Plankton are mostly microscopic small organisms floating in the water. The major share of aquatic vegetation here consists of single-celled algae, the so-called phytoplankton. In 2018, within the Rhine monitoring programme ‘Biology’, the phytoplankton of the Rhine was analysed from Lake Constance to the Rhine delta. In the long-term trend, the phytoplankton biomass has been declining since the 1980s and correlates with the decrease in nutrient concentrations and phytoplankton inputs from Lake Constance.
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