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Coastal Hypoxia and the Importance of Benthic Macrofauna Communities for Ecosystem Functioning
- Source :
- Estuaries and Coasts. 40:457-468
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2016.
-
Abstract
- Coastal ecosystems are important because of the vital ecosystem functions and services they provide, but many are threatened by eutrophication and hypoxia. This results in loss of biodiversity and subsequent changes in ecosystem functioning. Consequently, the need for empirical field studies regarding biodiversity-ecosystem functioning in coastal areas has been emphasized. The present field study quantified the links between benthic macrofaunal communities (abundance, biomass, and species richness), sediment oxygen consumption, and solute fluxes (NO3 − + NO2 −, NH4 +, PO4 3−, SiO4, Fe, Mn) along a 7.5-km natural gradient of seasonal hypoxia in the coastal northern Baltic Sea. Sampling was done in late August 2010 in the middle archipelago zone of the Hanko peninsula, Finland. As predicted, the macrofaunal communities were decimated with increasing hypoxia, and the nutrient transformation processes were changed at the sediment-water interface, with notably higher effluxes of phosphate and ammonium from the sediment. Solute fluxes varied even during normoxia, which implies a high context-dependency, and could be explained by even small variations in environmental variables such as organic matter and C/N ratios. Importantly, the low diversity benthic macrofaunal communities, which were dominated by Macoma balthica and the invasive Marenzelleria spp., had a large influence on the solute fluxes, especially under normoxia, but also under hypoxia.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Baltic Sea
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
MARINE-SEDIMENTS
ANOXIA
ARCHIPELAGO SEA
Biodiversity
Benthic macrofauna
Aquatic Science
Coastal zone
01 natural sciences
OXYGEN
Nutrient
Ecosystem
14. Life underwater
Hypoxia
POLYCHAETES MARENZELLERIA SPP
CHESAPEAKE BAY
1172 Environmental sciences
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
NUTRIENT FLUXES
Ecology
biology
010604 marine biology & hydrobiology
Hypoxia (environmental)
15. Life on land
biology.organism_classification
NORTHERN BALTIC SEA
ORGANIC-MATTER
Oceanography
Benthic zone
Ecosystem functioning
Environmental science
BIODIVERSITY
Species richness
Eutrophication
geographic locations
Macoma balthica
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15592731 and 15592723
- Volume :
- 40
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Estuaries and Coasts
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....d7785012d3ae8cad7d51a284425d88d2