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Assessment of habitat quality with relation to fish assemblages in an impacted river of the Ganges basin, northern India

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Abstract

In this work, we examined water-quality assessment in relation to fish assemblage of Gomti River, a large tributary of the Ganges River basin in northern India. Principal component analysis was performed for 18 environmental variables which produced three axes that cumulatively explained 60.23% of the environmental variation in sites. Fifteen variables (fine substrate fine gravel, coarse gravel, cobble, sand substrate water flow, conductivity, TDS, total hardness, temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and overhanging vegetation) had high loadings on at least one of the principal component axes interpreted. The canonical correspondence analysis was used to establish the relationship between important fish species and environmental variables. Species were distributed within four groups with respect to the significant habitat characteristics. The Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated between the water-quality parameters. We concluded that the level of species richness is mostly dependent on abiotic factors like temperature, dissolved oxygen, TDS, conductivity, depth, pH, and water current in the Gomti River, of the Ganges basin.

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Acknowledgments

We express sincere thanks to Dr W. S. Lakra, former Director, NBFGR and Dr J. K. Jena, Director, NBFGR, Lucknow for providing necessary facilities. This study was supported financially by the Council of Science and Technology, Government of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow (CSTUP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, Canal Ring Road, P.O. Dilkusha, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, 226002, India

    Braj Kishor Gupta, Uttam Kumar Sarkar & Sanjay Kumar Bhardwaj

  2. Department of Zoology, Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Sanjay Kumar Bhardwaj

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  1. Braj Kishor Gupta
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  2. Uttam Kumar Sarkar
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  3. Sanjay Kumar Bhardwaj
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Correspondence to Uttam Kumar Sarkar.

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Gupta, B.K., Sarkar, U.K. & Bhardwaj, S.K. Assessment of habitat quality with relation to fish assemblages in an impacted river of the Ganges basin, northern India. Environmentalist 32, 35–47 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-011-9363-4

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