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(W/EH125) Evaluation of pollution in the Guadalquivir River estuary. Biomarker approach. Blasco, Julián 1, Hampel, Miriam1, Moreno-Garrido, Ignacio1, Arias, Alberto1, 1 ABSTRACT- Estuaries are the most intensively used and and the most vulnerable coastal areas. They receive a multitude of inputs from point and diffusive sources. The river Guadalquivir estuary is the main river in south Spain and its estuary is a very important rearing zone for marine species. The contamination and pollution can affect to the reproductive success and the growth of inhabitant species. For the measurement of the environmental quality biomonitoring organisms are frequently employed. Among species employed for biomonitoring pollution, oysters are widely used. This species have got a great capacity to accumulate metals from three sources: dissolved inorganic metal ions, organic metallic ion complexes and metal ions preconcentrated on phytoplankton. The use of active biomonitoring in which samples collected from a site are translocated to the monitoring site allow the reduction of the variability of the results in field sampling programmes and the use of biomarker approach have been employed to evaluate the effect of pollution. In this work the results of an experiment with transplanted oysters carried out for three months in the Guadalquivir River estuary, after the Aznalcollar mining accident, where chemical analyses (heavy metal concentration) and biomarkers (metallothionein and oxidative stress enzymes activity) are reported Key words: oyster, heavy metal, metallothionein, oxidative stress |
