Maria Grazia Finoia

Baseline Trace Metals in Seagrass, Algae, and Mollusks in a Southern Tyrrhenian Ecosystem (Linosa Island, Sicily)

Trace elements were analyzed in organisms collected at five sampling stations along coastal areas of Linosa Island, Sicily (southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy). Concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn were measured in Posidonia oceanica L. Delile tissues, the two brown algae Padina pavonica (L.) Thivy and Cystoseira sp., and the two gastropod mollusks Monodonta turbinata Born and Patella caerulea L. Seawater samples were also collected at each site to assess soluble metal concentrations and to gain relevant information on their bioaccumulation ability. Data were processed by multivariate techniques, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis on PCA factors. The scoreplots obtained showed that the pollutant distribution is more significantly correlated with species than with sites. For seaweeds, P. oceanica was associated with higher Cd, Cu, and Zn levels; Padina species had higher Cr concentrations, and Cystoseira had higher Pb levels. For mollusks, Monodonta species had high concentrations of Cu and Cr and Patella species were associated with Cd. Some general metal bioaccumulation patterns are described but no one sampling site was more contaminated than the others. The hypothesis of Linosa island serving as a reference ecosystem for baseline trace metal levels in southern Tyrrhenian areas is indeed supported by the statistical comparison among other southern Tyrrhenian ecosystems performed with Kruskall Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. For P. oceanica leaves, P. pavonica, M. turbinata, and P. caerulea, this study confirms their usefulness as possible cosmopolitan biomonitors of trace metals in marine Mediterranean areas.

Metals in molluscs and algae: a north-south Tyrrhenian Sea baseline.

We develop a 800 km long relative baseline of metal pollution for the Tyrrhenian Sea, from the north of Naples to south of Sicily (Italy), based on spatio-temporal (1997-2004) concentrations of trace metals in marine organisms and on the bioaccumulative properties of those organisms. The study concerns sites in the gulf of Gaeta-Formia, near Naples, and three islands north, west, and south of Sicily: Ustica, Favignana and Linosa. The five metals are: cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, and zinc; the species include: Monodonta turbinata (n=161), Patella caerulea (n=244) and the algae Padina pavonica (n=84). We use Johnsons (1949) [15] probabilistic method to determine the type of distribution that accounts for our data. It is a system of frequency curves that represents the transformation of the standard normal curves. We find an N-S pollution gradient in molluscs considered: the lowest metal pollution occurs around the Sicilian islands. Our method can accurately characterize marine pollution by contributing to: policy-making, coastal resources management, the assessments of environmental damages from marine accidents and other events. The method here presented is a useful tool for pollution comparisons purposes among ecosystems (i.e., risk monitoring) and it is an ideal starting point for its application on a global scale.

Determination of trace metal baseline values in Posidonia oceanica, Cystoseira sp., and other marine environmental biomonitors: a quality control method for a study in South Tyrrhenian coastal areas

In this study, we investigated Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn in the seagrass Posidonia oceanica (L.) Delile leaves and in the brown algae Cystoseira sp. sampled along a 280-km transect in the Tyrrhenian Sea, from the Ustica to Linosa Islands (Sicily, Italy) with the aim to determine their control charts (baseline levels). By applying the Johnson’s (Biometrika 36:149–175, 1949) probabilistic method, we determined the metal concentration overlap ranges in a group of five biomonitors. Here, we propose the use of the indexes of bioaccumulation with respect to the lowest (L′i) and the highest (Li) extreme values of the overlap metal concentration ranges. These indexes allow the identification of the most opportune organism (or a suite of them) to better managing particular environmental conditions. Posidonia leaves have generally high Li indexes for Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn, and this suggests its use as biomonitor for baseline marine areas. Our results confirm the high aptitude of Patella as a good biomonitor for Cd levels in seawater. From this study, Ustica resulted with higher levels of Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn than the other Sicilian Islands.