Epilimnetic Phytoplankton and Zooplankton Biomass
and Species
Composition in Lake Michigan,1983 to 1992
Introduction
Evidence of appreciable change in the biota of Lake Michigan
(e.g. Jude and Tesar 1985, Evans and Jude 1986, Scavia et. al.
1986, Fahnenstiel and Scavia 1987, Stewart and Ibarra 1991, Evans
1992) has directed attention to the long-term data sets of
phytoplankton and zooplankton collected by the Great Lakes
National Program Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. Phytoplankton, which have short carbon turnover
rates, are sensitive to water quality conditions and grazing by
zooplankton, and thus respond rapidly to perturbations of the lake
ecosystem. The determination of phytoplankton abundance and
species composition is one method to trace long-term changes in
lakes (Munawar and Munawar 1982, Makarewicz 1993, Makarewicz and
Bertram 1991). Similarly, whether aquatic ecosystems are
perturbed by changes in the top predator fish cascade down the
food web or by nutrients or other stressors that are expressed from the first trophic level upward, the zooplankton are sensitive
integrators of such changes (McNaught and Buzzard 1973).
They have also proved useful for complementing phytoplankton data
to assess the effects of water quality (Gannon and Stemberger
1978) and fish populations on biota (e.g. Brooks and Dodson
1965). the large interannual variability in abundance of
zooplankton requires long-term data sets to detect trends in
zooplankton abundance (Evans 1992). Thus zooplankton have
value as indicators of water quality and the structure of the
biotic community. Specifically, has there been a reduction
of other change in the phytoplankton community concomitant with
the top-down mediated changes observed in the fish and zooplankton
community during the 1980s? In this study, the 1983 - 92
spring and summer phytoplankton and zooplankton data assemblages
presented make it possible to examine the historical, geographic,
and seasonal relationships prevailing in Lake Michigan and to
compare them, where possible, to previous studies.
Table of Contents
This full report is available as Adobe portable document
files:
- Part 1: Table of Contents, Methods,
Results and Discussion - Phytoplankton
- Part 2: Results and Discussion -
Zooplankton, Literature Cited
- Part 3: Tables
- Part 4: Figures
- Part 5: Appendices
- Part 6: Appendices, Species Lists
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