| Helping zooplankton
Zooplankton benefits lakes and ponds by keeping phytoplankton populations down, improving fish populations and acting as an environmental indicator.
Improving water quality and eliminating the anaerobic hypolimnia allows an increase of aerobic habitat in which zooplankton can find refuge. The increase in volume of quality water increases populations of zooplankton. A prime example of this occurred when Daphnia pulex numbers in Hemlock Lake (Livingston County, New York) increased nearly 90 times following hypolimnetic aeration (qtd. in Cooke et al. 412).
The limited mobility of benthic organisms generally inhibits them from avoiding poor ecological conditions. In turn, this makes them accurate indicators of local environmental conditions (qtd. in Weisberg et al. 149).
The Shannon Weiner Diversity Index—which is used by many states—is used to quantify the diversity of benthic organisms. When put in correlation with dissolved oxygen, it shows that oxygen is a primary indicator in benthic diversity. As the oxygen is depleted in the area of the sediments, benthic taxa richness decreases. |
