Environmental Quality Assessment of Bizerte Lagoon (Tunisia) Using Living Foraminifera Assemblages and a Multiproxy Approach.

This study investigated the environmental quality of the Bizerte Lagoon (Tunisia) through an integrated approach that combined environmental, biogeochemical, and living benthic foraminiferal analyses. Specifically, we analyzed the physicochemical parameters of the water and sediment. The textural, m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLOS ONE
Main Authors: Maria Virgínia Alves Martins, Noureddine Zaaboub, Lotfi Aleya, Fabrizio Frontalini, Egberto Pereira, Paulo Miranda, Miguel Mane, Fernando Rocha, Lazaro Laut, Monia El Bour
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015
Subjects:
Medicine
R
Science
Q
Northeast Atlantic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137250
https://doaj.org/article/a5af6b60bbac4f10a8be7f4572a3b977
Description
Summary:This study investigated the environmental quality of the Bizerte Lagoon (Tunisia) through an integrated approach that combined environmental, biogeochemical, and living benthic foraminiferal analyses. Specifically, we analyzed the physicochemical parameters of the water and sediment. The textural, mineralogical, and geochemical characteristics of the sediment, including total organic carbon, total nitrogen, simultaneously extracted metals (SEM), acid volatile sulfides (AVS), chlorophyll a, CaCO3, and changes in bacterial populations and carbon isotopes were measured. The SEM/AVS values indicated the presence of relatively high concentrations of toxic metals in only some areas. Foraminiferal assemblages were dominated by species such as A. parkinsoniana (20-91%), Bolivina striatula (<40%), Hopkinsina atlantica (<17%), and Bolivina ordinaria (<15%) that cannot be considered typical of impacted coastal lagoons both in Mediterranean and northeast Atlantic regions. The results of this work suggest that Bizerte Lagoon is a unique setting. This lagoon is populated by typical marine species that invaded this ecosystem, attracted not only by the prevailing favorable environmental conditions but also by the abundance and quality of food. The results indicate that the metal pollution found in some areas have a negative impact on the assemblages of foraminifera. At present, however, this negative impact is not highly alarming.

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