Assessing land-use impacts on a 5th-order tropical river using multiple environmental indicators

Land-use change, such as agricultural expansion and intensification, and urbanisation, affects river ecosystem health and threatens riverine biological communities in a multifactorial and interactive way. In this study, we compiled the results of several studies carried out in a 5th-order tropical river, the Rio das Mortes in the upper Rio Grande basin (Southeast Brazil). We analysed if a combination of different environmental indicators, such as river water quality, sediment structure, habitat structural integrity, biochemistry of suspended organic matter, and the composition and distribution of the benthic invertebrate community, provides a complementary and more complete assessment of land-use impacts from headwaters to the river mouth than single indicators. Water quality exhibited longitudinal changes along the studied river, especially during the dry season, corresponding to the urbanisation pattern in the river catchment with considerable urbanisation already in the upper catchment, and several urban centres along the river's course. The predominance of saturated fatty acids and bacterial fatty acids in the river water's suspended organic matter at urbanised river segments showed that the biochemistry of suspended organic matter, an important resource for the river's biological community, was a sensitive indicator of catchment urbanisation. In contrast, river sediment structure and habitat integrity showed local impacts, primarily in mid-catchment urbanised river segments, with notable positive effects of local conservation efforts and natural differences in sediment structure. Chironomidae and Oligochaeta were the dominant groups in the river's macroinvertebrate community. Their spatial distribution was mainly determined by sediment structure and river habitat integrity, and thereby, by local impacts on river structure. We argue that integrated assessment approaches rarely applied to larger tropical rivers, combining local structural, habitat and community characteristics with large-scale land use and water quality patterns, are important to understand and manage land-use stress in these systems.

Nourished, Exposed Beaches Exhibit Altered Sediment Structure and Meiofaunal Communities

To retain recreational uses and shoreline protection, a large proportion of ocean beaches have been, and continue to be, nourished. Adding sand from subtidal and terrestrial sources to nourish beaches rarely re-creates the original sediment structure of the beach. Numerous studies have demonstrated that meiofaunal communities are altered by changes in sediment composition in low-energy substrates, therefore, we have explored whether beach nourishment has affected exposed, ocean beach meiofaunal communities. Since the early 2000s, we have conducted a series of sampling and experimental studies on meiofauna and sediments on nourished beaches in coastal North Carolina USA that had been sampled previously in the early 1970s, prior to any beach nourishment. Most of our studies consider meiofauna at the level of major taxa only. However, a few studies examine free-living flatworm (turbellarian) species in detail because of the existence of historical studies examining this group. Comparison of contemporary results to historical data and of heavily nourished versus lightly nourished beaches reveals extensive changes to beach sediment structure and meiofaunal community composition, indicating that the beaches are a more heterogeneous habitat than in the past. The effects of these substantial physical and biological changes to the production of beach ecosystem services are unlikely to be inconsequential.

Integrated characterization of subsurface media from locations up- and down-gradient of a uranium-contaminated aquifer

The processing of sediment to accurately characterize the spatially-resolved depth profiles of geophysical and geochemical properties along with signatures of microbial density and activity remains a challenge especially in complex contaminated environments. To provide site assessment for a larger study, we processed cores from two sediment boreholes from background and contaminated core sediments and surrounding groundwater from the ENIGMA Field Research Site at the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR). We compared fresh core sediments by depth to capture the changes in sediment structure, sediment minerals, biomass, and pore water geochemistry in terms of major and trace elements including contaminants, cations, anions, and organic acids. Soil porewater samples were matched to groundwater level, flow rate, and preferential flows and compared to homogenized groundwater-only samples from neighboring monitoring wells. This environmental systems approach provided detailed site-specific biogeochemical information from the various properties of subsurface media to reveal the influences of solid, liquid, and gas phases. Groundwater analysis of nearby wells only revealed high sulfate and nitrate concentrations while the same analysis using sediment pore water samples with depth was able to suggest areas high in sulfate- and nitrate- reducing bacteria based on their decreased concentration and production of reduced by-products that could not be seen in the groundwater samples. Positive correlations among porewater content, total organic carbon, trace metals and clay minerals revealed a more complicated relationship among contaminant, sediment texture, groundwater table, and biomass. This suggested that groundwater predominantly flowed through preferential paths with high flux and little mixing with water in the interstices of sediment particles, which could impact microbial activity. The abundant clay minerals with high surface area and high water-holding capacity of micro-pores of the fine clay rich layer suggest suppression of nutrient supply to microbes from the surface. The fluctuating capillary interface had high concentrations of Fe and Mn-oxides combined with trace elements including U, Th, Sr, Ba, Cu, and Co. This suggests the mobility of highly toxic elements, sediment structure, and biogeochemical factors are all linked together to impact microbial communities, emphasizing that solid interfaces play an important role in determining the abundance of bacteria in the sediments.