Studies on Diversity and Abundance of Phytoplankton in Glacial fed mountainous Goriganga River of Kumaun Himalaya, Uttarakhand, India

The paper presents the results that was conducted to analyze the phytoplankton diversity, abundance, monthly and seasonal variations including similarity and dissimilarity index in glacial fed mountainous Goriganga River of Kumaun Himalaya, Uttarakhand” (India) from July-2006 to June-2008. Samples for monitoring phytoplankton diversity and abundance were collected monthly from three sampling spots (spot-1, Jauljibi-600msl; spot-2, Baram-900msl and spot-3, Madkot-1300msl) with in a river stretch of 44 km in the Goriganga river. For the last two years studies on qualitative and quantitative estimation of phytoplankton revealed that some total 46 genera of phytoplankton were encountered during the course of study. Diatoms (Bacillariophyceae) accounted for the major share of phytoplankton diversity, represented by 27 genera (56.69%); green algae (Chlorophyceae) were appeared to be the second dominating group in terms of phytoplankton diversity, represented by 15 genera (32.60%) while the qualitative analysis of blue-green algae (Cyanophyceae) constituted only 04 genera (8.69%). During the course of study, phytoplankton showed the distributional pattern as: Bacillariophyceae (56.69%) > Chlorophyceae (32.60%) > Cyanophyceae (8.69%). The maximum phytoplankton population was recorded in winter season whereas minimum phytoplankton population was recorded in monsoon season. In the present study maximum similarity (s = 0.47 and s = 0.57) was observed among the taxa of bacillariophceae and cyanophyceae during 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively while minimum similarity (s = 0.25 and s = 0.38) was recorded among the taxa of cyanophyceae and chlorophyceae during 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively.