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Environmental change and its effects on inter-decadal variations of diatom production, species composition and frustule dissolution in a coastal marginal sea

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Abstract

The implications of climate change during the second half of the 20th century have been reported throughout the world. Although marginal seas are sensitive to climate change and anthropogenic impacts, relatively little attention has been given to the South East Asian marginal seas. Thus, to bridge this gap in knowledge, a sediment core was collected from the coastal areas of the Leizhou Peninsula in the South China Sea (SCS) to study the inter-decadal climate change and its consequences using diatom species composition as a proxy record. Diatom absolute abundance varied from 2300 to 68000 and averaged 16000 valves per gram of dry weight (v/gdw). The fractional dissolution index (Fi) was usually below 0.5, which indicates low to moderate preservation of diatom valves at coastal area of the SCS. At the inter-decadal time scale, total diatom abundance was high for the period after 1972, which coincided with 1) increased percentage of planktonic diatom abundance and Fi; 2) emergence and dominance of high productivity indicative cosmopolitan species such as Thalassionema nitzschioides and Paralia sulcata (their relative abundance increased from <1.5% to >7% for the period before and after 1972, respectively); 3) decreased relative abundance of the small-sized eutrophication indicative species, Cyclotella striata, from 70% to 40%. This study reveals that variations in the abundance of diatoms preserved in the sediment was a function of both production and dissolution/preservation of diatom valves, which in turn was intimately connected to the prevailing environmental/climatic conditions. In conclusion, these data reveal the existence of substantial changes in the coastal SCS in response to the 1970s climate shift that was recorded in different parts of the world.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Rediat Abate, Yahui Gao  (高亚辉), Changping Chen  (陈长平) & Junrong Liang  (梁君荣)

  2. State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China

    Yahui Gao  (高亚辉), Weifang Chen  (陈蔚芳) & Lin Sun  (孙琳)

  3. College of Natural Science, Arba Minch University, Arba Minch, PO Box 21, Ethiopia

    Rediat Abate

  4. Department of Zoological Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, PO Box 1176, Ethiopia

    Demeke Kifile

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  2. Yahui Gao  (高亚辉)
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  3. Changping Chen  (陈长平)
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Correspondence to Yahui Gao  (高亚辉).

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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41476116) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0601302)

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Abate, R., Gao, Y., Chen, C. et al. Environmental change and its effects on inter-decadal variations of diatom production, species composition and frustule dissolution in a coastal marginal sea. Chin. J. Ocean. Limnol. 35, 1362–1373 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-017-0084-5

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