《Assessing the benthic habitat quality in the Huanghe Yellow River Estuary and its adjacent areas using AMBI and MAMBI》.pdfVIP

Acta Oceanol. Sin., 2014, Vol. 33, No. 9, P. 117–124 DOI: 10.1007/s13131-014-0522-6 E-mail: hyxbe@263.net Assessing the benthic habitat quality in the Huanghe (Yellow River) Estuary and its adjacent areas using AMBI and M-AMBI 1 1 2,3 3,4 3,4 LUO Xianxiang *, ZHANG Juan , YANG Jianqiang , SONG Wenpeng , CUI Wenlin 1 Key Laboratory of Marine Environment and Ecology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China 2 North China Sea Branch of State Oceanic Administration, Qingdao 266033, China 3 Laboratory of State Oceanic Administration for Marine Spill Oil Identification and Damage Assessment Technology, Qingdao 266033, China 4 North China Sea Monitoring Center, North China Sea Branch of State Oceanic Administration, Qingdao 266033, China Received 9 January 2013; accepted 16 October 2013 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract The protection of the biological diversity and the maintenance of the regional ecological integrity for the Huanghe (Yellow River) Estuary and its adjacent areas are practically significant and valuable. However, fre- quent human activities and natural climate changes have caused vigorous disturbances on the ecosystem in these sea areas. An objective assessment on the benthic habitat quality (BHQ) of the Huanghe Estuary and its adjacent areas is conducted, using AZTI’s Marine Biotic Index (AMBI) and multivariate AMBI (M-AMBI) based on the data of macrobenthos in May and August 2011. The results show that both the indices do not correlate significantly, and their assessment results are greatly different. All of the samples assessed using the AMBI were “high” or “good”, because the ecological group I (EGI) and the ecological group II (EGII) were dominant macrobenthic ecological groups in the research area. Owing to a low species’ richness