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Nitrogen Fixation and its Significance in Tropical Lake George, Uganda

Abstract

TROPICAL lakes have been little studied although they often seem to be very productive, especially at those trophic levels exploitable by man. One such lake, Lake George (0°, 00′, 29° 55′ E) is a shallow lake (z̄ = 2.5 m) with an area of approximately 290 km2 including the associated channel, and is one of the smaller lakes in the western arm of the Rift Valley of Africa. An important feature of the lake is the high phytoplankton standing crop of approximately 400 mg of chlorophyll a m−2. Yet, in spite of this, there is very little inorganic nitrogen in the water. There is little seasonal variation in species composition, in the numbers of the phytoplankton and in chemical and physical parameters1,2.

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HORNE, A., VINER, A. Nitrogen Fixation and its Significance in Tropical Lake George, Uganda. Nature 232, 417–418 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/232417a0

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