Long-term changes in diversity in a subtropical estuary in southern Brazil

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1 Instituto de Oceanografia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Rio Grande, RS, Brazil
2 Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26522v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biodiversity, Ecology, Marine Biology, Climate Change Biology, Environmental Impacts
Keywords
diversity, coastal zone, estuary, southern Brazil, ILTER, long-term monitoring, ENSO
Copyright
© 2018 Muelbert et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Muelbert JH, Odebrecht C, Copertino M, Muxagata E, Colling AL, Vieira JP, Secchi ER. 2018. Long-term changes in diversity in a subtropical estuary in southern Brazil. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26522v1

Abstract

The Patos Lagoon (10,000 km2) is the dominant feature in the coastal plain of Southern Brazil. The estuary of the Patos Lagoon (32° 05' S, 52° 10'W) and adjacent coast were chosen as a SITE (1,500 km2) for the Brazilian Long Term Ecological Research (LTER). This region presents high biological productivity and at the same time is host of important port and industrial activities. From 2000 to 2015, systematic sampling of physico-chemical variables and of the main constituents from plankton, benthos and nekton was conducted monthly. Species diversity index were calculated to express changes in diversity in the estuary. The estuary is a river-dominated system with discharge maxima associated with strong rainfall and low discharge periods occurring during drought years. This has direct influence on the circulation and salinity variations, with low values recorded during El Niño and high salt-water intrusion during La Niña years. Results reveal that species composition of phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthic flora and macrofauna in the estuary are all affected by different scales of variability. The fact that ENSO is a dominant forcing factor in the region highlights the importance of long term monitoring of biological components of coastal and ocean observing systems.

Author Comment

This is an abstract which has been accepted for the WCMB.