Classifying diurnal changes of cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Taihu to identify hot patterns, seasons and hotspots based on hourly GOCI observations

Abstract

Occurrence of cyanobacterial blooms in most lakes has dramatic changes in time and space. However, most current studies only focused on daily or seasonal scales to obtain a relatively coarse resolution result. To explore the possibility of fine changes occurring within a day in Lake Taihu (China), the area coverage of surface cyanobacterial blooms was quantified from the hourly Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI) data using a GOCI-derived cyanobacterial index. Based on that, diurnal change characteristics were explored at two scales, and the environmental impacts were investigated. For that, an classification method was first designed to identify the types of diurnal change patterns of cyanobacterial blooms automatically. This method classified the patterns into four types, including the decreasing (Type1), decreasing first and then increasing (Type2), increasing (Type3), increasing first and then decreasing (Type4). Based on that, the types of diurnal change patterns of blooms in Lake Taihu (from April 1, 2011 to October 31, 2020) were identified at pixel (500 m) and synoptic scales. Results indicated that Type1 and Type3 were two hot diurnal change patterns of blooms, and lakeshore was the hotspot occurring severe diurnal changes, and autumn was the hot season occurring frequent diurnal changes. Specifically, hotspot of Type1 was lakeshore, while hotspot of Type3 was Central Regions. Environmental impacts were analyzed at two scales. At pixel scale (500 m), diurnal variation of temperature affected the regional occurence of each type ofdiurnal changes patterns of blooms, and the afternoon temperature played the most critical role (p < 0.001, N = 8316). The occurrence frequency of Type1 was positively (R = 0.41) related with the afternoon temperature, and the occurrence frequency of Type3 was negatively (R = -0.37) related with it. Diurnal variation of wind speed was another key factor impacting the occurrence of obvious diurnal blooms changes, and the wind impacts should be distinguished when the wind speed was over or below 3.5 m/s. At synoptic scale, the interaction of multi environmental factors influenced the diurnal change degree of blooms area, and the environmental contributions were 71%.Comparing with the existing manual classifying workat synoptic scale, the designed classification method can identify the types of diurnal change patterns of blooms at a higher spatial resolution (500 m). These explorations on diurnal dynamics of cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Taihu provide a new insight for advanced cyanobacteria dynamics studies and regional water management.