EFFECT OF SALINITY AND SILICATE ON ICE ALGAL GROWTH IN SAROMA KO LAGOON, HOKKAIDO, JAPAN (EXTENDED ABSTRACT)

• Main Authors: Satoru Taguchi, Ralph E. H. Smith, Kunio Shirasawa
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aksnes; ice algae; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.509.2431; http://polaris.nipr.ac.jp/~penguin/polarbiosci/issues/pdf/1995-Taguchi.pdf

Ice algae may go through a drastic change of environment when ice starts melting. This is particularly true in the vicinity of fresh water runoff (RUNGE and INGRAM, 1991). The melting ice produces low salinity and low nutrient water immediately underneath the ice since the ice does not contain much nutrients (COTA et al., 1990). The life time of this low saline and nutrient limited layer may be a function of advection of sea water in the water column. When a stable condition lasts longer than one day, low salinity and nutrient deficiency are expected to affect the physiology of ice algae at the ice-water interface. Particularly, silicate deficiency may occur within 24 h (BADOUR, 1968; WERNER, 1970; TAGUCHI et al., 1987) since other nutrients take longer to be effective than silicate. Silicate defficiency may subsequently play a significant role in competition between species (EGGE and AKSNES, 1992). In Saroma KO lagoon, Hokkaido, Japan, runoff of fresh water but high silicate content is underlaid by low saline-nutrient lenses. Therefore, once the ice algae in Saroma KO lagoon are released from the sea ice, they may enter the low saline-nutrient lenses, the low saline but nutrient rich water, and finally the nutrient