0000000000066970

AUTHOR

Juan M. Soria

The use of zooplankton metrics to determine the trophic status and ecological potential: An approach in a large Mediterranean watershed.

In the European Water Framework Directive, zooplankton was not included as a Biological Quality Element despite its important place in the aquatic trophic web. In the present study on zooplankton abundances and biomasses, we used several metrics to test their ability to detect differences among trophic statuses and ecological potential levels, and collected a large sum of data in more than 60 reservoirs at Ebro watershed, on more than 300 sampling occasions over 10 years. Our results indicate that most zooplankton metrics are correlated to environmental variables that determine reservoirs’ trophic states, especially chlorophyll a and total phosphorus. The metrics with better sensitivity to …

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Calibration and Validation of Algorithms for the Estimation of Chlorophyll-A in Inland Waters with Sentinel-2

The Ocean Color 2 (OC2), Ocean Color 3 (OC3) and Dall'Olmo three-band (TBDO) algorithms used for the estimation of the chlorophyll-a concentration [Chl-a] have been calibrated and validated for Sentinel-2 spectral bands. Measurements of in situ chlorophyll-a, radiometry and simulations with HydroLight have been used for this purpose within the Ecological Status of AQuatic Systems Satellites (ESAQS) Project to estimate water quality in aquatic systems in Spain. The results show that Sentinel-2 spectral bands are suitable for studying the chlorophyll-a concentration in inland waters. The TBDO algorithm have been applied to Sentinel-2 images and satisfactory results have been obtained in Albuf…

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Influence of Wind on Suspended Matter in the Water of the Albufera of Valencia (Spain)

Wind is one of the factors that has a great influence on suspended matter in lakes, especially in shallow lagoons. In order to know how wind affects the water in Albufera of Valencia, a shallow coastal lagoon, the measured variables of turbidity and transparency have been correlated with the estimates by processing Sentinel-2 satellite images with the Sen2Cor processor. Data from four years of study show that most of them are light to gentle easterly breezes and moderate to fresh westerly breezes. The results obtained show significant correlations between the measured variables and those obtained from the satellite images for total suspended matter and water transparency and with the averag…

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Effect of restoration on zooplankton community in a permanent interdunal pond

Restoration projects in wetlands are becoming increasingly frequent to recover or to create new aquatic ecosystems, after the significant impact and high degradation they have undergone. In the present study, we focused on the changes in the zooplankton community in a permanent peridunal pond where a restoration was carried out in order to increase its surface as a main objective. For this purpose, the community was compared before and after the restoration (15 years before, the year after and between 3 and 6 years later). Significant changes in environmental variables were observed after pond restoration: chlorophyll a concentration decreased and dissolved oxygen increased. Substantial mod…

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Summer phytoplankton assemblages across trophic gradients in hard-water reservoirs

Summer phytoplankton assemblages are described and characterised according to their prevalence in a series of hard-water reservoirs of eastern Spain that had been classified in trophic categories on OECD criteria. Distribution patterns of phytoplankton species were ordinated statistically by principal components analysis (PCA). The first component was strongly related to trophic gradient and it particularly discriminated the eutrophic and hypertrophic reservoirs. The second component segregated life-forms, so that (1), on the oligo-mesotrophic side, large dinoflagellates were separated from small centric diatoms, unicellular chrysophytes and filamentous ullotrichales and, on the eu-hypertro…

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Phytoplankton distribution in Mar Menor coastal lagoon (SE Spain) during 2017.

The Mar Menor is a Spanish coastal lagoon of great ecological and economic interest. The agricultural and tourist activities developed in the surroundings of the lagoon, together with the modifications in its channels of connection with the Mediterranean Sea, have notably affected the quality of its waters, which is altering the natural balance of the ecosystem. In this work, an analysis of the density of phytoplankton present in the lagoon between the months of May to December 2017 was carried out. The results indicate a significant increase in phytoplankton density between 2500 and 67,300 cells/mL compared to previous data of 1981 (between 10 and 500 cells/mL). Concentration of Chlorophyl…

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Pesticide contamination in water and sediment of the aquatic systems of the Natural Park of the Albufera of Valencia (Spain) during the rice cultivation period

The Natural Park of the Albufera (Valencia, Spain) is a Mediterranean wetland where rice cultivation dominates the agricultural activity. The purpose of this study was to offer broader information about the current state of the wetland assessing the contamination by pesticides in four aquatic habitats during the rice cultivation period in 2016. Liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometer (UHPLC-MS/MS) was used to determine the pesticides in water and sediment samples from the rice fields, Lake Albufera and irrigation and outlet channels. 21 pesticides were detected in our samples (seven already forbidden by European legislation). Higher values than 10000 ng L of accumulated pesticid…

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A European Multi Lake Survey dataset of environmental variables, phytoplankton pigments and cyanotoxins

Under ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic activity, which continuously challenge ecosystem resilience, an in-depth understanding of ecological processes is urgently needed. Lakes, as providers of numerous ecosystem services, face multiple stressors that threaten their functioning. Harmful cyanobacterial blooms are a persistent problem resulting from nutrient pollution and climate-change induced stressors, like poor transparency, increased water temperature and enhanced stratification. Consistency in data collection and analysis methods is necessary to achieve fully comparable datasets and for statistical validity, avoiding issues linked to disparate data sources. The Europea…

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Residence Time Analysis in the Albufera of Valencia, a Mediterranean Coastal Lagoon, Spain

The Albufera of Valencia is a coastal lagoon located in the western area of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Iberian Peninsula. It has an area of 23.1 km2 and an average depth of only 1 m, with a maximum depth of 1.6 m. This lagoon is the remnants of an original and more extensive wetland of about 220 km2 which is now mostly dedicated to rice cultivation. Surface water is supplied through several main and many secondary canals for a total of 64 water entry points and three exit points to the sea. It is difficult to evaluate the residence time due to the lack of reliable measurements of the inflow or outflow, as well as continuous measurements. Between 1988 and 2018, several procedures were use…

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A new tool for the assessment of severe anthropogenic eutrophication in small shallow water bodies

Abstract Unlike in deep stratified lakes, the assessment of eutrophication in shallow aquatic systems (i.e., wetlands, marshes, ponds) should be based on the interaction between water and sediment. The availability of P to primary producers is naturally higher in shallow systems, because the sediment plays an active part via adsorption, precipitation and release processes. Thus, many wetlands in protected areas are naturally eutrophic and have a high trophic status due to intrinsic features and thus, display a high concentration of total-P in the water without necessarily implying pollution or poor quality. We have provided a diagnostic tool based on the chemical equilibrium of dissolved re…

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Stratification strength and light climate explain variation in chlorophyll a at the continental scale in a European multilake survey in a heatwave summer

The authors acknowledge COST Action ES 1105 "CYANOCOST Cyanobacterial blooms and toxins in water resources: Occurrence impacts and management" and COST Action Global Change Biology ES 1201 NETLAKE -Networking Lake Observatories in Europe" for contributing to this study through networking and knowledge sharing with European experts in the field. We acknowledge the members of the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) for their collaborative spirit and enthusiasm that inspired the grassroots effort of the EMLS. E.M. was supported by a grant from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation to Bas Ibelings and by supplementary funding from University of Geneva…

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In Memoriam Maria Rosa Miracle. Limnologist

Volumen colectivo que reúne 42 contribuciones dedicadas a María Rosa Miracle, fallecida el 28 de mayo de 2017 en Valencia, a los 72 años, cuando aún estaba en activo como profesora emérita de la Universitat de València. Durante sus casi cinco décadas de investigación y docencia, se convirtió en una limnóloga de influencia mundial, ya que sus líneas de investigación abrieron el camino a nuevos temas interdisciplinares, algunos de los cuales se tratan en este libro homenaje. Poco después de su muerte, la Asociación Ibérica de Limnología le dedicó un número especial de su revista 'Limnetica', a la que siempre estuvo vinculada como autora, revisora o editora. Antiguos alumnos, colegas y colabor…

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Remote sensing of cyanobacterial blooms in a hypertrophic lagoon (Albufera of València, Eastern Iberian Peninsula) using multitemporal Sentinel-2 images

Eutrophy in Albufera of Valencia (Eastern Iberian Peninsula) is a quite old problem since after the intense eutrophication processes throughout the 1960s. The system shifted to a turbid stable state consolidated by the virtual disappearance of macrophytes by the early 1970s. The lagoon has been studied extensively since the 1980s, but efforts to revert the system to a clear state have not yielded the expected results because cultural eutrophication due to the growth of population in its area of influence and the effects of climate change, decreasing rainfall and increasing evaporation. This has driven to an increase in water retention times in the lagoon in recent years, resulting in a phyt…

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Turbidez y profundidad de disco de Secchi con Sentinel-2 en embalses con diferente estado trófico en la Comunidad Valenciana

[ES] En los estudios de calidad de aguas por teledetección, uno de los principales indicadores es la transparencia o turbidez del agua. La transparencia puede ser medida in situ mediante la profundidad del disco de Secchi (SD), y la turbidez con un turbidímetro. En las últimas décadas se han utilizado diferentes relaciones entre bandas de diferentes sensores obtenidas por teledetección para la estimación de estos parámetros. En este trabajo, a partir de datos de campo obtenidos a lo largo de 2017 y 2018 en embalses de la cuenca del Júcar con gran variedad de estados tróficos, se han calibrado diferentes índices y bandas para poder estimar la transparencia a partir de imágenes Sentinel-2 (S2…

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Influence of chlorophyllaquantification methods in ecological quality indices

Chlorophyll a concentration in aquatic ecosystems is strongly related to the phytoplankton community biomass, the growth of which depends on nutrient availability. Thus, chlorophyll a concentration...

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Monitoring Coastal Lagoon Water Quality Through Remote Sensing: The Mar Menor as a Case Study

The Mar Menor is a hypersaline coastal lagoon located in the southeast of Spain. This fragile ecosystem is suffering several human pressures, such as nutrient and sediment inputs from agriculture and other activities and decreases in salinity. Therefore, the development of an operational system to monitor its evolution is crucial to know the cause-effect relationships and preserve the natural system. The evolution and variability of the turbidity and chlorophyll-a levels in the Mar Menor water body were studied here through the joint use of remote sensing techniques and in situ data. The research was undertaken using Operational Land Imager (OLI) images on Landsat 8 and two SPOT images, bec…

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Seguimiento del fenómeno blanco de la laguna de la Cruz (Cuenca, España)

[EN] In the present study, a five-year follow-up was performed by remote sensing of the calcium carbonate precipitation in La Gitana karstic lake also known as La Cruz (located on the province of Cuenca, Spain). The important role that calcium carbonate precipitation plays in the ecology of the lake is well known for its influence on the vertical migrations of phytoplankton, the concentration of bioavailable phosphorus and, therefore, the eutrophication and quality of the waters. Whiting take place between the months of July and August, and it can be studied at this time through its optical properties, with the main objective of offering updated data on a phenomenon traditionally studied an…

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