Towards a suitable ecological status assessment of highly stratified mediterranean estuaries: A comparison of benthic invertebrate fauna indices

Nebra, Alfonso; Caiola, Nuño; Muñoz-Camarillo, Gloria; Rodríguez-Climent, Silvia; Ibáñez, Carles

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.06.023

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…To date, taxonomic distinctness has not been included in many papers comparing a plethora of other biotic indices employed to assess the environmental quality of estuaries (Hutton et al, 2-15;e.g. Cardoso et al, 2012;Wetzel et al, 2012;Nebra et al, 2014;Brauko et al, 2015).…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two major problems with this approach are the difficulties in setting baseline reference conditions (Borja et al, 2004;Borja and Tunberg, 2011;Warwick and Somerfield, in press) and distinguishing between the responses of these indictors to natural and anthropogenic environmental stresses (Dauvin, 2007;Elliott and Quintino, 2007;Dauvin and Ruellet, 2009). This is a particular problem in estuaries since their natural environmental conditions vary both spatially and temporally (Hutton et al, 2-15;Borja and Tunberg, 2011;Tweedley et al, 2012;Wetzel et al, 2012;Nebra et al, 2014;Brauko et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can biotic indicators distinguish between natural and anthropogenic environmental stress in estuaries?

Tweedley

Warwick

Potter

2015

Journal of Sea Research

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Please cite this article as: Tweedley, J.R., Warwick, R.M., Potter, I.C., Can biotic indicators distinguish between natural and anthropogenic environmental stress in estuaries?, Journal of Sea Research (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.seares. 2015.04.001 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. significantly between estuarine and coastal environments, i.e. they were unaffected by natural differences between these two environments, but both were significantly correlated with overall heavy metal concentrations. Furthermore, Δ + was correlated significantly with the Cu, Zn, Cd, Hg and Pb concentrations and Λ + was correlated significantly with the Cr, Ni, Cu, Cd and Hg concentrations. Thus, one or both of these two taxonomic distinctness indices are significantly correlated with the concentrations for each of these seven heavy metals. These taxonomic distinctness indices are therefore considered appropriate indicators of anthropogenic disturbance in estuaries, as they allow a regional reference condition to be set from which significant departures can then be determined.

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Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can biotic indicators distinguish between natural and anthropogenic environmental stress in estuaries?

Tweedley

Warwick

Potter

2015

Journal of Sea Research

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“…It appeared that, in most cases, the BOPA and BO2A indices tended to overestimate the Ecological Status of the stations (e.g. Caglar and Albayrak, 2012;Reizopoulou et al, 2014;Aguado-Giménez et al, 2015), but the comparisons showed in most of the cited studies did not take into account the revised thresholds proposed by de-la-Ossa-Carretero and , including recent publications (Nebra et al, 2014;Aguado-Giménez et al, 2015). In addition, Keeley et al (2012) pointed out that the Ecological Status classification was underestimated by BOPA when the species richness and abundances of macro-invertebrates were very low, though the use of BOPA was not recommended for abundance <20 ind.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, many users of BOPA/BO2A did not apply this threshold. Others like Nebra et al (2014) continued to use BOPA in the upper part of the transition estuarine system, while the BO2A, which included the oligochaeta, was recommended in such low salinity zone of estuaries. Nevertheless, in some cases, such as the offshore platforms in the Adriatic Sea, the BOPA index seemed to yield a better assessment of stressed situations than AMBI or M-AMBI (Spagnolo et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…BOPA/BO2A was among the five most used indices in a review of 35 benthic quality assessment indices employed in different countries to assess the impact of 15 different human pressures (Borja et al, 2015). Moreover, in most of these studies, BOPA and BO2A were compared with other indices, mainly BENTIX, AMBI and M-AMBI (see also Boon et al, 2011;Culhane, 2012;Nebra et al, 2014;Reizopoulou et al, 2014). It appeared that, in most cases, the BOPA and BO2A indices tended to overestimate the Ecological Status of the stations (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Polychaete/amphipod ratios: An approach to validating simple benthic indicators

Dauvin

Andrade

de-la-Ossa-Carretero

et al. 2016

Ecological Indicators

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a b s t r a c tAmong the macro-invertebrates used for the assessment of soft-bottom communities, most polychaetes are classified as tolerant/opportunistic to pollution while amphipods are considered as sensitive. These taxa have been used in several ecological indices, such as the simple abundance ratio between Polychaeta and Amphipoda or the Benthic Opportunist Annelids Amphipods (BO2A) index, to assess the Ecological Quality Status -EcoQs-of soft-bottom communities. In terms of Taxonomic Sufficiency (TS), the polychaete/amphipod ratio (i.e. at the level of the class/order) has been proved to be effective in identifying major changes in benthic communities following disturbances. However, an underlying issue is to assess the acceptable TS limit value needed to state accurately the quality of the benthic environment. We tested three indices using 18 series of observations carried out in five north-eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean zones impacted by oil spills, oil and gas production, brine and urban sewage, harbours and aquaculture farms within impacted and control areas. Similar results to BO2A were obtained when limiting the TS at the level of Polychaete opportunistic families, which required a lower degree of taxonomic expertise, and classifying all amphipods as sensitive taxa. In such a way that the EcoQs given by the BPOFA (Benthic Polychaete Opportunistic Families Amphipods) was very similar to those given by the BO2A (Benthic Opportunistic Annelids Amphipods).

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Biological Indicators to Assess the Ecological Status of River-Dominated Estuaries: The Case of Benthic Indicators in the Ebro River Estuary

Ibáñez

Caiola

Trobajo

et al. 2015

The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry

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Towards a suitable ecological status assessment of highly stratified mediterranean estuaries: A comparison of benthic invertebrate fauna indices

Cited by 16 publications

References 66 publications

Can biotic indicators distinguish between natural and anthropogenic environmental stress in estuaries?

Can biotic indicators distinguish between natural and anthropogenic environmental stress in estuaries?

Polychaete/amphipod ratios: An approach to validating simple benthic indicators

Biological Indicators to Assess the Ecological Status of River-Dominated Estuaries: The Case of Benthic Indicators in the Ebro River Estuary

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