The purpose of this investigation was to identify the zooplankton and phytoplankton found in Lake Mead, to quantify their presence, to elucidate some temporal and spatial patterns, and to investigate some of the planktonic responses to physical, chemical, and biological parameters. Phytoplankton and zooplankton population samples were collected from eight different sites at il depths at six times over an annual period. These samples were collected with a 6-liter Van Dorn sampler. Phytoplankton samples were preserved in Lugol's solution and the zooplankton were placed in formalin preservative. The 503 zooplankton population samples were scored in a ruled counting chamber using a stereomicroscope. Eighteen species of zooplankton were identified. The 274 phytoplankton samples were placed on Millipore filters and slides were prepared for examination with phase contrast microscopy. A total of at least 79 algae were found to comprise the phytoplankton flora. The zooplankton for the most part were rotifers, cladocerans, and copepods. Keratella, the principal rotifer, was found to be diacmic and Bosmina, Daphnia, the calanoid, cyclopoid, and nauplii copepods were monacmic. Spatial relationships across the reservoir indicate that Bosmina and cyclopoid copepods are water quality indicators. The late summer phytoplankton were mostly Cyanophyta with populations as large as 5 x 10⁶ cells/liter occurring in Boulder Basin. Winter samples contained mostly diatoms and cryptomonads, while the spring phytoplankton was mainly Chlorophyta. The early summer flora showed a mixture of Chrysophyta, Chlorophyta, and Cryptophyta. Biomass determinations were made from average cell volumes and population counts. The blue-green alga Oscillatoria had the greatest biomass during the late summer period. Bacillariophyta reached a volumetric peak in late winter and the Chlorophyta in spring. The Cryptophyta showed a peak in winter while the Chrysophyta, represented mostly by the presence of Dinobryon, showed greatest population sizes in early summer. The Euglenophyta and Pyrrophyta were relatively unimportant groups of the biomass, Weak nocturnal migrations were exhibited by Asplanchna sp., Keratella cochlearis, and Bosmina longirostris. This conclusion was derived from an analysis of variance of the diurnal data. The copepod groups showed no migration patterns. Since this study was performed when the lake was isothermal, it is inferred that migration is a phenomenon not influenced by temperature. A transect study in Boulder Basin during the winter showed that Daphnia, Asplanchna, Chydorus, and Polyarthra, and possibly calanoid copepods, appear to be littoral, and are found mostly in the Las Vegas Wash area. Phytoplankton counts showed evidence for decreases in Bacillariophyta, Chlorophyta, Cyanophyta, and Cryptophyta across the basin from the wash to the dam area. Pyrrophyta Chrysophyta, and Euglenophyta were not important in the phytoplankton flora at this season. Nygaard's and Pearsall's ratios and Palmer's pollution- tolerant algae indices were applied to the phytoplankton data. Results of the Nygaard and Pearsall ratios, the migration study, the transect study, and the population studies indicate that Boulder Basin is eutrophic.

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the zooplankton arc. phytoplankton found in Lake Mead, to quantify their presence, to elucidate some temporal and spatial patterns, and to investigate some of the planktonic responses to physical, chemical, and biological parameters. Phytoplankton and zooplankton population samples were collected from eight different sites at 11 depths at six times over an annual period. These samples were collected with a 6 -liter Van Dorn sampler. Phytoplankton samples were preserved in Lugol's solution and the zooplankton were placed in formalin preservative. The 503 zooplankton population samples were scored in a ruled counting chamber using a stereomicroscope. Eighteen species of zooplankton were identified. The 274 phytoplankton samples were placed on Millipore filters and slides were prepared for examination with phase contrast microscopy. A total of at least 79 algae were found to comprise the phytoplankton flora. The zooplankton for the most part were rotifers, cladocerans, and copepods. Keratella, the principal rotifer, was found to be diacmic and Bosmina, Daphnia, the calanoid, cyclopoid, and nauplii copepods were monacmic. Spatial relationships across the reservoir indicate that Bosmina and cyclopoid copepods are water quality indicators. The late summer phytoplankton were mostly Cyanophyta with populations as large as 5 X 106 cells /liter occurring in Boulder Basin. Winter samples contained mostly diatoms and cryptomonads, while the spring phytoplankton was mainly Chlorophyta. The early summer flora showed a mixture of Chrysophyta, Chlorophyta, and Cryptophyta. Biomass determinations were made from average cell volumes and population counts. The blue -green alga Oscillatoria had the greatest biomass during the late summer period. Bacillariophyta reached a volumetric peak in late winter and the Chlorophyta in spring. The Cryptophyta showed a peak in winter while the Chrysophyta, represented mostly by the presence of Dinobryon, showed greatest population sizes in early summer. The Euglenophyta and Pyrrophyta were relatively unimportant groups of the biomass. Weak nocturnal migrations were exhibited by Asplanchna sp., Keratella cochlearis, and Bosmina longirostris. This conclusion was derived from an analysis of variance of the diurnal data. The copepod groups showed no migration patterns. Since this study was performed when the lake was isothermal, it is inferred that migration is a phenomenon not influenced by temperature. A transect study in Boulder Basin during the winter showed that Daphnia, Asplanchna, Chydorus, and Polyarthra, and possibly calanoid copepods, appear to be littoral, and are found mostly in the Las Vegas Wash area. Phytoplankton counts showed evidence for decreases in Bacillariophyta, Chlorophyta, Cyanophyta, and Cryptophyta across the basin from the wash to the dam area. Pyrrophyta, Chrysophyta, and Euglenophyta were not important in the phytoplankton flora at this season. Nygaard's and Pearsall's ratios and Palmer's pollution -tolerant algae indices were applied to the phytoplankton data. Results of the Nygaard and Pearsall ratios, the migration study, the transect study, and the population studies indicate that Boulder Basin is eutrophic.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Joint Program in Applied Ocean Science and Engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-173). / A fundamental problem in limnology and oceanography is the inability to quickly identify and map distributions of plankton. This thesis addresses the problem by applying statistical machine learning to video images collected by an optical sampler, the Video Plankton Recorder (VPR). The research is focused on development of a real-time automatic plankton recognition system to estimate plankton abundance. The system includes four major components: pattern representation/feature measurement, feature extraction/selection, classification, and abundance estimation. After an extensive study on a traditional learning vector quantization (LVQ) neural network (NN) classifier built on shape-based features and different pattern representation methods, I developed a classification system combined multi-scale cooccurrence matrices feature with support vector machine classifier. This new method outperforms the traditional shape-based-NN classifier method by 12% in classification accuracy. Subsequent plankton abundance estimates are improved in the regions of low relative abundance by more than 50%. Both the NN and SVM classifiers have no rejection metrics. In this thesis, two rejection metrics were developed. / (cont.) One was based on the Euclidean distance in the feature space for NN classifier. The other used dual classifier (NN and SVM) voting as output. Using the dual-classification method alone yields almost as good abundance estimation as human labeling on a test-bed of real world data. However, the distance rejection metric for NN classifier might be more useful when the training samples are not "good" ie, representative of the field data. In summary, this thesis advances the current state-of-the-art plankton recognition system by demonstrating multi-scale texture-based features are more suitable for classifying field-collected images. The system was verified on a very large real-world dataset in systematic way for the first time. The accomplishments include developing a multi-scale occurrence matrices and support vector machine system, a dual-classification system, automatic correction in abundance estimation, and ability to get accurate abundance estimation from real-time automatic classification. The methods developed are generic and are likely to work on range of other image classification applications. / by Qiao Hu. / Ph.D.