Rapid sewage pollution assessment by means of the coverage of epilithic taxa in a coastal area in the SW Atlantic

SARACHO BOTTERO MARIA ANDREA; GARAFFO GRISELDA; JAUBET LOURDES; ELÍAS RODOLFO; BECHERUCCI, MARIA EUGENIA; LLANOS ELIZABETH

SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2018 vol. 628-629 p. 826 - 834

0048-9697

The sewage pollution impact over coastal environment represents one of the main reasons explaining the deteriorationof marine coastal ecosystems around the globe. This paper aims to detect promptly a putative sewagepollution impact in a Southwestern Atlantic coastal area of Argentina as well as to identify a straightforwardway for monitoring, based on the relative abundance coverage of the intertidal epilithic taxa. Four samplingsites were distributed at increased distances from the sewage outfall where the cover of individual epilithic specieswas visually estimated. The surrounded outfall area (i.e. outfall site) resulted polluted with high percentagesof organic matter in sediment and Enterococcus concentration in seawater. The structure of the communityshowed a remarkable difference between the polluted site (outfall site) and the unpolluted sites. The polychaeteBoccardia proboscidea dominated the outfall site with variable abundances of the green algae Ulva sp. during theperiod of study, decreasing the diversity of the community,while themussel Brachidontes rodriguezii and variableabundances of several algae species dominated the unpolluted sites. The monitoring of the benthic communityrepresents an effective, non-destructive, relative inexpensive and rapidmethod to assess the health of the coastalenvironment in the study area. The large abundance of B. proboscidea along with the absence of B. rodriguezii individualsat b300 m to the sewage outfall discharge allowed the success of this classical monitoring method in atemperate marine-coastal ecosystem with certain gradient of pollution.