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Effects of water level reduction on the dynamics of phytoplankton functional groups in tropical semi-arid shallow lakes

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Abstract

Droughts are large-scale perturbations that affect freshwater ecosystems worldwide. A water level reduction caused by drought is an important driving factor of phytoplankton dynamics. It has been suggested that a water level reduction alters the light and mixing regime and increases nutrient concentrations and phytoplankton biomass favoring cyanobacterial blooms. We took advantage of two exceptionally dry years in the Brazilian semi-arid region to investigate the effects of the water level reduction on the water quality and phytoplankton communities of two shallow man-made lakes. In both lakes, the water level was reduced by half, while the water turbidity, conductivity, and nutrient concentrations increased. In the deeper lake, the phytoplankton biomass increased and was dominated by a cyanobacteria group as expected, but it decreased in the shallower lake and was dominated by mixotrophic flagellate groups. This was because of sediment resuspension by wind and fish facilitated by a water level reduction and increased the water turbidity more strongly in the shallower than in the deeper lake. Therefore, a water level reduction caused by a drought may either increase or decrease the phytoplankton biomass and cyanobacteria dominance in tropical shallow lakes depending on the lake depth and the concentration of inorganic suspended sediments.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by CNPq (Brazilian National Research Council) and ICMBio (Institute Chico Mendes of Biodiversity Conservation) process No. 372170/2014-5. Thanks go to CAPES (Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) for granting a master’s scholarship. We wish to thank the employees of the Ecological Station of Seridó (ESEC-RN) for their structure and field support; Leonardo Rosa for creating the localization map; Pablo Rubim, Gabriela Moura, Jurandir Mendonça-Júnior, Fabiana Araújo, Maria Marcolina Cardoso, Leonardo Teixeira, Danyhelton Dantas, Edson Santana, and Viviane Medeiros for their fieldwork, sampling, and laboratory analysis and Rosemberg Menezes for hel** with the multicollinearity statistics analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Av. Senador Salgado Filho n° 3000, Natal, RN, Brazil

    Mariana Rodrigues Amaral da Costa, José Luiz Attayde & Vanessa Becker

  2. Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Av. Senador Salgado Filho n° 3000, Natal, RN, Brazil

    José Luiz Attayde

  3. Departamento de Engenharia Civil, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Av. Senador Salgado Filho n° 3000, Natal, RN, Brazil

    Vanessa Becker

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  1. Mariana Rodrigues Amaral da Costa
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  2. José Luiz Attayde
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Correspondence to Mariana Rodrigues Amaral da Costa.

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Guest editors: M. Beklioğlu, M. Meerhoff, T. A. Davidson, K. A. Ger, K. E. Havens & B. Moss / Shallow Lakes in a Fast Changing World

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da Costa, M.R.A., Attayde, J.L. & Becker, V. Effects of water level reduction on the dynamics of phytoplankton functional groups in tropical semi-arid shallow lakes. Hydrobiologia 778, 75–89 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-015-2593-6

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