Phytoplankton Species Composition, Distribution And Abundance In Kerian River Estuary, Malaysia

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Date
2011-05
Authors
Mohamad Samsudin, Shazana
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
This study was conducted to characterize the health status of Kerian River estuary based on phytoplankton community and its implication to the river water quality. Five sampling stations were designated, and samples were collected from April 2008 to June 2009 during spring tide at low and high tide. The relationship of phytoplankton abundance and distribution toward nutrient concentration (nitrate, nitrite, ammonia and phosphate) and other environmental parameters such as dissolved oxygen, salinity, total suspended solid and water transparency were investigated based on the non-supervised Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Pearson correlation analysis using the SPSS software version 16.0. The most dominant genera were identified based on the Importance Species Index (ISI’s) value in which these following species can be considered as an indicator in the Kerian River estuary; the Coscinodiscus sp., Scenedesmus quadricauda, Gomphosphaeria sp., Spirulina sp., Desmidium sp. and Phacus acuminatus. The phytoplankton species composition was influenced by fresh water intrusion from Ampang Jajar Kerian dam located at the middle part of the river. The presence of fresh water species was observed during low tide, when salinity was 0 ppt throughout all the stations. The most abundant species during low tide were the Gomphosphaeria sp. and Phacus acuminatus with the maximum ISI’s value of 25.51 and 16.82 respectively. During high tide and with tidal influence the salinity reached 20 ppt; the occurrence of marine and fresh water species was noted. The dominant species during high tide were Coscinodiscus sp. (marine species) and Gomphosphaeria sp. (fresh water species which commonly found in station 4 and 5). The total abundance of phytoplankton during high tide (80,644 cell m-3) was higher compared to low tide (44,111 cell m-3). The Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H’) and Evenness (J’) reading showed 3.34 and 0.63 at high tide and 3.79 and 0.71 at low tide respectively.
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Keywords
Health status of Kerian River estuary based on , phytoplankton community and its implication to the river water quality
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