Environmental impact of an acid-iron effluent on macrobenthic and meiofaunal assemblages of the St. Lawrence River

Newell, P.; Newell, Roger I. E.; Trett, M. W.

doi:10.1016/0048-9697(90)90274-x

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The communities of larger animals (macrofauna) frequently fail to provide suitable and sufficient data to asses effects; the distribution of the organisms can be too patchy (mean-to-variance ratios small), their densities too low, or the animals are simply too mobile to examine and monitor impacts reliably. In response to this, in the past 20 years, many pollution ecologists have turned to the meiofauna ( − ). These microscopic animals live in the spaces between sediment or soil particles and can be defined as those organisms that will pass through a 1 mm mesh sieve but are retained on a 38 μm sieve (see refs 10−13 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terrestrial Meiofauna and Contaminated Land Assessment

Trett

Urbano

Förster

et al. 2000

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Following the development of aquatic pollution monitoring techniques using metazoan meiofauna (microscopic interstitial invertebrates), the value of this group in the assessment of contaminated terrestrial sites has been investigated. Communities present in a former explosives burning ground were sampled at 30 sites using coring techniques and examined in the laboratory. Nematoda were numerically dominant at each of the sites and were the most diverse invertebrate group present (60 species). Structurally modified assemblages of these were identified and correlated significantly with elevated soil heavy metal concentrations. Assemblages associated with elevated metal concentrations exhibited increased dominance and reduced species richness. Using principal components analyses (PCA) and redundancy analyses (RA), the relationships between individual species, the metals, and the structures of the nematode communities were described. Tolerant and resistant species were also identified. It is concluded that the technique is a valuable method of assessing metal contamination status, and it is recommended that further studies be made of sites contaminated with organic materials.

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