Abstract
The phytoplankton of a surface strongly desalinated water lens was investigated on the basis of materials collected during the 57th cruise of the R/V Akademik Mstislav Keldish in September of 2007. The lens with a salinity of <18 psu had area of approximately 19 thousand square kilometers and was located in the northwestern part of the Kara Sea near the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya. It was a specific biotope that had been isolated from the surrounding waters for more than three months. In the investigated area, 66 algae species were identified. The maximal species diversity was found in the upper layers of the desalinated lens, where the species number was 1.5 to 3 times higher than in other parts of the water column. The phytoplankton numbers in the upper layers of the lens were 1.5 to 4.5 times higher than in its lower part and generally higher than below the picnocline. Diatoms were the most abundant group in the upper layers of the lens, while flagellates dominated in numbers in the subpicnocline part of the water column. The maximal values of the phytoplankton biomass were observed everywhere in the upper layers of the lens, where they were 1.2 to 3.7 times higher than in the lower part of the lens and 1.3 to 7.2 times higher than in the layer below the picnocline. Dinoflagellates generally gave the most contribution to the total phytoplankton biomass. The phytoplankton of the desalinated surface lens in the northwestern part of the Kara Sea by its composition and quantitative parameters had the nearest resemblance to a phytocenosis that we observed two weeks later at a shallow desalinated shelf closely adjacent to the Ob estuary.
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Original Russian Text © I.N. Sukhanova, M.V. Flint, V.M. Sergeeva, 2012, published in Okeanologiya, 2012, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 688–699.
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Sukhanova, I.N., Flint, M.V. & Sergeeva, V.M. Phytoplankton of the surface desalted lens of the Kara Sea. Oceanology 52, 635–645 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0001437012050165
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0001437012050165