How Does Mining Salinisation Gradient Affect the Structure and Functioning of Macroinvertebrate Communities?
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How Does Mining Salinisation Gradient Affect the Structure and Functioning of Macroinvertebrate Communities? Agnieszka Sowa
& Mariola Krodkiewska & Dariusz Halabowski
Received: 14 May 2020 / Accepted: 13 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Elevated salinity creates degrading conditions for the development of aquatic biota in different regions of the world. There is a need for research on freshwater salinisation in order to understand how this stressor alters ecosystem function and to predict changes in biodiversity globally. Such data are missing from Central Europe, and therefore, the presented study was performed in inland anthropogenic ponds with different salinity levels located in the second largest European hard coal basin. The researcher indicated a positive correlation between water salinity and the biomass and density of macrozoobenthos as well as the percentage of shredders and the abundance of alien species, whereas there was a decrease in taxa diversity and richness and the abundance of filtering and gathering collectors and predators along with increasing salinity. The survey showed that a high level of nutrients and organic matter were also significantly correlated with the distribution of the macroinvertebrate taxa and functional feeding groups. The conducted research confirmed that mining salinisation acts as a strong filter that shapes the biodiversity because it affects the composition, abundance, biomass and functional traits of benthic macroinvertebrates and significantly contributes to the invasion of alien species.
A. Sowa (*) : M. Krodkiewska : D. Halabowski Institute of Biology, Biotechnology and Environmental Protection, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Silesia in Katowice, Bankowa 9, 40–007 Katowice, Poland e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Salt pollution . Benthic invertebrates . Coal mines . Water salinity . Anthropogenic ponds
1 Introduction Anthropogenic salinisation of inland waters is caused by many human activities on every inhabited continent and will expand globally as a consequence of global climate change (Williams 2001; Kefford et al. 2003; Vineis et al. 2011; Cañedo-Argüelles et al. 2013; Kefford et al. 2016; Olson 2019). This phenomenon is especially common in industrial and urban regions and areas that are connected with mining activity (Rzętała 2008; Machowski 2010; Molenda 2011; Cañedo-Argüelles et al. 2013). The hard coal mining process is inseparably connected with the production of huge amounts of saline underground water that contains high loads of TDS, sulphates and hardness and inflow into the surface and ground waters and contaminate them. The types of foundation and the extraction depth as well as radioactive contamination by radium and uranium also have an impact on water mineralisation (Tiwary 2001; Smoliński 2006). Thus, the problem of salinisation in such areas is particularly significant in the case of the water bodies that have been involved in the process of coal mining or that are located in regions where there was and/or is mining act
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