Impact of environmental factors on aquatic biodiversity in roadside stormwater ponds
Journal article, 2019

Constructed stormwater ponds mitigate runoff volumes and pollution, and provide other ecosystem services, such as supporting biodiversity, but these services attracted relatively less attention. The impacts of the pollution levels in the water column and sediments, the physical characteristics of ponds, and the presence of amphibians on the macroinvertebrate community composition and biodiversity were explored in twelve stormwater ponds in Norway. Also, the similarities between macroinvertebrate, zooplankton and plant communities were explored. Most of the taxa displayed in the ordination diagram were positively correlated with the pond size and the number of neighbouring ponds, and negatively correlated with the pollution levels in the water column and sediments. However, no statistically significant impacts on the number of taxa and Shannon index were observed. There were low similarities between the macroinvertebrate and zooplankton community compositions as well as between the plant and macroinvertebrate community compositions in the stormwater ponds. We observed a significant positive correlation between the number of plant and of zooplankton taxa, and a weak non-significant positive correlation between the number of plant and of macroinvertebrate taxa. Overall, the explanatory variables had a significant impact on the community composition, but not on the number of taxa nor Shannon index.

Author

Zhenhua Sun

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Ekaterina Sokolova

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

John E. Brittain

University of Oslo

Svein Jakob Saltveit

University of Oslo

Sebastien Rauch

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Sondre Meland

Norwegian Institute for Water Research

Norwegian University of Life Sciences

Scientific Reports

2045-2322 (ISSN) 20452322 (eISSN)

Vol. 9 1 5994

Subject Categories

Botany

Ecology

Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

DOI

10.1038/s41598-019-42497-z

PubMed

30979933

More information

Latest update

11/17/2021