Long-Term Changes of the State of Macrozoobenthos Comuninies in the Kruglaya Bay (Sevastopol)

S. V. Alyomov, T .V. Viter, E. V. Guseva

A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas RAS, Sevastopol, Russia

Abstract

To analyze the long-term changes in the ecological state of the Kruglaya Bay (Sevastopol) water area the environmental indices (BENTIX, AMBI, M-AMBI) are applied. For 20 years period (1992 – 2012) due to the anthropogenic load increasing there is a decrease in the indicators of the ecological state of benthic communities in a number of parts of the Bay. The communities’ state has deteriorated to "bad" in the polluted top part of the Bay and in the central part of the Bay it has changed to "good" or "medium". It is concluded that the ranking of water areas using all three indices will allow giving a more correct assessment of the environmental changes taking place.

Keywords

pollution, ecological state, macrozoobenthos, indices, the Black Sea

DOI

10.22449/2413-5577-2019-2-59-66

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