A Marine Biotic Index to Establish the Ecological Quality of Soft-Bottom Benthos Within European Estuarine and Coastal Environments

doi:10.1016/S0025-326X(00)00061-8

Marine Pollution Bulletin

Volume 40, Issue 12, December 2000, Pages 1100-1114

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0025-326X(00)00061-8 Get rights and content

Abstract

In this paper, a marine Biotic Index (BI) for soft-bottom benthos of European estuarine and coastal environments is proposed. This is derived from the proportions of individual abundance in five ecological groups, which are related to the degree of sensitivity/tolerance to an environmental stress gradient. The main difference with previously published indices is the use of a simple formula that produces a continuous Biotic Coefficient (BC) – which makes it more suitable for statistical analysis, in opposition with previous discreet biotic indices – not affected by subjectivity. Relationships between this coefficient and a complementary BI with several environmental variables are discussed. Finally, a validation of the proposed index is made with data from systems affected by recent human disturbances, showing that different anthropogenic changes in the environment can be detected through the use of this BI.

Introduction

Marine environmental quality control is undertaken usually by means of monitoring different parameters in water, sediment and sentinel organisms (i.e. Mussel Watch), as in the USA (O’Connor, 1992), France (RNO, 1998) or Great Britain (Franklin and Jones, 1994). This control is centred on physico-chemical and ecotoxicological variables and, less usually, on biological variables. Dauer (1993) stated that biological criteria are considered important components of water quality because: (i) they are direct measures of the condition of the biota, (ii) they may uncover problems undetected or underestimated by other methods; and (iii) such criteria provide measurements of the progress of restoration efforts.

New European rules (see Directive Proposal 1999/C 343/01, Official Journal of the European Communities 30/11/1999) emphasize the importance of biological indicators, in order to establish the ecological quality of European coasts and estuaries. Benthic invertebrates are used frequently as bio-indicators of marine monitoring, because various studies have demonstrated that macrobenthos responds relatively rapidly to anthropic and natural stress Pearson and Rosenberg, 1978, Dauer, 1993.

River ecology has an established long tradition in applying macrobenthos as bio-indicators; likewise some biotic indices have been proposed Woodiwiss, 1964, Cairns et al., 1968, Chandler, 1970, ISO-BMWP, 1979. On the other hand, some attempts to provide useful `tools' to measure ecological quality in the marine environment have been developed in Europe and North America Hily, 1984, Majeed, 1987, Dauer, 1993, Grall and Glémarec, 1997, Weisberg et al., 1997.

All the aforementioned studies utilize soft-bottom communities to construct the indices, because macrobenthic animals are relatively sedentary (and cannot avoid deteriorating water/sediment quality conditions), have relatively long life-spans (thus, indicate and integrate water/sediment quality conditions, with time), consist of different species that exhibit different tolerances to stress and have an important role in cycling nutrients and materials between the underlying sediments and the overlying water column Hily, 1984, Dauer, 1993.

In this contribution, a marine Biotic Index (BI) is designed to establish the ecological quality of European coasts. This explores the response of soft-bottom communities to natural and man-induced changes in water quality, integrating long-term environmental conditions.

Section snippets

Sampling

The Department of Land Action, Housing and Environment of the Basque Government has established a network of monitoring stations along the Basque coast-line (North of Spain). This provides water, sediment and biological quality information from 30 sampling stations (Fig. 1). The benthic sampling has been carried out every February, from 1995 to 1998 using the research vessel `Ortze'.

At each of these stations, three replicates of benthos were collected with a Van Veen grab (1215 cm²). The

Results

The mean and standard error values of grain size and physical characteristic associated with each of the sampling stations (17 estuarine and 13 littoral) are listed in Table 2. The water depth range is very large at each of the stations (under Mean High Water Neap to 24 m in the estuaries and 30–35 m associated with the littoral samples). Mean salinity, at bottom water, ranges from 16.2 to 35.3 in estuaries, but is restricted within the coastal areas (35.3–35.5).

The range in the percentage of

Discussion

Many of the biotic indices developed in the literature (Clements et al., 1992, Mouthon, 1993, Stark, 1993, Grall and Glémarec, 1997, Roberts et al., 1998, etc.) have been based on the paradigm of Pearson and Rosenberg (1978), as stated by Weisberg et al. (1997) in developing their own index. The paradigm states that benthic communities respond to improvements in habitat quality in three progressive steps: the abundance increases; species diversity increases; and dominant species change from

Conclusions

The BC, proposed here as a BI to establish the ecological quality of the soft-bottom benthos within the European coastal environments, takes into account the faunal composition. As such, it ascribes each species to an ecological grouping, according to their sensitivity to an increasing stress gradient.

The different composition, in terms of the abundance of the various ecological groups in these samples provides a continuous BC (with values between 0 and 6). This is referenced to a BI,

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by different contracts undertaken between the Department of Land Action, Housing and Environment of the Basque Government and AZTI. One of the authors (V. Pérez) was supported by a grant from the Department of Agriculture and Fishing of the Basque Government. We thank the staff of the Department of Oceanography of AZTI for their assistance during the field sampling and laboratory analyses and the INSUB Group that was charged of the taxonomical analysis. We wish to thank

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