An overview of ecological status, vulnerability and future perspectives of European large shallow, semi-enclosed coastal systems, lagoons and transitional waters. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science,
ABSTRACT1. Transitional waters, described as critical transition zones because of their position at terrestrial, freshwater and marine interfaces, provide essential goods and services to the biosphere including human populations. These ecotones face increasing human influence mainly due to population density increase in coastal areas.2. Transitional water bodies have, to date, received little attention in the development of ecological status indicators; this is a critical deficiency when trying to meet the Water Framework Directive objective of all significant water bodies achieving good ecological status by the year 2015.3. In order to assess changes in transitional water communities many taxonomic-based indicators have already been proposed but there are a number of concerns for their use such as taxonomic classification difficulties, their unsuitability for multi-site comparisons and their inconsistent relationships with disturbance or stress.4. Alternative methods based on body size, abundance distribution among functional groups, functional diversity and productivity descriptors are proposed. These methods offer the opportunity to compare sites with different taxonomic compositions and allow derivation of indicators related to ecological status of communities under scrutiny.5. Finally, the suitability of these taxonomic-free descriptors to provide relevant information for each of the four main biotic compartments in coastal lagoons is discussed. The use of biomass distribution among functional groups for fish, benthos and macrophyte and to use body-size distribution for benthos and plankton is proposed.
ABSTRACT1. Benthic community parameters were studied in six coastal brackish-water lagoons located in western Greece (Ionian Sea). Five of the lagoons studied are around the coast of the Amvrakikos Gulf under the influence of the Rivers Louros and Arachthos and one lagoon is situated in northwest Peloponissos.2. All the lagoons experienced a wide range of temperatures, salinities and dissolved oxygen due to their high degree of confinement and shallow depths. Confinement and sediment composition were the major factors affecting number of species and biodiversity of benthic communities.3. The Shannon diversity index does not appear to be efficient in discriminating between natural stress and anthropogenic disturbance in lagoonal ecosystems.
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