Monitoring of Phytoplankton in the Artificial Lake: Comparison Study

Abstract

Abstract The current study was carried out to study phytoplankton in Lake of Baghdad Touristic Island from July 2019 to February 2020 to predict the Lake’s environmental change. Monthly samples were taken from the surface water from four sampling sites in the Lake and the results were presented as dry and wet seasons. A total of 180 algal taxa was identified with the dominancy of diatoms. The highest total cell number of phytoplankton was recorded at the fourth site with 303.85×104 cells/L in dry season 2019, while the lowest was 93.72× 104 cell/L in the third site during the dry season 2019. The diatoms dominancy is still higher than 90%, while the Cyclotella spp percentage reduced from 90% to less than 5% in this study. Achananthes spp percentage became raised >7% in comparison with a previous study in 1989. These results showed the dominancy of diatoms among other algal taxa. They reduced the total number of Chlorohyceae and Cyanophyceace in the Lake, which indicates the stability of environmental conditions and good lake management.