Elsevier

Environmental Pollution

Volume 159, Issue 10, October 2011, Pages 2328-2346
Environmental Pollution

Review
Fate and effects of anthropogenic chemicals in mangrove ecosystems: A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2011.04.027Get rights and content

Abstract

The scientific literature for fate and effects of non-nutrient contaminant concentrations is skewed for reports describing sediment contamination and bioaccumulation for trace metals. Concentrations for at least 22 trace metals have been reported in mangrove sediments. Some concentrations exceed sediment quality guidelines suggesting adverse effects. Bioaccumulation results are available for at least 11 trace metals, 12 mangrove tissues, 33 mangrove species and 53 species of mangrove-habitat biota. Results are specific to species, tissues, life stage, and season and accumulated concentrations and bioconcentration factors are usually low. Toxicity tests have been conducted with 12 mangrove species and 8 species of mangrove-related fauna. As many as 39 effect parameters, most sublethal, have been monitored during the usual 3 to 6 month test durations. Generalizations and extrapolations for toxicity between species and chemicals are restricted by data scarcity and lack of experimental consistency. This hinders chemical risk assessments and validation of effects-based criteria.

Introduction

Coastal wetlands, mangrove habitats, and seagrass beds are plant-dominated ecosystems that interface between marine and terrestrial environments. Mangroves, the subject of this review, are intertidal dicots adapted to high temperatures, fluctuating salinities and changing aerobic and anaerobic substrates. Mangroves, fringe, riverine, and basin, are represented by 70 tropical and subtropical species, 28 genera, and 19 families (Duke et al., 1998). The global coverage of these halophytic spermatophytes has been estimated as 152,308 km2 (Spalding et al., 2010) and 137,760 km2 (Giri et al., 2011).

Mangrove forest and wetland ecosystems provide as many as 21 ecological services and 45 natural products (Rönnbäck, 1999). Services include flood protection, prevention of shoreline erosion and salinity buffering. In addition, mangrove habitats have a diversity-promoting function (Hogarth, 2007). As many as 4100 species of plants, invertebrates and invertebrates inhabit India’s mangrove forests (Kathiresan, 2004). Odum et al. (1982) reported that 220 fish species, 24 reptile species, 18 mammal species and 181 bird species use Florida mangrove forests. In addition, about 80%–99% of commercial and recreational fishes in Florida depend upon mangroves at some stage in their life cycle. Sixty percent of commercial fish in Fiji and India occupy mangroves (Teas, 1976, Hamilton and Snedakaer, 1984, Untawale, 1986). The global economic value (USD) of mangrove habitat has been estimated as 181 billion (Alongi, 2002) and 1.6 billion per year in the U.S. (Polidoro et al., 2010). Other annual estimates of value are $9990/ha (Costanza et al., 1997), $10,000/ha (Alongi, 2002) and between $475–$16750/ha (Rönnbäck, 1999).

It was recognized at least 30 years ago that mangrove ecosystems were anthropogenically stressed (Lugo et al., 1978) but only 6.9% of mangrove areas are currently protected (Giri et al., 2011). Approximately, 50% of global mangrove cover has been destroyed (Rosen, 2000) and the losses continue (Farnsworth and Ellison, 1997, Polidoro et al., 2010). The loss of coverage is due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic-source stressors. These include hurricanes, disease, deforestation, reclamation projects, canals, marina developments, aquaculture, and the focus of this review, the adverse effects of oil spills and chemical-containing runoff from urban, industrial and agricultural areas (Baker, 1982, Teas et al., 1987, Wong et al., 1995, Wong et al., 1997a, Ellison and Farnsworth, 1996, Ong Che, 1999, Rönnbäck, 1999, Schaffelke et al., 2005, Binelli et al., 2007). Tropical ecosystems recover slowly from damage and disasters, between 20 and 50 years for mangroves (Thorhaug, 1989), and symptoms of stress may be delayed for years (Snedaker et al., 1996).

The scientific literature for mangroves in recent years has been relatively abundant but mangroves receive less research and public attention than the more iconic corals (Duarte et al., 2008). Reviews of the mangrove literature are available for sediment chemistry (Ong Che, 1999, MacFarlane et al., 2003, Defew et al., 2005), life history characteristics (Walsh, 1974, Hogarth, 2007), habitat function (Nagelkerken et al., 2008), macrobenthos (Lee, 2008); economic value (Rönnbäck, 1999), medicinal uses (Bandaranayake, 2002), environmental drivers (Krauss et al., 2008), salt tolerance (Parida and Jha, 2010), nutrition (Reef et al., 2010) and for the effects of oils and dispersants (Thorhaug, 1989, Burns et al., 1993, USDOI, 1997, Hoff et al., 2002), climate change and sea level rise (USGS, 2004, Gilman et al., 2008). The impact of anthropogenic chemicals on tropical and subtropical habitats, particularly primary producers, has been of secondary interest or of no interest until the last 10–15 years despite several pathways for contaminant exposure (Fig. 1) and evidence that exposure to land-based chemicals may reduce the survival and condition of mangrove ecosystems (Peters et al., 1997, Duke et al., 2005, Lee, 2009). The reported literature describing the fate and toxic effects of non-nutrient chemicals is scattered and the few available summaries are either dated (Ragsdale and Thorhaug, 1980, Peters et al., 1997) or abbreviated for specific regions, species and contaminants (Ellison and Farnsworth, 1996, MacFarlane et al., 2007). An updated review is needed not only to summarize current information but also to evaluate the impact of one of the primary ecological services of mangrove ecosystems, which is to filter and remove contaminants to improve water quality of adjacent ecosystems (Montgomery and Price, 1979, Clough et al., 1983, Wong et al., 1997a, Wong et al., 1997b, Tam and Wong, 1996, Yang et al., 2008). This review provides perspective on issues of sediment contamination, bioaccumulation, and toxic effect levels for mangroves and their associated biota. It complements a previous review for another coastal fringe ecosystem, seagrass meadows (Lewis and Devereux, 2007).

Section snippets

Materials and methods

This review is intended to provide a cross section of the international literature concerning the subject matter. It does not represent all papers published during the years of our interest (1975 – present). A total of 300 reports were evaluated and information from 248 reports is included in this review.

The results of the reports were assumed to be of comparable technical quality even though information needed to support this assumption was not always available. Details for sample collection

Sediments

Mangrove ecosystems serve as physical and biogeochemical barriers to contaminant transport (Saenger et al., 1990). Chemical contaminants retained in mangrove ecosystems partition between pore water, overlying water, and solid phases such as sediment, suspended particulate matter and biota. Mangrove soils/sediments are usually fine-grained, water-logged by riverine, estuarine and oceanic sources and receive allochthonous organic matter from terrigenous origins. The input of suspended solids to

Mangroves

Concentrations of trace metals have been reported for at least 33 mangrove species (Table 3) and 12 tissues such as leaves, stems, bark, trunk, twigs, flowers, aerial, stilt and underground roots, and seedlings. Trace metal concentrations in leaf litter have also been determined (Mackey and Smail, 1995: Peters et al., 1997, Ellis et al., 2006, Ake-Castillo et al., 2006, Utrera-López and Moreno-Casasola, 2008). Most studies report concentrations for multiple trace metals but some have focused on

Toxicity: oils, dispersants and dispersed oils

The accidental discharge of petroleum into the marine environment has been estimated as 1.7 × 106 to 8.8 × 106 m tons per year (Klekowski et al., 1994). Oil contamination from petroleum storage, refining facilities and oil fields often occurs in areas adjacent to mangrove-dominated habitats. Oil that accumulates in these low energy habitats is difficult to physically remove and the anaerobic sediments reduce the rate of microbial degradation (Lewis, 1979). The effects of oil in mangrove ecosystems

Mangroves

Toxic effect concentrations for most shoreline anthropogenic chemicals and mangroves are unknown which is a data limitation recognized 12 years ago (Lacerda, 1998). The effectiveness of war-related defoliants (Ross, 1974, Teas, 1976) and a few historic herbicides (Walsh et al., 1973) were the early focus of many toxicity tests conducted with mangroves. The first toxicity test reported for herbicides was conducted in 1961 (Truman, 1961). Since then, the toxic effects of fish aquaculture (Alongi

Discussion and summary

The decline in mangrove condition and coverage worldwide, other than their physical removal, is due to the complex interaction of site-specific habitat characteristics such as tidal regime and geomorphology, natural stressors such as hurricanes and anthropogenic stressors that include sea level rise and the focus of this review, the presence of potentially phytotoxic chemicals. With the exception of oil and dispersants, relatively few and consistent efforts have been made to determine the

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Val Coseo and Nancy Smith (The National Caucus and Center on Black Aged, Washington, DC) for manuscript preparation and Paul Soderlund (SRA International) for graphic support.

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