A variabilidade ambiental influencia a composição e biomassa fitoplanctônica de um reservatório neotropical

Abstract

Phytoplankton is an important model of the aquatic environments functioning, responding directly to environmental variability in space and time. Therefore, represents an excellent tool for the monitoring of reservoirs, which comprise highly heterogeneous ecosystems longitudinally, influencing the structure and distribution of phytoplankton species. The objective of this study was to investigate the variation in the composition and biomass of the phytoplankton in a reservoir in the Goiás state, Brazil, and how these organisms respond to environmental variability along the reservoir spatial extent in dry and rainy periods. The phytoplankton and environmental variables were collected during one dry period and other rainy, over seven sampling sites, distributed in the regions downstream of the dam, lacustrine, intermediate and lotic of the reservoir. The composition and biomass of the phytoplankton community were measured as a response to the spatial and temporal environmental variability. We recorded a spatio-temporal variation in water temperature, light, nutrients, and phytoplankton biomass. Cyanobacteria had the highest biomass in the lacustrine and intermediate regions, while diatoms in the lotic region, in both periods. The highest phytoplankton total biomass was recorded in rainy period. We recorded a clear relation between the phytoplankton biomass and the environmental variability, being that water temperature, turbidity and soluble iron the ones that showed the biggest influence on the biomass structure. Thus, the composition and biomass of the phytoplankton community can be important metrics of reservoirs functioning and, therefore, the phytoplankton study in these ecosystems it’s of interest in their monitoring, since reservoirs have great ecological, economic or public health relevance.