The phytoplankton of Tierra del Fuego

MATALONI, G.

Freshwater phytoplankton of Argentina

E. Schwizerbais'che

Lugar: Stuttgart; Año: 2014; p. 275 - 292

Tierra del Fuego constitutes the only insular and southernmost province of Argentina. Its landscape varies from a lowland, dry steppe in the north to the Andean ridges in the southwest, which surround deep glacial valleys and descend to an extense peatland area in the southeast. These features divide the province into four hydrological watersheds (North, Central, South and East), which host a wide variety of lentic water bodies, from very large ultraoligotrophic glacial lakes to eutrophic coastal ponds and small humic ponds in peat bogs. All along the province, a large number of lotic and lentic environments have been extensely studied within the framework of a major floristic survey. Nevertheless, studies dealing with the phytoplankton community are far more scarce, and carried out almost exclusively in lentic water bodies. Results of these efforts ?some of which constitute ongoing research lines- are reunited and commented in this chapter.