankton communities in the marine ranching ground of Tongyeong coastal waters, Korea

Abstract

In order to investigate the structures and dynamics of phytoplankton communities, each physicochemical environmental factor, species composition, standing crop, and dominant species were examined in the marine ranching ground of Tongyeong coastal waters from April to October, 2000. During the studies, mean water temperature and salinity were 18.8°C and 33.1 psu, respectively. DO, SS and transparency varied from 5.43 to 11.39 mg/l, 14.6 to 32.4 mg/l and 3.5 to 9.0 m, respectively. Light intensities varied from 0.02 to 966 μE/m2/s, which decreased with depth. NH4-N, NO3-N, NO2-N, PO4-P, and SiO2-Si were fluctuated from 0.059 to 0.332 mg/l, 0.040 to 0.800 mg/l, 0.001 to 0.468 mg/l, 2.3 to 143.0 μg/l, and 0.007 to 0.600 mg/l, respectively. chlorophyll a concentrations were fluctuated from 0.7 to 8.9 μg/l. Among 130 taxa of phytoplankton communities observed, diatoms occupied more than 81.54% of the total species, and the others were dinoflagellates and silicoflagellates. Phytoplankton standing crops ranged from 4.6 × 104 to 2.6 × 106 cells/l. In October, the standing crops were at bloom level showing more than 106 cells/lat all stations. Dominant species changed by month and station. Leptocylindrus danicus occupied 59.84% in April and 22.03% in June. Pseudo-nitzschia pungens in August and Chaetoceros socialis and Skeletonema costatum in October were predominant species. In order to investigate factors influencing the total phytoplankton standing crops the correlations between the standing crops of diatoms, dinoflagellates, all phytoplanktons occurred and environmental factors were calculated using a multiple regression analysis. The coefficient of determination (R2) for total standing crops was 0.63 which explained 63% of variance and that of R2 for diatom was 0.82. In statistical analysis, the results showed that the environmental factors influencing the size of the communities were predominantly water temperature, salinity and silicate.