Ecological Continuum and Discontinuum in the River - Nuclear Power Station Cooling Pond System

Abstract

The paper is dealt with the study of some peculiarities of phytoplankton and zooplankton community structure in the river - Nuclear Power Station (NPS) cooling pond system. The river flowing into the cooling pond is the main source of its water supply. Plankton structure in this system was considered from the standpoint of the continuum concept of three types: continuum of indistinguishability, gradient, and metameric continuum. It has been shown that in the watercourse, including several lentic elements represented by ponds, plankton structure was discrete-continuous, whereas in the cooling pond it was continuous. The metameric continuum was typical to phytoplankton of lentic sections of river system (ponds and estuaries). The continuity index (Ic) was put forward for the quantitative assessment of the ecological continuum.