Resumen de A long-term study of an estuarine mudflat subject to industrial pollution
Donald S. McLusky, Maureen McCrory
The Kinneil intertidal mudflat (Forth estuary, eastern Scotland) receives industrial effluent from several sources, the main ones being petro-chemical discharges. The fauna of this estuarine mudflat has been sampled annually, every August, 1976-1986, using 89 standard stations. The results have been analysed by a variety of computational techniques, including the multivariate technique TWINSPAN, to perform community classification of the data. Provided that a merge technique was used, the Twinspan method provided a good summary of the data in terms of gradients or groupings within the area. Mean diversity indices gave a good indication of long term changes in the area, and when used in conjunction with community analysis, proved capable of reflecting the man-induced changes which this area has experienced, and provided some evidence of an improvement in the quality of this environment. Variations in the abundance of animals in this area, could not, except for one species, be attributed to temperature fluctuations or anomalies.
