RT Journal Article
T1 Ecological quality assessement of marinas: An integrative approach combining biological and environmental data
A1 Guerra García, José Manuel
A1 Navarro Barranco, Carlos
A1 Ros Clemente, Macarena
A1 Sedano Vera, Francisco
A1 Espinar, Rafael
A1 Fernández  Romero, Alejandro
A1 Martínez Laiz, Gemma
A1 Cuesta Mariscal, José Antonio
A1 Giráldez Díaz, Inmaculada
A1 Morales Carrillo de Albornoz, Emilio
A1 Florido Capilla, Marta
A1 Moreira da Rocha, Juan
AB The importance of marinas as infrastructures for recreational boating is increasing substantially. However, information on their soft-bottom benthic communities, a key tool for managing programmes, is still scarce. We combined environment features with macro- and meiofaunal soft-bottom community information for assessing the ecological status of marinas with an integrative approach. To address this issue, we focused on eight marinas of the Southern Iberian Peninsula. Macro- and meiofauna data revealed high benthic heterogeneity at a spatial scale. The environmental variables which correlated best with macrofauna were mainly phosphorus, granulometry, and total organic carbon, and secondarily important variables were faecal coliforms, the biocide Irgarol, and heavy metals; total hydrocarbon concentration was also significant for meiofauna. Annelida was the dominant phylum in terms of number of species (37%) and abundance (66%) and were better descriptors of the environmental conditions than Arthropoda and Mollusca. Although identification to the species level is desirable and mandatory for assessing biological pollution, significant differences among marinas and correlations between fauna and abiotic variables were already detected at the level of family and order. This implies that biota assessment at higher levels may still be useful in monitoring programmes limited by time and budget constraints. The major novelty of this study lies in the development of an integrative assessment method based on the following selected ecological indicators: Marinas Environmental Pollution Index (MEPI), Biocontamination Index (BCI), macrofaunal biotic indices (AMBI, M-AMBI, BENTIX, MEDOCC and BENFES), macrofaunal taxa richness and Shannon-Wiener’s diversity, and nematode:copepod index. This approach was able to discriminate marinas of the Southern Iberian Peninsula based on their ecological status, which ranged from poor to good. The method can be useful to design standards for assigning “sustainable quality seals” to those marinas with better values of ecological indicators.
PB Elsevier
SN 0301-4797
YR 2021
FD 2021-03
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/23353
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/23353
LA eng
NO Guerra-García, J. M., Navarro-Barranco, C., Ros, M., Sedano, F., Espinar, R., Fernández-Romero, A., Martínez-Laiz, G., Cuesta, J. A., Giráldez, I., Morales, E., Florido, M., & Moreira, J. (2021). Ecological quality assessement of marinas: An integrative approach combining biological and environmental data. In Journal of Environmental Management (Vol. 286, p. 112237). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112237
NO We are very grateful to the staff in charge of the marinas for all support and facilities. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments to improve the manuscript, and to Clara Gavira O'Neill for the English revision. Financial support for this study was provided by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Project CGL 2017-82739-P co-financed by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación -AEI- and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional - FEDER-).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 15 jul 2026