[Seasonal Variation on Nutrient Limitation for Phytoplankton Growth in a Coastal River-Reservoir System, Southeast China].

A comprehensive analysis was conducted using a dataset obtained from October in 2013 to October in 2014 monitoring in 20 headwater streams of Jiulong River and four reservoirs, situated in such a coastal river-reservoir system in Southeast China suffering from intensive anthropogenic disturbance. In-situ monitoring, GIS and statistical analysis were coupled in this study to identify the spatiotemporal variations of nutrients & phytoplankton abundance and community structure, the differentiation of nitrogen & phosphorus limitation of phytoplankton growth, and the seasonal variations in nutrient limitation of phytoplankton growth. The results showed that there were obvious spatiotemporal variations in terms of nutrients & phytoplankton abundance and community structure in the 20 headwater streams and four reservoirs. The concentration of nitrogen was higher in winter and spring whereas lower in summer and autumn for both 20 headwater streams and four reservoirs. However, the concentration of phosphorus showed an opposite trend. The phytoplankton's abundance was the highest in summer for four reservoirs while it was higher in winter and spring, lower in summer and autumn in the 20 headwater streams. Meanwhile, the main trend in the succession of phytoplankton was from Bacillariophyta in autumn, winter and spring to Chlorophyta in summer in Tingxi reservoir, from Chlorophyta-Cryptophyta in winter and spring to Chlorophyta-Cyanophyta in summer and autumn in Jiangdong reservoir. No obvious trend exhibited in phytoplankton succession in Shidou-Bantou reservoir and 20 headwater streams. The Redundancy analysis (RDA) ordination plots well displayed the phytoplankton's community structure and its relationships with environmental factors. Besides, according to linear regression analysis there was a closer correlation between chlorophyll-a and nutrients in four reservoirs than in 20 headwater streams. In four reservoirs, N limitation was preliminarily observed in autumn whereas P limitation exhibited in winter.