Environmental factors influencing cyanobacteria community structure in Dongping Lake, China

The present study was conducted to provide a detailed understanding of the variation in cyanobacterial communities of Dongping Lake, which is the final water volume adjusting and storing lake in the east route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China. The spatial and temporal distribution of cyanobacteria was assessed from May 2010 to October 2012 based on monthly samples collected from three stations. Over the 30-month survey, 15 genera and 25 species of cyanobacteria were identified, with cyanobacterial abundance at each monitoring station ranging from undetected to 3.04×10⁷ cells/L, average of 4.27×10⁶ cells/L. The dominant cyanobacterial species were Pseudanabaena limnetica and Aphanizomenon issatschenkoi and not the usual bloom-forming genera such as Microcystis and Anabaena. Cyanobacterial community structure and water quality variables exhibited substantial changes over the period of survey. Redundancy analysis, Pearson correlations, and regression analysis were applied to analyze the relationships among the variables. The results suggested that temperature and chemical oxygen demand were key drivers of the cyanobacterial community composition in Dongping Lake. In addition, the concentration of inorganic nitrogen in the lake had a profound effect on the cyanobacterial abundance as a non-limiting factor in warm periods.