Geographical Patterns of Algal Communities Associated with Different Urban Lakes in China

Abstract

Urban lakes play an important role in drainage and water storage, regulating urban microclimate conditions, supplying groundwater, and meeting citizens’ recreational needs. However, geographical patterns of algal communities associated with urban lakes from a large scale are still unclear. In the present work, the geographical variation of algal communities and water quality parameters in different urban lakes in China were determined. The water quality parameters were examined in the samples collected from north, central, south, and coastal economic zones in China. The results suggested that significant differences in water quality were observed among different geographical distribution of urban lakes. The highest total phosphorus (TP)(0.21 mg/L) and total nitrogen (TN) (3.84 mg/L) concentrations were found in XinHaiHu (XHH) lake, it also showed highest the nitrate nitrogen (NO3−-N) (0.39 mg/L),total organic carbon(TOC) (9.77 mg/L), and COD Mn (9.01 mg/L) concentrations among all samples. Environmental and geographic factors also cause large differences in algal cell concentration in different urban lakes, which ranged from 4700 × 104 to 247,800 × 104cell/L. Through light microscopy, 6 phyla were identified, which includes Chlorophyta, Bacillariophyta, Cyanophyta, Dinophyta, Euglenophyta, and Cryptophyta. Meanwhile, the heat map with the total 63 algal community composition at the genus level profile different urban lakes community structures are clearly distinguishable. Further analyses showed that the dominant genera were Limnothrix sp., Synedra sp., Cyclotella sp., Nephrocytium sp., Melosira sp., and Scenedesmus sp. among all samples. The integrated network analysis indicated that the highly connected taxa (hub) were Fragilaria sp., Scenedesmus sp., and Stephanodiscus sp. The water quality parameters of NO3−-N and NH4+-N had significant impacts on the structural composition of the algal community. Additionally, RDA further revealed distinct algal communities in the different urban lakes, and were influenced by NO2−-N, Fe, and algal cell concentrations. In summary, these results demonstrate that the pattern of algal communities are highly correlated with geographic location and water quality on a large scale, and these results also give us further understanding of the complex algal communities and effectively managing eutrophication of urban lakes.