Seasonal variation of environmental properties and phytoplankton community in al-Hussainya River, Holly Karbala-Iraq

Abstract EN

A comprehensive ecological study was conducted on Al-hussainya river during the period from October , 2012 To Septemper 2013 .

This study includes measuring some chemical and physical properties of water , in addition to the study of Phytoplankton community quantitatively and qualitatively .The values of the parameters ranged between 12.7-31.

3 C°, 8.5-45C° for water and air temperature respectively , 7.

5-9.

4 for PH, 840-1416.67 μs / cm , 413.

33-700 mg / l , 6.

33-55.07 mg / l , 0.54 ‰-0.91 ‰ for each of electrical conductivity (EC ) , Total dissolved solids (TDS) , Total suspended solids (TSS) and salinity respectively , 11.

68 – 37.

77 cm / sec.

, 33.67-148.67 cm for each of water current velocity and water penetration respectively , 4.

97-12.

63 mg/l , 0.4-4.

84 mg/l for dissolved oxygen (DO) and BOD5 respectively.

Nutrients such as silica , total nitrogen and total phosphorous showed variation during this study , their values ranged between 1.

63-6.

26 mg / l , 1.

4-3.

5 mg/l and 1.33-17.

29 μg / l for each of them respectively .

A total of 242 taxa of phytoplankton identified during this study belonged to six classes of algae dominated by Bacillariophyceae which constitute 62.

81% of the total number of the species followed by Chlorophyceae by 20.

66 % and Cyanophyceae by 11.

16 % respectively .

Dinophyceae and Euglenophyceae constitute the 2.

07 % , while the the Cryptophyceae constitute the lower percentage which amounted to 1.

24 % of the total species , some genera like as Nitzschia , Navicula , Cymbella , fragilaria , Scenedesmus and Oscillatoria were dominated by their species numbers in the Phytoplankton community .The total numbers of Phytoplankton cells ranged between (446.

8-9177) × 103 cell / l recorded for March and October respectively .