TY - JOUR ID - TI - Seasonal Variation of Environmental Properties and Phytoplankton Community in Al- Hussainya River, Holly Karbala – Iraq AU - Fikrat M . Hassan AU - Jasim M . Salman AU - Sara H . Abdulameer PY - 2014 VL - 1 IS - 1 SP - 56 EP - 82 JO - Mesopotamia Environmental Journal بيئة وادي الرافدين SN - 24102598 AB - A comprehensive ecological study was conducted on Al-hussainya river during the period from October , 2012 To Septemper 2013 . This study includes measuring some chemical and physical properties of water , in addition to the study of Phytoplankton community quantitatively and qualitatively .The values of the parameters ranged between 12.7 – 31.3 C°, 8.5 – 45C° for water and air temperature respectively , 7.5–9.4forPH,840–1416.67μs/cm,413.33–700mg/l, 6.33–55.07mg/l,0.54‰–0.91‰for each of electrical conductivity (EC ) , Total dissolved solids (TDS) , Total suspended solids (TSS) and salinity respectively , 11.68 – 37.77 cm / sec. , 33.67 – 148.67 cm for each of water current velocity and water penetration respectively , 4.97 – 12.63 mg/l , 0.4 – 4.84 mg/l for dissolved oxygen (DO) and BOD5 respectively. Nutrients such as silica , total nitrogen and total phosphorous showed variation during this study , their values ranged between 1.63 – 6.26 mg / l , 1.4 – 3.5 mg/l and 1.33 – 17.29 μg/l for each of them respectively .A total of 242 taxa of phytoplankton identified during this study belonged to six classes of algaedominated by Bacillariophyceae which constitute 62.81 % of the total number of the species followed byChlorophyceae by 20.66 % and Cyanophyceae by 11.16 % respectively . Dinophyceae andEuglenophyceae constitute the 2.07 % , while the the Cryptophyceae constitute the lower percentage whichamounted to 1.24 % of the total species , some genera like as Nitzschia , Navicula , Cymbella ,fragilaria , Scenedesmus and Oscillatoria were dominated by their species numbers in the Phytoplankton 3community .The total numbers of Phytoplankton cells ranged between (446.8 - 9177) × 10 cell / l recorded for March and October respectively .

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