Abstract
Stormwater retention ponds receive a variety of urban and highway pollutants that may have adverse effects on water-dwelling organisms. In this exploratory study, the benthic diatom community composition at genus level of nine such ponds servicing highway, residential, industrial, and mixed industrial/residential catchments was examined. Thirteen biocides were measured in the pond water as one of the possible explanatory factors for diatom taxonomic variability. The uppermost 1 cm of sediment was sampled, and a total of 50 diatom genera were identified. Moderate to high similarities were found among the diatom communities of the ponds. Two genera, namely Navicula and Nitzschia, were the most abundant and accounted for 19–47% of the relative abundance in the ponds. Estimated relative abundances of diatom genera and measured biocide concentrations in the ponds were grouped according to land use. Highway ponds were found to be significantly different from ponds servicing residential and industrial catchments, while no significant differences were found between residential and industrial ponds. The presence of biocides alone could not explain diatom taxonomic variability, although some evidence was found that communities differed depending on the catchment type of the ponds. The results of this exploratory study are an important contribution to future works investigating stormwater diatom communities, where combined effects of biocides and other stormwater contaminants and community stressors, e.g., metals, PAHs, road salt, should be explicitly looked at.
Highlights
Increasing urbanization and human activities create pollution pressure on the natural environment
In the present exploratory study, we investigate the taxonomic composition of benthic diatom communities at genus level in sediments from stormwater retention ponds from catchments of different land use
The benthic diatom community composition of nine stormwater retention ponds located in catchments of different land use and receiving varying levels of biocide contamination was examined
Summary
Increasing urbanization and human activities create pollution pressure on the natural environment. Surface water bodies are habitats for a diversity of fauna and flora. They receive particular attention with respect to contamination. Surface runoff contains a substantial amount of particulate and dissolved pollutants, originating from different sources such as vehicles, pavements, installations, and buildings (Bannerman et al 1993; McLeod et al 2006). One such pollutant group that has received increasing attention—and which has been found in significant concentrations in urban stormwater runoff—is biocides from building materials (Bollmann et al 2014)
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