New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Horizontal and vertical variability in the distribution of aquatic macrophytes in Lake Waikaremoana

CLIVE HOWARD-WILLIAMS JOHN DAVIES WARWICK F. VINCENT

Taupo Research Laboratory
Division of Marine and Freshwater Science
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research
P. O. Box 415, Taupo
New Zealand

Abstract Lake Waikaremoana, North Island, New Zealand, with a surface area of 51 km², has a shoreline of 93 km. The complex lake morphom-etry means that most of the shoreline is sheltered from strong winds which leads to dense macro-phyte development in the littoral zone. The distribution and abundance of the macrophytes around the lake were studied by a number of methods including horizontal and vertical SCUBA transects. Almost the entire shoreline is colonised to a depth of 16m by macrophyte vegetation. Tall vascular aquatics occur to a depth of 8 m but the mono-specific adventive communities found in many other North Island lakes are not found. The deep water macrophytes (8-16 m) are exclusively char-aceans with Chara corallina forming the deepest zone. Horizontal species composition and abundance were very uniform, an unusual situation when compared with other New Zealand lakes. Analysis of variance at different scales of horizontal distance showed that most of the variation in species performance was between individual quadrats 4 m apart rather than at longer distances.

Keywords aquatic macrophyte; zonation; littoral zone; Elodea; Characeae; Lake Waikaremoana; abundance; distribution; vegetation; lake; Chara corallina Received 17 April 1985; accepted 26 June 1985

New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 1986, Vol. 20: 55-65 Received 17 April 1985; accepted 26 June 1985

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (826K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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