Abstract: The impact of tea garden on stream water quality and benthic macroinvertebrate communities is of growing concern. In April 2007, an investigation was made on the water quality and benthic macroinvertebrates at 17 sites in the first and second order streams in Zhejiang Province of China, among which, 12 sites were disturbed by the tea gardens managed with common cultivation method or green and organic cultivation methods in the hills and plains in Songyang and Fuyang counties and in the mountains in Jiande and Wuyi counties, and 5 reference sites were not disturbed by the tea gardens in the hills and mountains in Fuyang and Jiande counties. The ammonium nitrogen, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, chemical oxygen demand, and conductivity in the streams disturbed by tea gardens were higher than those in reference streams. The total nitrogen (5506 mg·L-1) and total phosphorus (0053 mg·L-1) in the streams disturbed by hilly tea gardens were about two times higher than those in the streams disturbed by mountain tea gardens, and the richness of benthic macroinvertebrate in the streams disturbed by hilly tea gardens was significantly lower than that in reference streams (P<001). No significant difference (P<005) was observed in the richness of benthic macroinvertebrate between the streams disturbed by mountain tea gardens and the reference streams. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) analysis of Bray-Curtis species similarities showed that the benthic macroinvertebrate communities in the streams disturbed by mountain tea gardens and in the reference streams had the highest species similarity (stress value=009), followed by those in the streams disturbed by plain tea gardens and croplands.

Key words: Laminaria japonica, Strain, Antioxidant system, Heat-resistance, Relationship