Ecological quality assessment of small estuaries from the Portuguese coast based on fish assemblages indices |
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Authors: | Cardoso Inês Pais Miguel Pessanha Henriques Sofia da Fonseca Luís Cancela Cabral Henrique N |
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Institution: | a Centro de Oceanografia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal;b Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal;c Centro de Oceanografia, Laboratório Marítimo da Guia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Av. N. Sra. do Cabo, 939, 2750-374, Portugal |
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Abstract: | The importance of establishing the ecological quality of estuarine systems has been widely acknowledged and led to the development of several fish community-based multimetric indices. Nevertheless, a question rose about the accuracy of these tools when natural disturbance is acting upon the organization of the systems’ communities. Four multimetric indices were used to examine their ability to differentiate the ecological status of five small estuarine systems (southern Portugal), and also to test if they reflected the level of anthropogenic pressures. Fish assemblages from Mira, Odeceixe and Aljezur (in the Southwest coast), Gilão and Bensafrim (in the South coast) estuaries were sampled seasonally for one year, and anthropogenic sources of pressure were identified and quantified. We found that although the applied indices provided information on ecological condition differentiation among systems, they are unable to explain different classes of ecological status in systems with equivalent pressure levels. |
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Keywords: | Fish assemblages Small estuaries Ecological integrity Fish-based multimetric indices Portuguese coast |
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