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Abstract:
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The estuaries are highly productive ecosystems and
characteristically are more productive than the adjacent river or
sea. Estuarine producers which include planktonic algae,
periphyton, herpobenthos as well as macrophytes are capable of
nearly year round photosynthesis. Productivity of an environment
is mainly the contribution of various groups of autotrophic
flora. Any quantitative estimation excluding any one of these
would be an underestimation. Periphyton plays a very important
role in the productivity of estuarine and coastal waters. It has
been reported that periphytic algae attain high biomass (Moss,
1968; Hansson, 1988a) and may contribute up to 80% of the primary
production (Persson gt gtt, 1977); Considerable amount of work
has been done on the productivity in Cochin backwaters by different
investigators (Qasim, 1973, 1979; Nair gt gtt, 1975; Gopi—
nathan gt gtt, 1984). All of them have estimated the primary production based only on phytoplankton of the estuary. Considering the contribution of other autotrophic components of the estuary such as periphyton (haptobenthos), sediment flora (herpebenthos)
and macropytes, the productivity estimated by earlier
authors were essentially underestimations. The present work is
an attempt inter glig to assess the contribution of periphytic
flora towards the total organic production in the estuary |