In Sicily, there are some saline rivers. I am interested in evaluating the environmental quality of such streams using fish as indicators.
Take the fish counts from the Columbia River in Oregon (US). Lots of Salmon (and other fish species) migrate upward the river with decreasing salt content to the spawn areas inland. See what you can learn from fish counts and salinity measurements, giving you a gradient of decreasing salt load and its impact on species composition! Can be revealing.
Many tidal estuaries and rivers show saline gradients, but some if not many rivers on the globe are dead, meaning that there are no fish left in them, due to pollution (China, India, ..., Amazonia).
Look for healthy estuaries and the availability of fish species counts and salinity measurements upwards in the estuary and the river(s) ending up in an estuary. One of the largest is the Bengal estuary (Calcutta, Dhaka), which unfortunately gets loads of organic shit and inorganic substances from about 200 million folks trying to live in the enormous Bengal tropical delta where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers end up! Population density in the delta is more than 1000 folks/km².
#Justsaying
Hi Antonio. Here in Perm, I adapted Karr's IBI for assessment of using of fish as an indicator group at the river polluted by industrial wastes (this is the link to the Article Impact of Wastewater on Water Quality and Fish Community in ...
).Here we also has a problem with salinization of freshwaters due to industrial mining of salt. We clearly see that some of the species are not tolerate chloride stalinisation while others can be found in salinity up to 14 g\l. I'm happy to chat with you about that if you want.
Pavel Mikheev Hi thanks, here we have natural (as far as I know) saline rivers...i.e.: rivers that cross saline rocks during theur flow to the sea. So salinity is not due to pollution..Anyway I''l read you article and I will be happy to chat with you on the argunent, L'et's keep in touch
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