Diatom Assemblages and Environmental Change Assessments
Summary
Diatoms are unicellular, photosynthetic algae characterised by siliceous cell walls and remarkable taxonomic diversity. Assemblages of diatom species respond rapidly to changes in water chemistry, nutrient availability, salinity and physical disturbance, making them powerful indicators of both contemporary and historical environmental conditions. By analysing the composition, abundance and morphological characteristics of diatom communities in sediment cores or living samples, researchers can reconstruct past climate fluctuations, pollutant events, eutrophication episodes and hydrological shifts. Such assessments combine multivariate statistical techniques with microscopy and, increasingly, high-throughput sequencing to resolve species-level patterns. Globally, diatom-based reconstructions have informed management of freshwater resources, guided restoration of degraded wetlands and refined models of sea-level change. In coastal and deltaic systems, transitions between planktonic and benthic diatom taxa mark shifts in salinity regimes and tidal dynamics, while in riverine and lacustrine settings changes in assemblage diversity and functional traits signal anthropogenic impact or natural climate oscillations. The integration of diatom palaeoecology and modern biomonitoring protocols offers a comprehensive toolkit for detecting environmental change at multiple timescales and spatial scales, from local streams to continental shelf ecosystems.
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Diatom Assemblages and Environmental Change Assessments publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in diatom assemblages and environmental change assessments across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Diatom assemblage: A community of diatom species co-occurring in a particular aquatic habitat or sediment layer.
Biomonitoring: The use of living organisms or communities to assess environmental health and detect pollution or ecological change.
Paleoenvironmental proxy: A biological or geochemical indicator preserved in sediments that enables reconstruction of past environmental conditions.
Benthic diatoms: Diatom species that live on or within sediment surfaces in aquatic ecosystems.
Planktonic diatoms: Diatom species that float freely in the water column and are influenced by water-column dynamics.
Eustatic sea-level change: Global change in sea level resulting from variations in the volume of water in the world’s oceans, typically due to glacial cycles.
References
- Holocene coastal evolution of Colorado River Delta based on diatom assemblages, Northern Patagonia, Argentina. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências (2022).
- Composition and structure of the benthic diatom community from salt marshes of southern Brazil and their relationship to environmental variables. Acta Limnologica Brasiliensia (2023).
- Dinámica y composición de los ensambles diatomológicos de dos arroyos del Noroeste Argentino en relación con variables ambientales. Bonplandia (2022).
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