Impact of anthropogenic forcing on the environmental controls of phytoplankton dynamics between 1974 and 2017 in the Pearl River estuary, China

How phytoplankton responded spatiotemporally to the co-occurrence of multiple variables is of central importance for ecosystem management. In this study, extensive investigations in the Pearl River estuary (PRE), southern China, between 1974 and 2017 revealed a strong anthropogenic effect on the environmental drivers of phytoplankton dynamics (in terms of chlorophyll a). The empirical cause-and-effect chain summarized as human activity →...