Stream drying and stream pollution: similarities in impact on benthic invertebrates

Investor logo

Warning

This publication doesn't include Faculty of Economics and Administration. It includes Faculty of Science. Official publication website can be found on muni.cz.
Authors

STRAKA Michal POLÁŠEK Marek LOSKOTOVÁ Barbora DOSTÁLOVÁ Alena POLÁŠKOVÁ Vendula PAŘIL Petr

Year of publication 2019
Type Conference abstract
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Science

Citation
Description Due to the ongoing climate change which brings unbalanced summer precipitations together with higher evapotranspiration related to rising temperatures, there is an increasing risk of stream intermittency in continental temperate zone. Intermittent streams are exposed to diverse anthropogenic impacts including the input of organic pollution. The discharge of wastewater from sewage treatment plants is one of the most common forms of pollution in stream ecosystems and has adverse effect on benthic invertebrates. The response of stream biota to saprobic pollution is well described in perennial systems. However, the evidence of structural and functional aspects of benthic invertebrate assemblages in polluted intermittent streams is scarce. We analysed the impact of such pollution and flow cessation on freshwater invertebrate community within the dataset of 16 sites from the Czech Republic. Perennial and intermittent sites and polluted and non-polluted sites (4 replicates from each combination) were compared to disentangle the impact of wastewater pollution and flow intermittency. We found that the benthic invertebrate assemblages from four studied groups (perennial non-polluted, perennial polluted, intermittent non-polluted, intermittent polluted) differ. Our results indicate, that this type of water pollution and stream intermittency can have similar yet not the same effect on benthic invertebrates.
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.