Response of aquatic organism richness to physiochemical factors at different regions in Jinan City

Abstract

Aquatic organisms and physiochemical factors were important components in the aquatic ecosystem. It will be benefited for understanding the health condition of aquatic ecosystem and planning restoration project by investigating the relationships between aquatic organisms and physiochemical factors. In this study, 36 sampling stations were set to investigated fish, macroinvertebrate, zooplankton and phytoplankton assemblages during May, August and October in 2014 in Jinan City, whilst, 26 physiochemical variables were tested as well. Methods of Spearman analysis, violin-plots and redundancy analysis were used to select the main physiochemical factors, exhibit the distribution of biological richness and main factors at each regions, and analyze the relationship between biological richness and main factors at each region. The results showed that six physiochemical factors including Flow, dissolved oxygen (DO), qualitative habitat evaluation index (QHEI), COD, electrical conductivity (Cond) and total nitrogen (TN) were selected as the main environmental factors based on the Spearman analysis. The distribution of Flow, DO, QHEI and biological richness were higher in Yellow River regions than those in other regions, and COD, TN, Cond and biological richness were the lowest in the Xiaoqing River region. Based on the Spearman analysis, Cond had a significant correlation with fish richness in Yellow River region, and TN were significant correlated with macroinvertebrate richness in urban region. The redundancy analysis showed that TN had a significant impact on the biological richness in Tuhaimajia River region, and COD, DO and QHEI significantly affected the biological richness in Xiaoqing River region. This study could be used as reference for the management or government to design a restoration project of aquatic ecosystem in Jinan City, and provided a new way for other cities to develop the aquatic ecosystem as well.