Ecological relationships between phytoplankton communities and different spatial scales in European reservoirs: implications at catchment level monitoring programmes

Abstract

Phytoplankton communities are structured by factors acting over temporal and spatial scales. Identifying which factors are driving spatial patterns in aquatic communities is the central aim of ecology. In this study, data sets of phytoplankton communities and environmental data of two Portuguese reservoirs types (lowland ''riverine reservoirs'' and higher altitude ''artificial lake reservoirs'') were used to determine the importance of environmental variables at different spatial (geographical, regional and local) and time scales (seasons, years) on the community structure. In all the data sets, the multivariate ordination technique Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) showed that regional and local scales explained the majority (9-18% and 13-19%, respectively) of the taxa variance. However, for ''riverine reservoirs'', time variables were more important, explaining 27% of the variability in phytoplankton assemblages. Variance partitioning was used to assess the individual importance of the three spatial scales and time for the community structure of the two reservoir types. The majority of among-site variability (5.9-21.4%) was accounted for by time variables, with local, regional, and geographical scale variables accounting for 3.3-5.6%, 3.7-4.5% and 2.6-2.9%, respectively. The effects of different spatial scales on phytoplankton communities were clearly interrelated; thus, implying that phytoplankton assemblages are capable of detecting stress from catchment to site scales.Handling editor: J. Padisak Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

Responses of phytoplankton functional groups to the hydrologic regime in the Daning River, a tributary of Three Gorges Reservoir, China

“…Scaling of hydro-morphological stress and its relation to the phytoplankton community are current topics in applied aquatic ecology (Cabecinha et al, 2009). Hydrologic regimes may affect phytoplankton biomass and species composition by influencing photosynthetic active radiation (Naselli-Flores and Barone, 2000) and nutrient dynamics in the water column (Costa et al, 2009).…”

Contribution of zooplankton as a biological element in the assessment of reservoir water quality

“…The variation in classification is due to a parameter that varies according to its natural pattern, so it may be an indication that the ecosystems were little disturbed by external factors. All the reservoirs are located in rural areas, isolated and subjected to very low anthropogenic disturbance, being surrounded by forest and natural areas or small agricultural holdings (Cabecinha et al, 2009a;Cabecinha et al, 2009b;Santos et al, 2015). Indeed, several studies have shown a relationship between land use in the watershed and water quality (Smith et al, 1999;Pan et al, 2004;Lee et al, 2009).…”

A predictive modelling tool for assessing climate, land use and hydrological change on reservoir physicochemical and biological properties

“…Phytoplankton communities in the Douro regions reservoirs are known to respond to seasonal patterns and stress over different spatial scales (Cabecinha et al . ). Chironomid pupal exuviae collection will provide data on benthic community responses to stress (Ruse ).…”