Ecological Dynamics of Macrophytes in Lentic Water Bodies: A Case Study in Valsad, Gujarat, India

We examined the occurrence of macrophyte diversity and its distribution in the selected lakes of Valsad district, Gujarat, India. There were two main objectives, first examine the macrophyte species diversity in the selected lakes using the Shannon-Wiener diversity index, and the second one was to investigate the impact of environmental parameters on the macrophyte diversity. The canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was utilized to better understand the relationship between macrophyte communities and environmental conditions. The results showed that from the 50 macrophyte species recorded, 30 species were emergent, 06 species were submerged and 14 species were floating and the overall Shannon-Wiener diversity (H’) of water bodies ranged from 1.917 to 2.584. As per the Sorenson percentage similarity result, there was 80.3 % of an average similarity was present in macrophytes composition (p = 0.0039). The 14 (except phosphate and salinity) out of 16 selected physicochemical variables were statistically significant (p < 0.05) and mentioned in the CCA model, which revealed that macrophyte assemblage structure was strongly associated with Physicochemical parameters.