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Macroalgae as bioindicators in the Adriatic Sea: The application of CARLIT and EEI methods

A strong incentive to development of new bioindicator methods to assess the state of aquatic environment was declaration of EU Water Framework Directive. New methods that use marine macroalgae to measure the ecological status of benthic communities were published in the past decade, among them the Ecological Evaluation Index or EEI (Orfanidis et al., 2001) and CARLIT (CARtography of LITtoral, Ballesteros et al., 2007). CARLIT method quantifies communities with different sensitivity to disturbance on a macroscale by visual estimation of coverage on at least 50 meters of coastline. EEI quantifies total vertical coverage of species sorted into different functional groups on a microscale, from destructively collected samples (400 cm2). CARLIT method was developed and is currently in use in the Western, while EEI was developed and used in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The Adriatic Sea is a specific environment, with its eastern Croatian coastline complex and more than 6000 kilometers long. To find the most suitable method for biomonitoring according to the WFD requirements, EEI and CARLIT indices were applied and tested from 2009 to 2011 on eight locations in the middle and southern Adriatic Sea. The results were evaluated separately for each method and compared to available pressure data. On the locations where both of the methods were applied, results are compared. The strengths and weaknesses of methods are outlined and problems in the application, as sea urchin grazing, are discussed.

macroalgae; bioindicators; Adriatic Sea; CARLIT; EEI

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