Abstract
The abundance and composition of phytoplankton were investigated at six stations along a transect from the Barguzin River inflow to the central basin of Lake Baikal in August 2002 to clarify the effect of the river inflow on the phytoplankton community in the lake. The water temperature in the epilimnion was high near the shore at Station 1 (17.3°C), probably due to the higher temperature of the river water, and gradually decreased offshore at Station 6 (14.5°C). Thermal stratification developed at Stations 2–6, and a thermocline was observed at a 17–22-m depth at Stations 2–4 and an 8–12-m depth at Stations 5 and 6. The concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients in the epilimnion at all stations were <1.0 μmol N l−1 and <0.16 μmol P l−1, respectively. Relatively high concentrations of nutrients (0.56–7.38 μmol N l−1 and 0.03–0.28 μmol P l−1) were detected in the deeper parts of the euphotic zone. Silicate was not exhausted at all stations (>20 μmol Si l−1). The chlorophyll a (chl. a) concentration was high (>10 μg l−1) near the shore at Station 1 and low (<3 μg l−1) at five other stations. The <2 μm fraction of chl. a in Stations 2–6 ranged between 0.80 and 1.85 μg l−1, and its contribution to total chl. a was high (>60%). In this fraction, picocyanobacteria were abundant at all stations and ranged between 5 × 104 and 5 × 105 cells ml−1. In contrast, chl. a in the >2 μm fraction varied significantly (0.14–11.17 μg l−1), and the highest value was observed at Station 1. In this fraction, the dominant phytoplankton was Aulacoseira and centric diatoms at Station 1 and Cryptomonas, Ankistrodesmus, Asterionella, and Nitzschia at Stations 2–6. The present study demonstrated the dominance of picophytoplankton in the pelagic zone, while higher abundance of phytoplankton dominated by diatoms was observed in the shallower littoral zone. These larger phytoplankters in the littoral zone probably depend on nutrients from the Barguzin River.
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Acknowledgments
We dedicate the present article to Captain Oleg Kalinin, who totally supported our sample collection on the R/V Vereshchagin. We are also grateful to the crew of the vessel for their assistance with sample collection. Thanks are also due to members of the Limnological Institute, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for their arrangement of the sampling schedule. This study was partly supported by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A), project no. 14255015 and 18255001.
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Katano, T., Nakano, Si., Ueno, H. et al. Abundance and composition of the summer phytoplankton community along a transect from the Barguzin River to the central basin of Lake Baikal. Limnology 9, 243–250 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-008-0252-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-008-0252-6