The difficulty of disentangling natural from anthropogenic forcing factors makes the evaluation of ecological quality problematic: A case study from Adriatic lagoons

Pitacco, Valentina; Reizopoulou, Sofia; Sfriso, Adriano; Sfriso, A.; Mistri, Michele; Cristina, Maria Luisa

doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2019.104756

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…These metrics underpin biomonitoring programmes that aim to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, to maintain and enhance the quality of ecosystems, and to assess the effectiveness of conservation and restoration measures, such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD; European Commission, ), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, ) or the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, ). Problematically, few current metrics integrate the effects of natural disturbances, which can confound the assessment of anthropogenic impacts and thus lead to inappropriate management actions (Gutiérrez‐Cánovas et al, ; Pitacco et al, ; Tockner, Pusch, Borchard, & Lorang, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural disturbances can produce misleading bioassessment results: Identifying metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts in intermittent rivers

Soria

Gutiérrez‐Cánovas

Bonada

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Ecosystems experience natural disturbances and anthropogenic impacts that affect biological communities and ecological processes. When natural disturbance modifies anthropogenic impacts, current widely used bioassessment metrics can prevent accurate assessment of biological quality.2. Our aim was to assess the ability of biomonitoring metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts at both perennial and intermittent sites, and in the latter including both flowing and disconnected pool aquatic phases. Specifically, aquatic macroinvertebrates from 20 rivers were sampled along gradients of natural flow intermittence (natural disturbance) and anthropogenic impacts to investigate their combined effects on widely used river biomonitoring metrics (i.e. taxonomic richness and standard biological indices) and novel functional metrics, including functional redundancy (i.e. the number of taxa contributing similarly to an ecosystem function, here a trophic function) and response diversity (i.e. how functionally similar taxa respond to natural disturbance and anthropogenic impacts). Only the widely used IBMWP index (Iberian Biological Monitoring Working Party)was able to detect anthropogenic impacts in intermittent rivers when used during flowing phases. Several functional metrics also detected anthropogenic impacts regardless of flow intermittence. Besides, functional redundancy of the entire community remained effective even in disconnected pools. Synthesis and applications.Our results show that natural flow intermittence can confound river bioassessment, and that a set of new functional metrics could be used as effective alternatives to standard metrics in naturally disturbed intermittent rivers. Our findings suggest that water managers should incorporate alternative functional metrics in the routine biomonitoring of naturally disturbed rivers. K E Y W O R D Sbioassessment, functional diversity, intermittent rivers, intermittent streams, macroinvertebrates, multiple stressors, natural stress, temporary rivers 284 | Journal of Applied Ecology SORIA et Al.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural disturbances can produce misleading bioassessment results: Identifying metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts in intermittent rivers

Soria

Gutiérrez‐Cánovas

Bonada

et al. 2019

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…Salinity, historically used to classify coastal lagoons (Anonymous, 1959), was also an important driver of SR (linear positive effect) and total macrofauna density (concave effect). Indeed, simple and multimetric descriptors of lagoon macrobenthic communities like species richness are known to be highly and positively influenced by mean water salinity (Barbone et al, 2012; Magni et al, 2022; Pitacco et al, 2019; Reizopoulou et al, 2014). Differently from us, Barbone et al (2012) reported a macrofauna density decrease from oligo- to eu-haline lagoons, maybe because only undisturbed lagoons were considered in their study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, several studies have underlined the limits of using the M-AMBI based on abundance to evaluate the ecological state of transitional ecosystems like coastal lagoons, as opportunistic and tolerant species are generally numerically dominant in these systems (Mistri et al, 2018;Pitacco et al, 2019;Puente and Diaz, 2008). Other indicators based on the size spectra and biomass of benthic macroinvertebrates like the biomass based M-AMBI (M-bAMBI (Mistri et al, 2018)) and the index of size distribution (ISD (Reizopoulou and Nicolaidou, 2007)) have showed promising results and applying these indices to French coastal lagoons would represent an additional trial in the context of historically highly eutrophic lagoons currently undergoing a re-oligotrophication trajectory (Derolez et al, 2020a(Derolez et al, , 2020bLe Fur et al, 2019;Leruste et al, 2016).…”

Section: The M-ambi and Recommendations For Its Use As An Indicator F...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These characteristics make benthic macroinvertebrates good theoretical indicators of the ecological health status of coastal lagoons and since 2000, this biological compartment is officially included in the assessment of European transitional water bodies carried out within the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (Reizopolou et al, 2018). However, although they are in theory good ecological indicators, benthic macroinvertebrates are also influenced by “natural environmental stress”, hence it appears crucial to disentangle the effect of natural environmental variability from the effect of variability linked to human disturbances on this compartment in hyper-variable ecosystems like coastal lagoons (Pitacco et al, 2019). Most of the published work on Mediterranean coastal lagoon macroinvertebrates have either been descriptive studies focusing on one or a few lagoons (Amanieu et al, 1977; Arocena, 2007; Bachelet et al, 2000; Carlier et al, 2007; Guelorget et al, 1994; Guelorget and Michel, 1979; Magni et al, 2022; Pérez-Ruzafa et al, 2007a; Rossi et al, 2006), theoretical oriented studies testing ecological hypotheses like environmental filtering (Basset et al, 2007) or species-area relations (Sabetta et al, 2007) or very applied studies related to the WFD and focusing on lagoon typology definition, indicator development or indicator reference values (Barbone et al, 2012; Basset et al, 2012; Reizopoulou et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disentangling the effects of eutrophication and natural variability on macrobenthic communities across French coastal lagoons

Jones

Schaal

Boyé

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Coastal lagoons are transitional ecosystems that host a unique diversity of species and support many ecosystem services. Owing to their position at the interface between land and sea, they are also subject to increasing human impacts, which alter their ecological functioning. Because coastal lagoons are naturally highly variable in their environmental conditions, disentangling the effects of anthropogenic disturbances like eutrophication from those of natural variability is a challenging, yet necessary issue to address. Here, we analyze a dataset composed of macrobenthic invertebrate abundances and environmental variables (hydro-morphology, water, sediment and macrophytes) gathered across 29 Mediterranean coastal lagoons located in France to characterize the main drivers of community composition and structure. Using correlograms, linear models and variance partitioning, we found that lagoon hydro-morphology (connection to the sea and surface) which affects the level of environmental variability (salinity and temperature), as well as lagoon-scale benthic habitat diversity (using macrophyte morphotypes) seemed to regulate macrofauna distribution, while eutrophication and associated stressors like low dissolved oxygen acted upon the existing communities, mainly by reducing species richness and diversity. Furthermore, M-AMBI, a multivariate index composed of species richness, Shannon diversity and AMBI (AZTI's Marine Biotic Index) and currently used to evaluate the ecological state of French coastal lagoons, was more sensitive to eutrophication (18%) than to natural variability (9%) with nonetheless 49% of its variability explained jointly by both. Conversely, AMBI was the only tested index that uniquely responded to eutrophication variables, which nonetheless explained less than a third of its variability. To improve the robustness of benthic indicators like M-AMBI and increase the effectiveness of lagoon benthic habitat management, we call for a revision of the ecological groups at the base of the AMBI index and of the current lagoon typology which could be inspired by the lagoon-sea connection levels used in this study.

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“…The fluctuations observed in the present work in terms of both pollutant concentrations and biotic indices reflected the marked fluctuations of environmental parameters characterizing those ecosystems. In this framework, the relationship between biotic and physico-chemical variables is always complex, and disentangling the effect of natural and anthropogenic disturbances is a major challenge [49,50].…”

Section: Coupling Abiotic and Biotic Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiannual Trend of Micro-Pollutants in Sediments and Benthic Community Response in a Mediterranean Lagoon (Sacca di Goro, Italy)

Pitacco

Mistri

Ferrari

et al. 2020

Water

Self Cite

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Long-term variations of ecological status in a Mediterranean coastal lagoon (Sacca di Goro, Northern Adriatic) were investigated, combining data on the concentration of surface sediment contaminants and on the structure of the macrobenthic community. The aim was to assess any amount of chemical contamination and check the response of the macrobenthic community to sediment contamination. Over the studied period, the sediments of the lagoon showed contamination by trace metals and organochlorine pesticides, with most of them exceeding the thresholds indicated by the Italian legislation in many samples. Contamination by polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) instead never exceeded the threshold. The ecological status based on the macrobenthic community, evaluated through biotic indices (AMBI and M-AMBI), fell below the Good/Moderate threshold in most samples. The results indicate a possible influence of toxic compounds in sediment on benthic organisms, but most of the variability shown by the macrobenthic community is probably due to other factors. The difficulty in establishing a cause/effect relationship was due to the co-occurrence and variability of various stressors (both natural and anthropogenic) and their interactions. The methods currently used for monitoring transitional waters thus seem insufficient to disentangle the effect of pollutants and other environmental variables on the benthos. Integrated approaches (e.g., bioaccumulation and toxicity tests) are thus needed for a more precise identification of the risk posed by a high concentration of pollutants in such environments.

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The difficulty of disentangling natural from anthropogenic forcing factors makes the evaluation of ecological quality problematic: A case study from Adriatic lagoons

Cited by 16 publications

References 49 publications

Natural disturbances can produce misleading bioassessment results: Identifying metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts in intermittent rivers

Natural disturbances can produce misleading bioassessment results: Identifying metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts in intermittent rivers

Disentangling the effects of eutrophication and natural variability on macrobenthic communities across French coastal lagoons

Multiannual Trend of Micro-Pollutants in Sediments and Benthic Community Response in a Mediterranean Lagoon (Sacca di Goro, Italy)

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