Impacts of dam discharge on river environments and phytoplankton communities in a regulated river system, the lower Han River of South Korea

Abstract

To understand the effects of fluctuations in dam discharge due to river environments and phytoplankton communities, we monitored such environments and phytoplankton communities biweekly, from February 2001 to February 2002 and from February 2004 to February 2005, in the lower Han River (LHR), South Korea. The phytoplankton abundance during the dry season was approximately two times higher than that during the rainy season. In particular, fluctuations in diatom assemblages, which constituted over 70% of the total phytoplankton abundance, were affected severely by the changes in the discharge. When a large quantity of water in a dam was discharged into the LHR, the conductivity and the concentrations of total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) decreased rapidly, whereas the concentrations of suspended solids (SS), dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), and dissolved silica (DSi) increased immediately. Time-delayed relationship also revealed that the dam discharge had an immediately significant negative relationship with phytoplankton abundance. On the whole, fluctuations in phytoplankton communities in the LHR were influenced much more by hydrodynamics such as dam discharge than by the availability of nutrients. Thus, the variability in these concentrations usually parallels the strength of river flow that is associated with summer rainfall, with higher values during periods of high river discharge.