Marine Environmental Quality Research Articles

Valuing community awareness and willingness to pay for marine environment management: empirical analysis in coastal central region of Vietnam

Vietnam is a country with strengths in marine resources and economy. The coast provides habitats and livelihoods for millions of households but is in decline due to economic activity and climate change. This study’s purpose is to evaluate the awareness of people in the central coastal provinces of Vietnam about marine environmental values and their willingness to pay for the management and improvement of marine environmental quality. The study applied a binary random assessment model and surveyed 980 households in 4 coastal provinces to evaluate community payments. The results show that people have good awareness of tangible environmental values, associated with life and livelihood. They also highly agree with protecting marine environmental values and emphasize passing these values on to future generations. Community payment for sea environment management was estimated at 420 thousand/household/year in parametric model and 398 VND thousand/household/year in non-parametric model. Bid level, income and education are main factors affecting people’s ability to pay. The study also proposes implications for marine environmental management including strengthening community awareness and capacity, establishing financial mechanisms for community-led conservation at the local level, and integrating education marine environmental values for high school students to aim for sustainability in community awareness and behavior.

Recommendations for Using the Method of Standards in Bioindication Studies of the Northern Caspian Sea

Despite the increasing water and sediment pollution in the western part of the Northern Caspian Sea, the quality of its marine environment has never been assessed through bioindication, largely due to methodological issues. In this article, the method of standards, which involves comparing the species composition between the polluted and clean (reference) sites, was used for the bioindication of organic pollutants in the Northern Caspian Sea. The study area was segmented based on isobaths. The segments were determined depending on the range of depths inhabited by zoobenthos species and their ecological valence to oxygen. The depths with a sufficient abundance of oxyphilic zooplankton species (bioindicators) to apply the method of standards were located. The obtained results show that the method of standards is a good and reliable choice to assess the marine environment quality in the Northern Caspian Sea at isobaths of 6–9 m and within depths of 14–18 m for polluted and reference sites. However, the sediments must contain shells, sand, and siltstones. Therefore, while the method of standards has clear merits, it does not suffice for the rest of the Caspian Sea area.

Sustainable carbon sequestration via olivine based ocean alkalinity enhancement in the east and South China Sea: Adhering to environmental norms for nickel and chromium

Enhancing silicate weathering to increase oceanic alkalinity, thereby facilitating the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), is considered a highly promising technique for carbon sequestration. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility and potential of olivine-based ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) for the removal of atmospheric CO2 and its storage in seawater as bicarbonates in the East and South China Seas (ESCS). A particular focus is placed on the potential ecological impacts arising from the release of nickel (Ni) and chromium (Cr) during the olivine weathering process. We considered two extreme scenarios: one where Ni and Cr are entirely retained in seawater, and another where they are completely deposited in sediments. These scenarios respectively represent the maximum permissible concentrations of Ni and Cr in seawater and sediments during the OAE process. Current marine environmental quality standards (EQS) were utilized as the threshold limits for Ni and Cr in both seawater and sediment, with concentrations exceeding these EQS potentially leading to significant adverse effects on marine life. When all released Ni is retained in seawater, the allowable dosage of olivine varies from 0.05 to 13.7 kg/m2 (depending on olivine particle size, temperature, and water depth); when all released Ni is captured by sediment, the permissible addition of olivine ranges from 0.21 to 2.1 kg/m2 (depending on mixing depth). Given the low solubility of Cr, it is not necessary to consider the scenario where Cr exceeds the limit in seawater. The allowable amount of Cr entirely retained in sediments ranges from 0.69 to 47.2 kg/m2.In most scenarios, the accumulation of metals in sediments preferentially exceeds the corresponding threshold value rather than remaining in seawater. Therefore, we recommend using alkalization equipment to fully dissolve olivine before discharging into the sea, enabling a larger-scale application of olivine without significant negative ecological impacts.

Spatiotemporal Differences in Marine Environment Quality in China and the Influencing Factors

Based on 2011–2020 panel data for China’s coastal cities and provinces, this study used the entropy method and Theil index to measure marine environment quality (MEQ) and construct MEQ indicators. We used the Theil index to measure heterogeneity in regional MEQ and a geographic detector model to explore the driving factors of MEQ. Our study resulted in the following findings: (1) MEQ increased in waves, but the overall quality was relatively low, forming a spatial distribution pattern of high in the north and south, and low in the east. Moreover, MEQ was polarized between provinces. (2) Regional MEQ showed a distribution pattern of significant differences between the east and the north but small differences in the south. The regional gap was significant but gradually narrowing, with the contribution rate of intra-regional differences reaching over 90%. Meanwhile, interregionalinter-regional differences were relatively small and showed a balanced development trend. (3) Agricultural and aquaculture pollution were found to be the main factors affecting MEQ. The effect of marine engineering pollution was significantly increasing while that of environmental regulation intensity was relatively weak. The interaction between different driving factors mainly manifested as dual-factor enhancement and nonlinear enhancement.

New insights on the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of Chinese marine environmental quality and its driving factors from 2003 to 2021

As land and sea integration continues to accelerate, it will inevitably have an effect on the marine ecological environment. However, the study on spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of Chinese marine environmental quality and its driving factors was lacking. This paper employs Regression Analysis, Spearman Correlation Analysis, Canonical Correlation Analysis, Boston Consulting Group Matrix and Environmental Kuznets Curve to examine the spatial–temporal distribution characteristics and correlation factors of Chinese jurisdictional sea areas environmental quality. The environmental quality of the waters under China's jurisdiction improved on average from 2003 to 2021, the area of sea with excellent water quality increased by 7.21 × 104 km2. The spatial distribution showed “South superior, North inferior” trend. The accumulated red tide area is 2.01 × 105 km2, and the green tide has the average maximum area of distribution is 3.13 × 104 km2. The marine dumping area's volume of waste has a three stages of slow rise (2003–2007), steady (2008–2014) and rapid rise (2015–2021). The average percentage of seawater bathing areas with good water quality is 82.10 %. Urban Environmental Infrastructure Investment and Urban Drainage Construction Investments are positively correlated with excellent water quality and negatively correlated with light-sewage water quality. The typical correlation for the group “Environmental Quality/Environmental Governance” is 0.911, and the strongest correlation is between excellent water quality and urban drainage construction investment. The typical correlation coefficient for the “Environmental Quality/Socioeconomic” group is 0.960, and the strongest correlation is between excellent water quality and per capita GDP. The Gross Ocean Product, Per Capita GDP, Proportion of Non-agricultural Industries, Year-end Resident Population, and excellent water quality are positively correlated whereas light-sewage water quality is negatively correlated. Liaoning, Tianjin, Shandong and Guangdong shift from high-pollution-low-investment to low-pollution-low-investment model. Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian and Hainan maintain high-pollution-low-investment model, Hainan maintains high-pollution-high-investment model. Jiangsu maintains low-pollution-low-investment model. Hebei and Guangxi shift from low-pollution-low-investment to low-pollution-high-investment model. Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin, Shandong, Guangxi and Shanghai show inverted “N” shape, Jiangsu shows positive “N” shape, Zhejiang and Fujian show monotonic decline shape, Guangdong and Hainan show positive “U” shape. The results could provide valuable suggestions for coastal provinces to accomplish economic development and environmental improvement, which to prevent the old way of “pollution first and treatment later”.

Perceived changes in the quality of terrestrial, coastal, marine environment and natural resources in coastal communities in the Caribbean

ABSTRACT Economies and livelihoods in the Caribbean strongly depend on the terrestrial and marine natural resource base. There are critical gaps in quantitative data and the contextual and compositional factors affecting perceptions of changes in ecosystems and natural resources. This paper used interview data from 441 households in Belize, Dominican Republic, and Suriname to explore the contextual and compositional determinants of perceptions of change in the quality of the terrestrial, coastal/marine environment and natural resources as a composite variable. The outcome variable comprised changes in fishing effort, marine and coastal environment, forest cover, agricultural land area, and soil fertility, and relationships with predictor variables were explored using univariate, bivariate, and three multivariate models. At the univariate level, most respondents in Belize and Suriname reported perceiving a significant increase in fishing effort (i.e. days and fuel spent at sea) and a decrease in forest cover, quality of the coastal/marine environment, area of agricultural land, and fertility and productivity of soils. Sex, marital status, household size, and years of experience were not significantly associated with the terrestrial variables and fishing effort. Sex was only significantly associated with the quality of the marine environment. At the multivariate level, the elderly, high school education, and household incomes were associated with a lower perception of the outcome variable. It is concluded that policy and interventions should strongly consider ethnicity and community, and improve education and household incomes to enhance perceptions of changes in the quality of the terrestrial and coastal/marine environment in the studied countries.

The acute neurotoxicity of inorganic mercury in Mactra chinensis philippi

Inorganic mercury (IHg) is hazardous to marine organisms especially resulting in neurotoxicity, bivalves are sensitive to pollutants as “ocean sentinel”, but data on the neurotoxicity of IHg in bivalves are sparse. So we chosed M. chinensis philippi with typical neural structures in bivalves to investigate the neurotoxicity of IHg, which could be helpful to understand the specificity of neural regulation and the response characteristics of bivalves. After acute exposed to IHg (HgCl2) for 24 h, the metabolites of ganglion tissues in M. chinensis philippi were evaluated using 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance based metabolomics; Ca2+, neurotransmitters (nitric oxide, glutamate, acetylcholine) and related enzymes (calcineurin, nitric oxide synthase and acetylcholinesterase) were measured using biochemical detection. Compared to the control group, the levels of the nitric oxide (81.04 ± 12.84 μmol/g prot) and acetylcholine (30.93 ± 12.57 μg/mg prot) in M. chinensis philippi of IHg-treated were decreased, while glutamate (2.11 ± 0.61 mmol/L) increased significantly; the activity of nitric oxide synthase (679.34 ± 135.33 U/mg prot) was increased, while acetylcholinesterase (1.39 ± 0.44 U/mg prot) decreased significantly, and the activity of calcineurin (0.52 ± 0.02 U/mg prot) had a statistically insignificant increasing tendency. The concentration of Ca2+ (0.92 ± 0.46 mmol/g prot) in the IHg-treated group was significantly higher than that in the control group. OPLS-DA was performed to reveal the difference in metabolites between the control and IHg-challenged groups, the metabolites of glucose, glutamine, inosine, succinate, glutamate, homarine, and alanine were sensitive to IHg, subsequently metabolic pathways that were affected including glucose metabolism, glutamine metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, Krebs cycle, amino acid metabolism and osmotic regulation. In our study, IHg interfered with metabolites in M. chinensis philippi, thus the corresponding metabolic pathways were changed, which influenced the neurotransmitters subsequently. Furthermore, Ca2+overload affected the synthesis or degradation of the neurotransmitters, and then the altered neurotransmitters involved in changes in metabolic pathways again. Overall, we hypothesized that the neurotoxic effects of IHg on bivalve were in close contact with metabolism, neurotransmitters, related enzymes and Ca2+, which could be effective neurotoxic biomarkers for marine environmental quality assessment, and also provide effective data for the study of the regulatory mechanism of the nervous system in response to IHg in bivalves.

Enhancing Maritime Navigational Safety: Ship Trajectory Prediction Using ACoAtt–LSTM and AIS Data

Predicting ship trajectories plays a vital role in ensuring navigational safety, preventing collision incidents, and enhancing vessel management efficiency. The integration of advanced machine learning technology for precise trajectory prediction is emerging as a new trend in sophisticated geospatial applications. However, the complexity of the marine environment and data quality issues pose significant challenges to accurate ship trajectory forecasting. This study introduces an innovative trajectory prediction method, combining data encoding representation, attribute correlation attention module, and long short-term memory network. Initially, we process AIS data using data encoding conversion technology to improve representation efficiency and reduce complexity. This encoding not only preserves key information from the original data but also provides a more efficient input format for deep learning models. Subsequently, we incorporate the attribute correlation attention module, utilizing a multi-head attention mechanism to capture complex relationships between dynamic ship attributes, such as speed and direction, thereby enhancing the model’s understanding of implicit time series patterns in the data. Finally, leveraging the long short-term memory network’s capability for processing time series data, our approach effectively predicts future ship trajectories. In our experiments, we trained and tested our model using a historical AIS dataset. The results demonstrate that our model surpasses other classic intelligent models and advanced models with attention mechanisms in terms of trajectory prediction accuracy and stability.

Acoustic monitoring of marine environmental quality: An example from the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence

As a part of the Canada’s Ocean Protection Plan, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has joined the efforts to better understand and monitor the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine environmental quality. Since 2017, underwater acoustic observatories were put in place across endangered whale habitats leading to the acquisition of big underwater acoustic dataset to process and analyze. In the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence, underwater noise has been continuously monitored at 13 locations (6 to 10 simultaneously) between 2018 and 2023 at sampling rate up to 256 ksps in order to better understand the effect of shipping noise on marine environmental quality of the endangered St. Lawrence estuary beluga habitat. In this presentation, the data analysis pipeline from in situ sampling to processing is detailed, including recording schemes, data quality and control, soundscape cube, source separation, multi-scale statistics on noise levels and risk of impacts on habitat quality and visualization. These steps are used to identify, characterize and quantify daily to interannual spectral variability of underwater noise and their relationship with local environmental forcings such as shipping, wind, ice, tides, and currents at targeted locations. Ultimately, these results are used to provide support to (1) marine conservation and spatial planning initiatives from DFO and the Saguenay St. Lawrence Marine Parc; and (2) assess the predictability power of the outputs of soundscape modeling.

Integrating ocean soundscape modelling and mapping into marine environment quality assessment and marine spatial planning

As on land, underwater anthropogenic noise and its potential impacts on marine ecosystems have been a growing concern in the past three decades. Initially focusing on louder noise sources, acute physical and behavioral impacts on marine mammals and commercial fish, governmental agencies started to integrate soundscapes into marine spatial planning. However soundscape science has to deal with a large number of metrics and variables (time, space, frequencies, species, types of impacts, sound sources,…) and uncertainties to be able to bring a scientifically robust and reliable support to decision making process. This is a real challenge to integrate and communicate to a vast diversity of stakeholders. To address this challenge, we present a study of the impact of shipping noise on the St Lawrence Estuary and Gulf ecosystems and in particular on endangered marine mammals. The methodology uses probabilistic underwater acoustic modelling to produce 3D-maps of acoustic-field statistics and risk of impacts at daily, weekly, monthly and annual scale over few year-cycles. Those maps are then fed into a web application capable of handling terabytes of geospatial raster’s which allows to produce statistics on user-defined area interactively in order to explore and support collaborative decision making process between marine spatial planner and stakeholders. Details on probabilistic methodology and practical examples will be shown, with concluding remarks on gaps and remaining challenges.

Investigating seasonal metal impact on Stramonita haemastoma gastropod along the Algerian East Coast: Understanding through various pollution indicators

The main objective of this study was to assess the impact of environmental pollution on the gastropod Stramonita haemastoma by examining various physiological and biochemical parameters. Trace metal elements (TME) were measured in the snail's foot. Over a one-year period from 2013 to 2014, the study investigated the variations in reduced glutathione, malondialdehyde, metallothionein, glutathione S-transferase, acetylcholinesterase and catalase activities in the foot of the gastropod at three different sites. The results showed spatiotemporal fluctuations in biomarkers, physiological parameters and TME. This integrative approach, being the first of its kind in the region using S. haemastoma as a model organism, represents a means of environmental assessment accessible to all countries allowing the monitoring and conservation of coastal marine environments on a national and international scale and which could be used in marine biomonitoring programs to indicate the impact of pollution and assess the quality of the Algerian coastal marine environment.

The correlation between echinoderms diversity and physicochemical parameters in marine pollution: A case study of the Persian Gulf coastline

This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the correlation between echinoderms diversity and physicochemical parameters in the Persian Gulf coastline in Bushehr province in 4 seasons from March to December 2017. The physicochemical parameters including water temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), electrical conductivity (EC), salinity, pH and turbidity were measured at each sampling location. The results showed a significant correlation between echinoderms diversity and physicochemical parameters. The correlation coefficient of the Astropecten polyacanthus species with the parameters of temperature, DO, EC, salinity and turbidity was reported as -0.41, 0.64, -0.25, -0.44 and 0.60 respectively. This coefficient for the Ophiothrix fragilis species was reported as -0.68, 0.70, -0.21, -0.36 and -0.55 respectively. The results demonstrated that the most sensitive species were Astropecten polyacanthus and Ophiothrix fragilis respectively. The different species of echinoderms can be used as biological indicators of pollution in evaluating the physicochemical quality of marine environments.

State of the art of trace metal detection in the mediterranean coastal marine environment, combinatorial approach using mytilus galloprovincialis and surface sediments

This literature review focuses on the use of Mytilus galloprovincialis, a common Mediterranean bivalve, as a bio-indicator for the detection of trace metals in the Mediterranean coastal marine environment. By analyzing various studies, we examined the ability of Mytilus galloprovincialis to bioaccumulate trace metals and its effectiveness as an environmental monitoring tool. We explored the methodologies employed, the levels of contamination detected, and the ecological and health implications. This review highlights current trends, gaps in knowledge, and proposes recommendations for future research. It offers a global perspective on the importance of Mytilus galloprovincialis in assessing the quality of the Mediterranean coastal marine environment, and highlights its potential role in environmental management strategies.

Public awareness of marine environmental quality and its relationship for policy support on marine waste management

Marine debris is a significant pollution problem affecting the world's oceans. The Marine Debris Governance Platform in Taiwan was established in 2017. It adopts a cross-disciplinary approach and encourages collaboration between the public and private sectors to implement actions aimed at raising social awareness and reducing ocean pollution. Generation and impact of waste due to the support and participation of the public, it is crucial for the successful implementation of waste management and the achievement of policy. This study utilizes questionnaire surveys to investigate the factors that influence public support and participation in the action plan of the marine waste management platform for the entire population of Taiwan. We recovered 1295 valid questionnaires and conducted an in-depth analysis of the public's awareness of the marine environment. In terms of the perceived effectiveness of policies, the public considers the “source reduction” action plan to be the most effective policy. Based on this study, it is recommended that the government utilize environmental education and media communication to effectively convey and promote the various policies associated with the action plans. This should gradually lead the public to develop a more positive awareness of the marine environment and increase their involvement in supporting the government's policies on reducing marine waste and plastic.

Impact of coastal tourism demand on fisheries industry sustainability: A suggested framework for blue growth

AbstractIntense use of coastal resources and construction of new marinas to expand the tourist industry might result in developing water and marine environmental quality due to pollution, noise, and species disturbance, harming aquatic ecosystems and fisheries. By considering the roles played by fisheries output, tourist development, energy input, economic growth, governance, and population density during 1990–2022, this research aims to explore the dynamic influence of tourism development on the sustainability of the fisheries sector in 27 European nations. The findings of this study, which used the new Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) with fixed variables, revealed a considerable adverse impact of energy consumption and tourist growth on the sustainability of fisheries across the EU27 area. In particular, the findings show that across all quantiles, the considerable adverse impact of tourist development on fisheries sustainability is more substantial in EU13 developing nations than in EU14 developed countries. At the same time, the findings show that the EU14 developed nations had a more significant negative impact on fisheries sustainability than the EU13 developing countries at the most recent quantiles. The relationship between governance (across all quantiles) and economic growth in the EU27 was also favorably significant. Notably, the findings show that the EU14 developed countries have a more substantial beneficial impact on fisheries sustainability than the EU13 developing nations. At medium quantiles, it was discovered that population density increased fisheries sustainability. Results show that population density has a more significant beneficial impact on fisheries sustainability in EU13 developing nations than in EU14 developed countries. To safeguard marine ecosystems and achieve sustainable blue growth, our results provide policymakers insight into how to support coastal tourism development in EU14 and EU13 nations using effective and environmentally friendly resources and technology.

Combined application of biochemical and chemical parameters in the liver of round goby Neogobius melanostomus (Pallas, 1814) for assessing the quality of water bodies

Bioindication assessment of three areas in the Sea of Azov (Pre-strait (PS), Open Sea (OS) and Taganrog Bay (TB)) by using some biochemical (superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), aminotransferase, cholinesterase (ChE) activities, albumin (Alb) content, levels of oxidized proteins (OP) and lipid peroxidation (LPO) as well as chemical (mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn)) parameters in the liver of round goby Neogobius melanostomus (Pallas, 1814) was carried out. The results of the CE analysis in the liver of fish from three locations did not exceed the maximum permissible concentrations (MPC), with the exception of Cu. Cu content amounted 1.4, 1.7 and 9.5 MPC in the liver of fish from PS, OS and TB regions respectively. Concentrations of Hg, Pb, Fe and Cu were higher in the liver of specimens from TB and decreased in a number of locations: TB → OS → PS, that is in line with the data on biochemical analyses. Inhibition of SOD activity, imbalance in the processes of peroxide neutralization as well as the shift of prooxidant–antioxidant reactions towards LPO in the liver of gobies from TB region indicate toxic chemical impacts and less favorable ecological state of this location compared to PS and OS areas. High informativeness of the combined use of the biochemical and chemical parameters in the liver of round goby for assessing the quality of marine environment with different levels of chemical pollution was shown.

Theoretical and methodological aspects of sea ecosystem risks management

In the context of worsening anthropogenic impact, climate change and natural disasters, the problem of managing the sea areas' ecosystem risks is becoming quite important. This research aims at exploring the modern theoretical and methodological aspects of the aforesaid scientific orientation and focuses on the analysis and evaluation of existing concepts and strategies.
 The article analyses main terms and principles and also presents a conceptual model for managing the sea ecosystem risks that plays a key role in reflecting the main theoretical components and their interrelationships. The model contributes to a better understanding of the structure and characteristics of this theory, emphasizing the complexity of interactions between socio-economic systems and marine ecosystems, as well as the risks arising from such interactions. The main elements of the model include natural and anthropogenic factors and consider their impact on the state of marine ecosystems and the risks associated therewith. The model also focuses on well-being, ecosystem stability and biodiversity, i.e. the parameters determining the status and functionality of marine ecosystems.
 The research presents a comparative analysis of various methodologies and strategies of ecosystem risks management. The analysis allowed identification of the most effective of them at certain stages of creating an optimum strategy for managing the ecosystem risks. Risk management strategies can be implemented using a variety of tools, such as marine spatial planning, creation of marine protected areas, basic ecosystem management, resource management, and a marine environmental quality management system developed in accordance with the requirements of the EU Marine Strategy Directive. These strategies integrate different approaches to managing the ecosystem risks and contribute to conservation of ecosystems ensuring the marine environment stability.
 The work made it possible to open up the prospects for further scientific research, namely development of hypotheses in order to increase theoretical knowledge and develop practical recommendations in the field of management of water areas' ecosystem risks.
 The conclusions of the research are aimed at creating a theoretical and methodological base that will contribute to analyzing and developing effective strategies for managing the water areas' ecosystem risks.

Comparing quantile regression spline analyses and supervised machine learning for environmental quality assessment at coastal marine aquaculture installations.

Organic enrichment associated with marine finfish aquaculture is a local stressor of marine coastal ecosystems. To maintain ecosystem services, the implementation of biomonitoring programs focusing on benthic diversity is required. Traditionally, impact-indices are determined by extracting and identifying benthic macroinvertebrates from samples. However, this is a time-consuming and expensive method with low upscaling potential. A more rapid, inexpensive, and robust method to infer the environmental quality of marine environments is eDNA metabarcoding of bacterial communities. To infer the environmental quality of coastal habitats from metabarcoding data, two taxonomy-free approaches have been successfully applied for different geographical regions and monitoring goals, namely quantile regression splines (QRS) and supervised machine learning (SML). However, their comparative performance remains untested for monitoring the impact of organic enrichment introduced by aquaculture on marine coastal environments. We compared the performance of QRS and SML using bacterial metabarcoding data to infer the environmental quality of 230 aquaculture samples collected from seven farms in Norway and seven farms in Scotland along an organic enrichment gradient. As a measure of environmental quality, we used the Infaunal Quality Index (IQI) calculated from benthic macrofauna data (reference index). The QRS analysis plotted the abundance of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) as a function to the IQI from which the ASVs with a defined abundance peak were assigned to eco-groups and a molecular IQI was subsequently calculated. In contrast, the SML approach built a random forest model to directly predict the macrofauna-based IQI. Our results show that both QRS and SML perform well in inferring the environmental quality with 89% and 90% accuracy, respectively. For both geographic regions, there was high correspondence between the reference IQI and both the inferred molecular IQIs (p < 0.001), with the SML model showing a higher coefficient of determination compared to QRS. Among the 20 most important ASVs identified by the SML approach, 15 were congruent with the good quality spline ASV indicators identified via QRS for both Norwegian and Scottish salmon farms. More research on the response of the ASVs to organic enrichment and the co-influence of other environmental parameters is necessary to eventually select the most powerful stressor-specific indicators. Even though both approaches are promising to infer environmental quality based on metabarcoding data, SML showed to be more powerful in handling the natural variability. For the improvement of the SML model, addition of new samples is still required, as background noise introduced by high spatio-temporal variability can be reduced. Overall, we recommend the development of a powerful SML approach that will be onwards applied for monitoring the impact of aquaculture on marine ecosystems based on eDNA metabarcoding data.

ПОКАЗАТЕЛИ КАЧЕСТВА МОРСКОЙ СРЕДЫ ПО УРОВНЮ АКТИВНОСТИ РАДИОНУКЛИДОВ ДЛЯ ЭКОСИСТЕМЫ КАРСКОГО МОРЯ

Regional indicators of the marine environment quality in the radiation aspect, that is, reference levels of radionuclides in seawater and bottom sediments, which provide an acceptable degree of ecological risk, have been developed to analyze radioecological conditions in the Kara Sea. Local concentration factors of 137Cs, 90Sr, 239, 240Pu, 241Am in biota and bottom sediments of the Kara Sea are estimated using long-term observations data. For the majority of representative organisms of the Kara Sea, the concentration factors of technogenic radionuclides differ from the reference values. Reference levels of 137Cs, 90Sr, 239, 240Pu, 241Am in water and bottom sediments of the Kara Sea have been calculated. The contamination index for both water and bottom sediments is several orders of magnitude lower than an environmentally safe level and also tends to decrease by 3 and 1.5 times, respectively, in 2004-2012 as compared to 1992-1996.

Editorial: Coastal and marine environmental quality assessments

Editorial: Coastal and marine environmental quality assessments