Evaluation of the impact of industrial sewage pollution on marine benthic communities

Abstract

A survey was performed to assess organic pollution, water properties and the marine benthic community. The need to assess the environmental status of marine and coastal waters encouraged the design of specific biotic indices to evaluate the response of benthic communities to humaninduced changes in water quality. In this study of the benthic community structure in Ghanam Creek surrounding an industrial sewage discharge, water and sediment samples were collected at eight sites in the warm season and cold season. Environmental data on physical and chemical variables were also collected from each site and a multivariate analysis was carried out to determine the effect of environmental factors on the biodiversity distribution. The results indicated that the station furthest from the petrochemical industries (station located in Ghanam Creek) had higher species diversity and consequently a higher value for the Shannon-Weaver diversity index. The present study also showed that polychaetes were more abundant. Although polychaetes were also recorded at all the other stations, these stations had greater biodiversity with different numerically dominant species such as: Isopoda, Decapoda, Gastropoda, Copepoda, Bivalvia, Pennatulacea and Crustacea.Consequently, it was established that macrobenthic biodiversity was related to dissolved oxygen and the percentage of organic matter in the sediment.

Response to oxygen deficiency (depletion): Bivalve assemblages as an indicator of ecosystem instability in the northern Adriatic Sea

“…Some benthic species are considered to be useful biological indicators for aquatic ecosystems (Tabatabaie & Amiri 2010;Billet et al 1983;Hrs-Brenko 2006). The macrobenthos, comprised of mostly non-migrant inhabitants, is used in the indices that expose the ecological changes in the marine ecosystem especially in the environmentally disturbed areas.…”

Macrozoobenthos as bioindicator of ecological status in Tanjung Pasir Coastal, Tangerang District, Banten Province, Indonesia

“…Macrozoobenthos is an organism that lives on the surface or in water sediment. Macrozoobenthos is the one of the most important organism in coastal and sea ecosystem (Dean 2008;Junardi and Wardoyo 2008;Shokat et al 2010;Tabatabaie and Amiri 2010;Sharma et al 2018), because it has a direct function in the nutrient cycle, pollutant metabolism and secondary productivity in water sediment (Kroncke and Reiss 2010;Amiri 2010, 2011). Macrozoobenthos also become one of the most important parts of water ecosystem food chain as food for demersal fish and some sea mammals (Sahidin and Yusli 2016).…”

Community Structure and Diversity across Spatial Scales of Macrobenthos in the Seomjin River

“…Some species of this group are considered to be useful biological indicators for aquatic ecosystems. The macro-benthos are mostly non-migrant inhabitants, and can be used as indices of ecological changes in the water environment [16]. This paper reports on this baseline survey of benthic macrofaunal community within the Seomjin River.…”