Looking for patterns in the phytoplankton community of the Mediterranean microtidal Venice Lagoon: evidence from ten years of observations

By analysing a ten-year series (1998-2007) of data on hydrochemical properties, phytoplankton abundance and species composition in the Venice Lagoon, we identified i) the average annual phytoplankton biomass cycle, mainly unimodal and fairly well tuned with the fluctuations in temperature and irradiance and (ii) the seasonal succession of the most important species, allowing us to construct a “phytoplankton calendar”. Phytoplankton biomass was significantly lower in the second half of the ten-year period (2003-2007) than in the first half (1998-2002).