Phycological flora of the Guadalquivir River Basin. Its value in determining the ecoregionalization of the basin

Abstract

Phycological flora of the Guadalquivir River Basin. Its value in determining the ecoregionalization of the basinIn compliance with the Water Framework Directive of the European Union, we needed to diagnose the ecologic quality of the different sections of the rivers of the Guadalquivir basin. In order to establish a regional classification of the water bodies by a grouping into areas of similar characteristics, we took into consideration the benthic phycologic flora of the Guadalquivir-River basin. Benthic algae, being one of the groups of organisms that best define the water quality of rivers, are useful for characterizing the basin's ecoregionalization. We collected multihabitat samples in 109 georeferenced reaches and identified 777 algal taxa: 397 Bacillariophyceae (diatoms), 181 Chlorophyta, 148 Cyanoprokariota, 41 Euglenophyta, 4 Chrysophyceae, 3 Dinophyta, 2 Rodophyta, and 1 Cryptophyta. Except for Achnanthidium minutissimum-it being present in nearly all the sites-the species composition enabled the identification of 4 groups: (1) the Sierra-Morena rivers with a predominantly siliceous substrate and concomitantly low mineralized water (< 250 mg/L); (2) the Doñana and lower-Guadiamar rivers of the lower-Guadalquivir with a high relative proportion of sodium; (3) rivers with any kind of disturbance, principally organic contamination, grouped regardless of their geographical location; (4) rivers of high calcium content that, though constituting a heterogeneous group, the majority of which belong to the Betic-Mountain region. According to our results, the subbasin was the one that determined the composition of the periphyton. The categorization of the rivers according to biota obtained in the present work differs from the hydrogeomorphological classification established by the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation.