Phytoplankton communities as bio-indicators of water quality in a mining-affected area of the river Ganga, Haridwar, India

Abstract

The present study investigated the status of the phytoplankton community as a bio-indicator of Ganga River’s water quality under riverbed mining and wastewater disposal impacted regions of Haridwar, India. The data were analyzed using various tools such as coefficient of variation (CV), principal component analysis (PCA), detrended correspondence analysis (DCA), Pearson's correlation, and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). The PCA analysis showed that the parameters such as electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, turbidity, total hardness, and alkalinity had the highest factor loadings in the mining-influenced zones. A total of thirty-two phytoplankton species were found belonging to four families: Chlorophyceae (53.82%), Bacillariophyceae (37.02%), Cyanophyceae (7.72%), and Dinophyceae (1.45%). The phytoplankton species identified at DCA, i.e., Diatom sp., Navicula sp., Synendra sp., occurred in greater abundance in the non-mining-influenced zones while Euglena sp., Ulothrix sp., and Volvox sp. occurred in the mining-influenced zones. Moreover, CCA showed a strong relationship between water quality parameters and the phytoplankton community. Overall, this study suggests that anthropogenic activities in the study area had a significant impact (P < 0.05) on phytoplankton diversity and therefore decisive measures should be taken to conserve, which serves as the main food for fish.

Keywords

Ganga River / Multivariate analysis / Phytoplankton diversity / Riverbed mining / Water quality

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Funding

Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India(IF160805)