Assessment of ecological quality of Vellar and Uppanar estuaries, southeast coast of India, using Benthos

摘要

Number of polychaete species identified from Vellar and Uppanar estuaries were 52 and 14 species respectively. Diversity indices were high in Vellar estuary (H'log2-4.264 +/- 0.21, d-5.782 +/- 0.65, J-0.964 +/- 0.008, Lambda'-0.02 +/- 0.004 and sPhi+-1906 +/- 264.99) and low in Uppanar estuary (H'log2-0.941 +/- 0.27, d-1.130 +/- 0.42, J-0.418 +/- 0.05, Lambda'-0.70 +/- 0.07 and sPhi+ 433 +/- 102.74). While the BI (AMBI-1.03 +/- 0.19) and M-AMBI (M-AMBI-0.90 +/- 0.06) values of Vellar estuary corresponded to the undisturbed nature and high/good estuarine ecological quality respectively, the above values in Uppanar showed the polluted (AMBI-4.47 +/- 0.14) and poor/bad status (M-AMBI-0.22 +/- 0.04) of estuarine ecological quality. Recently introduced tools such as AMBI & M-AMBI have clearly brought out the impaired health of Uppanar estuary and healthy nature of Vellar estuary.