1. Marine water pollution Impact on Abu Dhabi Marine Habitat
Asma AbedAlaziz Al Muharram / Shaikha Awad Al Shamsi Supervisor: professor .Fayez El Essawy
Abstract
Factors Affecting water quality
Conclusion
There are many factors that affect the water properties and change its characteristics. Most of these factors are caused by humans and they vary in their types and their impact , a good example of these factors is desalination process.
Brine discharge is one of the outcomes of the desalination process. It’s the waste fluid that results from the desalination process, it contains a high concentration of dissolved minerals and salt, and eventually it’s disposed into the sea. This discharge brine changes the salinity, alkalinity and the temperature of seawater which will have negative impacts on marine habitat.
Station 13~15 are the desalination plants areas, from the table we can see that the salinity and temperature in these areas are higher or equal to the other areas in the coast. However, salinity exceeded the normal value of 35PSU, and temperature exceeded the normal value of 27.5°C, this may pose a threat to the living organisms in these areas.
Water pollution impact on marine environment:
Impact of human behavior
When people throw their garbage on beach near the shore line , sea waves move these garbage from it place to another place, sometime it stick on marine animals bodies causing death to many of them .
Impact of oil Tankers and oil spill
The movement of oil tankers from one place to another for oil transportation is a pollution in itself.
Oil substances are harmful for many organisms and corals because of their toxicity. Also, oil spills has a great impact on the marine life, it kills the animals, pollute the water and make the animals movement hard.
The new world challenges forced people to change their way of practicing their activities which sometimes pose a threat on environment. The increasing pressure on demands leads to over exploitation and pollution of marine resources and destroying hundreds of marine habitats.
Human activities are responsible for a major decline of the world’s biological diversity, and the problem is so critical that combined human impacts could have accelerated present extinction rates to 1000–10,000 times the natural rate (Lovejoy, 1997). In the oceans, the threat to marine life comes in various forms, such as overexploitation and harvesting, dumping of waste, pollution, alien species, land reclamation, dredging and global climate One particular form of human impact constitutes a major threat to marine life: marine water pollution by human activities.
In conclusion, our research was about Abu Dhabi marine water quality .After analyzing the marine water quality data, it indicates that AD water quality is healthy in some areas such as central and western coast and really bad in other areas such as eastern corniche.
Human activities are the major cause of marine water degradation. The change in the water characteristics decreased the marine biota population. Human activities impact the marine environment very clearly its increase the temperature of water, and change the chemical and physical condition of it make it not suitable for animals to live on it and the whole ecosystem.
Therefore, Abu Dhabi government has started to take steps to protect the marine rights. Many protection programs has been established like the MPA and marine water quality monitoring stations. .
Acidity, Salinity and temperature value in AD Marine water 2014
Station
Acidity
Salinity PSU
Temperature °C 5
8.2
45.8
28.2 8
8.1
44.1
28.5 11
7.8
18.6
32.6 12
33.0
32.7 13
47.1
30.7 14
43.6
30.5 15
47.3
30.1 16
47.0
30.0 18
8.0
44.9
29.4
Introduction
Marine environment is an important part of the earth any turbulence happen within it, it will affect the whole environment system and cause a serious damage in it. Changing in the world climate, human urban expanding activities, and fast increase of world population which leads to increasing demand on the living area which leads to destroying hundreds of habitats of marine animals.
This research will focus on the causes of pollution in Abu Dhabi, the impact of the pollution, and solution if this problem.
Habitat conservation is one of the most important issues facing the environment today in both the ocean and land. As human populations increase, land use increases, Large area of marine habitat has been altered due to human activity, resulting in, biodiversity loss, and maybe extinction in future.
The marine water pollution in Abu Dhabi is considered as a serious issue that can be improved by establishing protection programs such as :
Marine protected areas (MPA’s) .
Marine water quality monitoring programs.
Enforcing laws and regulations.
Recommendations
Source: Abu Dhabi statistics center
Objectives
* To identify Abu Dhabi water quality status for 2014.
* Investigate the causes of marine water pollution.
* Study water pollution impacts on marine biota. .
Abu Dhabi Water Quality
Generally water quality can be identified as the physical, chemical, biological, and radiological characteristics of water. It is a measurement of the water condition in relation to the requirements of the biotic species in terms of dissolved oxygen concentration, salinity, bacteria levels and the amount of material suspended in the water. To identify Abu Dhabi marine water quality , we have used the water quality index study that is conducted by Abu Dhabi Environmental Agency to asset the water status.
Water Quality index indices average in AD marine water 2014
The table above shows the average concentration of the WQI in these five areas which all together include 20 different water quality monitoring stations.
It’s noticeable that the eutrophication index status is bad in all areas which means that the nutrition is bad and not ideal support the marine organisms. On the other hand, both public health and sediment indices were ranging from fair to good.
Discussion
References
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Coral reef of Marawah Marine Biosphere Reserve.
Source: modified after AD environmental Atlas
live and dead coral reef in Al -Yasat marine reserve.
Source: Modified after Abu Dhabi Environment Atlas