Seasonal Change of Phytoplankton Dominant Species Based on Water Mass in the Coastal Areas of the East Sea

Abstract

In order to understand the seasonal change of phytoplankton as well as the effect of water physico-chemical parameters, we investigated 18 stations in coastal areas of the East Sea in February, May, August and November in 2009. The taxa of phytoplankton observed in this study were classified as 37 Bacillariophyceae, 22 Dinophyceae, 1 Euglenophyceae, 3 Dictyophyceae and 1 Cryptophyceae. Phytoplankton abundance ranged from to (with a mean value of ), the highest biomass was observed in May. The dominant species were Leptocylindrus danicus, Chaetoceros affinis, Pseudo-nitzschia pungens, Thalassionema nitzschioides and etc. Pearson's correlation co-efficient between phytoplankton abundance and other water parameters showed the positive relationships with pH, DO, Secchi-disk depth, and SS, the negative relationships with . Seasonal patterns of phytoplankton dominant species were affected by the characteristics of water masses based on T-S diagram analysis. In particular, phytoplankton distributional patterns were related with water temperature in May and salinity in August, respectively. According to the result of MDS(Multi-dimensional scaling) using the phytoplankton abundance and species composition, the spatial distribution of phytoplankton were characterized with Ganwon(Group A) and Gyeongbuk(Group B) at the coastal areas of Jukbyeon or Uljin.