The Estuarine Quality Paradox, Environmental Homeostasis and the difficulty of detecting anthropogenic stress in naturally stressed areas.

By Michael Elliott, V. Quintino. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2007

917 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Estuaries have long been regarded as environmentally naturally stressed areas because of the high degree of variability in their physico-chemical characteristics, for example oxygen, temperature and salinity in the water column and bed sediment dynamics. However, their biota is well-adapted to cope with that stress and so the areas may be regarded as resilient because of that inherent variability; their ability to absorb stress without adverse effects is regarded here as Environmental Homeostasis. Hence these areas may only be regarded as stressful for marine or freshwater-adapted organisms and that for estuarine organisms this environmental stress is regarded as a subsidy whereby they successfully capitalise on the stressful conditions. In addition, using examples of the estuarine fauna and flora, this article indicates that the characteristics of natural stress in estuaries are similar to those for anthropogenic stress. An over-reliance on ecosystem structural features, such as diversity, in quality indicators therefore makes the detection of the anthropogenic stress more difficult. This difficulty is termed the Estuarine Quality Paradox. Because of these difficulties, the article argues that functional characteristics either as well as or rather than structural ones should be used in detecting environmental perturbations in estuaries.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a97743ecc89bbfb37dabb593e7fcb69d3032af6

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Citations in the corpus

Marine biodiversity and ecosystem function relationships: The potential for practical monitoring applications (2015, neutral): “However, this has been questioned for naturally stressed areas such as estuaries in which a lower diversity but high physico-chemical variability appears to confer greater resilience and resistance (Elliott and Quintino, 2007).”
Life in the salinity gradient: Discovering mechanisms behind a new biodiversity pattern (2013, background): “…only high population densities (e.g. Herlemann et al., 2011) but also reach the exceptionally high taxonomic diversity (Telesh et al., 2011a); the latter ensures the ecosystem is maintained as a benefit for those species adapted to the inherently variable conditions (Elliott and Quintino, 2007).”
The European Water Framework Directive at the age of 10: a critical review of the achievements with recommendations for the future. (2010, background): “The concepts of how organism groups respond to restoration measures are clear (rivers: Hering et al., 2006; lakes: Jeppesen et al., 2005; estuaries and marine areas: Elliott and Quintino, 2007).”
Framework for understanding marine ecosystem health (2013, background): “For example, biodi ver sity is naturally low in the physically stressed en vironment of estuaries (Elliott & Quintino 2007), where biomass can be high as a result of inputs of allo chthonous organic matter (Elliott & Whitfield 2011).”
Polychaete/amphipod ratios: An approach to validating simple benthic indicators (2016, neutral): “This observation corresponded to the ‘Estuarine Quality Paradox’ (Dauvin, 2007; Elliott and Quintino, 2007; Dauvin and Ruellet, 2009), whereby it was difficult to detect anthropogenically induced stress including the ”Amoco Cadiz” oil spill.”
Life strategies of fishes in European estuaries: the functional guild approach (2008, background): “…environment reinforces the concept that the relatively harsh conditions in estuaries challenge the physiological mechanisms of most species, especially marine, stenohaline species, thus excluding many from permanent residency in these systems (McLusky & Elliott 2004, Elliott & Quintino 2007).”
Integrating ecological, economic and social aspects to generate useful management information under the EU Directives' ‘ecosystem approach’ (2012, background): “Moreover, according to Elliott and Quintino (2007) one of the main causes for strong variations in coastal and estuarine systems is often natural factors instead of human activities.”
Classifying Ecological Quality and Integrity of Estuaries (2011, background): “The difficulty of separating these causes of change (natural and anthropogenic stress) in estuaries in relation to the usual structural features in estuaries has given rise to the estuarine quality paradox (Dauvin, 2007; Elliott and Quintino, 2007).”
Estuarine production of resident and nursery fish species: Conditioning by drought events? (2008, background): “, 2007) and are known for their high natural environmental variability (Maes et al., 2004; Elliott and Quintino, 2007).”