Stability And Resilience In Macrobenthic
Communities: The Role Of Habitat Disturbance
Author(s)
C. Guerra, F. Cobo, M. González & J. Alonso
Abstract
The diversity of fluvial ecosystems allows the detection of various changes in the
natural equilibrium. These changes can be related to variations in the
composition of the fluvial forest, to the chemical or physical quality of the water,
or to alterations of the habitat template. The aim of this study was to understand
the resilience of the ecosystem to the degradation of the habitat, resulting from
the construction of a highway in a regional protected area. This resilience was
measured in terms of the reestablishment of macrobenthic communities. Located
at the Estorãos River (sub-watershed of the Lima River, NW Portugal), a set of
three sampling stations upstream and downstream from the construction site
were monitored for a period of one year, and the invertebrate communities were
characterized as well as their ecological and biological traits, and the changes
that occurred were classified. The observations made clearly mark the moment of
the beginning of the construction process, and from the trait analysis we could
discriminate between different types of pressures, namely an increment on
sediment loads, and riverbed deterioration. This impact also affected the trophic
relations and the food preferences of the invertebrate communities. From the
analysis it is apparent that the fact that the construction was done in late winter
contributed to the reestablishment of the invertebrate communities, since
construction didn't affect their sensitive reproduction period. This fact permitted
full recolonization of the construction site in a period of four months, reestablishing
the community at the same diversity levels as the reference sites. All
these aspects are in agreement with the components being analysed, but they lack
information from the longer time series and more ecological components are
needed to classify the resilience capacity of this type of ecosystem.
Keywords: habitat disturbance, fluvial ecosystem resilience, environmental
impact, macroinvertebrate communities.
Keywords
habitat disturbance, fluvial ecosystem resilience, environmental
impact, macroinvertebrate communities.
Related Book
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