Community-level effects in edaphic fauna from an abandoned mining area: Integration with chemical and toxicological lines of evidence

• Tipo: Artigo em Revista Científica Internacional
• Data: 2013

Autores

Sara C Antunes (Autor) FCUP; Bruno B Castro (Autor) Outra; Claudia Moreira (Autor) Outra; Fernando Goncalves (Autor) Outra; Ruth Pereira (Autor) FCUP

Revista

Título: Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Vol. 88

Páginas: 65-71

ISSN: 0147-6513

Editora: Elsevier

Indexação

ISI Web of Knowledge - 6 Citações

Scopus - 7 Citações

Classificação Científica

FOS: Ciências médicas e da saúde > Medicina básica

Outras Informações

ID Authenticus: P-002-0QV

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2012.10.023

Abstract (EN): As a part of the Ecological Risk Assessment of a deactivated uranium mining area (Cunha Baixa), the aim of this study was to assess the drivers of litter arthropod community (ecological line of evidence) inhabiting soils with different degrees of contamination. Litter arthropods were collected in the mining area using a total of 70 pitfall traps, in the spring and autumn of 2004. Unlike information previously collected in the chemical and ecotoxicological lines of evidence, we found no clear evidence of impacts of soil contamination on the edaphic arthropod assemblage. Multivariate analyses were unable to extract relevant environmental gradients related to contamination, as most of the sites shared the same taxa overall. Given the consistency of the chemical and ecotoxicological lines of evidence, we must conclude that the litter arthropod assemblage underestimated the impacts of contamination in this abandoned mining area. In part, this could be due to the uncertainty caused by confounding factors that affect the litter arthropod community in the area. Nevertheless, despite the overall lack of responsiveness of the epigeic arthropod community data, a few taxa were negatively correlated with metal concentrations (Clubionidae and Staphylinidae), while Pseudoscorpionida were associated with the toxicological profile of the sites. These evidences suggest that community-level approaches with other animal and plant assemblages are necessary to reduce uncertainty relatively to the assessment of risks in higher evaluation tiers in the Cunha Baixa mine area.

Idioma: Inglês

Tipo (Avaliação Docente): Científica

Nº de páginas: 7