The Comacchio Saltworks, whose present day form is owed to the Napoleonic Government in 1808, remained productive until 1985, when the Ministry of Finance decided to cast off the Saltworks. Until the beginning of 2002, when a LIFE Project (LIFE00NAT/IT/7215) was launched, nothing had been done to the Saltworks, and the area appeared like a sort of completely abandoned industrial ruin. Within the LIFE Project framework, a 4-years study was carried out in order to evaluate the structure and composition of benthic communities under such harsh environmental conditions. The two main ponds (Valli Uccelliera and Lamenterio), plus the adductor canal (Duomo), were sampled from 2002 to 2005. Parameters of the water column were also gathered. The benthic community was very poor: the number of taxa varied between 9 and 2, and diversity between 1.95 and 0.13. During the study period, the most abundant species were Chironomus salinarius and Polydora ciliata. The results of the non parametric multivariate multiple regression analysis (DISTLM) showed that salinity, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, ammonia, and chlorophyll-a concentration in the water column explained all together about 62% of the variance of the benthic biodiversity pattern. The ecological quality status of the ponds was also investigated by means of benthic indices (AMBI, M-AMBI, BITS), resulting in very different EcoQ classifications. Our results confirm the need of care in the biotic index choice and use, also in hypersaline environments

Macrobenthic communities of Comacchio Saltworks: a four-years study

MUNARI, Cristina;ROSSI, Remigio;MISTRI, Michele
2008

Abstract

The Comacchio Saltworks, whose present day form is owed to the Napoleonic Government in 1808, remained productive until 1985, when the Ministry of Finance decided to cast off the Saltworks. Until the beginning of 2002, when a LIFE Project (LIFE00NAT/IT/7215) was launched, nothing had been done to the Saltworks, and the area appeared like a sort of completely abandoned industrial ruin. Within the LIFE Project framework, a 4-years study was carried out in order to evaluate the structure and composition of benthic communities under such harsh environmental conditions. The two main ponds (Valli Uccelliera and Lamenterio), plus the adductor canal (Duomo), were sampled from 2002 to 2005. Parameters of the water column were also gathered. The benthic community was very poor: the number of taxa varied between 9 and 2, and diversity between 1.95 and 0.13. During the study period, the most abundant species were Chironomus salinarius and Polydora ciliata. The results of the non parametric multivariate multiple regression analysis (DISTLM) showed that salinity, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, ammonia, and chlorophyll-a concentration in the water column explained all together about 62% of the variance of the benthic biodiversity pattern. The ecological quality status of the ponds was also investigated by means of benthic indices (AMBI, M-AMBI, BITS), resulting in very different EcoQ classifications. Our results confirm the need of care in the biotic index choice and use, also in hypersaline environments
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11392/1404530
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