INVESTIGADORES
MARCOVECCHIO Jorge Eduardo
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Distribution of metals and zooplankton in a heavily industrialized estuary (Bahía Blanca estuary, Argentina). Valuable tools in the assessment of ecosystems conditions.
Autor/es:
MELISA FERNANDEZ SEVERINI; SANDRA BOTTE; MONICA HOFFMEYER; JORGE MARCOVECCHIO
Lugar:
Figueira da Foz
Reunión:
Congreso; Integrative tools and methods in assessing ecological quality in estuarine and coastal systems worldwide ? ECSA 47; 2010
Institución organizadora:
Estuarine Coastal Sciences Association (ECSA)
Resumen:
Heavy metals are widely distributed in nature, and they are persistent contaminants which enter the environment by natural processes and processes derived from human activities through atmospheric deposition, rivers, direct discharges or dumping. Human activity is mainly located within the fluvial watersheds as well as in the rias and estuarine margins. These coastal areas are therefore important for the fate of contaminants and hence are worth studying. Moreover, estuaries are unique ecosystems with dynamic and complex processes of ecological and economic importance and they are amongst the most productive environments on Earth due to the presence of high phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass, key components in aquatic food webs. The suspended particulate matter (SPM) is a major carrier by which trace metals are transported to the sea and plankton also has an important role in the biogeochemical cycle of trace metals. Once incorporated, the metals may be transferred along the food chain and transformed by the organisms, enhancing or alleviating their toxicity. On the other hand, the bioavailable fraction is very important to assess the environmental quality of heavy metals, and is only accessible by determining the concentrations of metals in organisms like zooplankton. Accordingly, metal accumulated in invertebrates have the potential to provide information of applied relevance in terms of the geographical and temporal variation in the bioavailabilities of toxic metals in aquatic systems.