[Coral-List] New paper on the reliability of benthic indicators in health assessment of oil polluted coral reefs

[m_oladikelarijani at sbu.ac.ir]

Dear Coral-listers, 

We would like to draw your kind attention to our newly published paper in "Journal of Hazardous Materials" entitled "Multiple benthic indicators are efficient for health assessment of coral reefs subjected to petroleum hydrocarbons contamination: A case study in the Persian Gulf". 

Environmental impact assessment in marine ecosystems is being widely used to determine the possible impacts of human-driven pollutions in order to find a way to mitigate the adverse effects of those impacts. So far, most studies on the examination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in marine ecosystems have focused on reporting the occurrence of these toxic elements in the marine environment, but in this paper, we examined the extent to which these contaminants affected the living resources in the most valuable marine ecosystems, the coral reefs. Using multiple indicators and statistical analyses, we assessed the ecological impact of anthropogenic activities, reflected by the amount of PAHs in the water, sediment, and corals and proposed a fast and cost-effective combination of indices for coral reef health assessment in an industrialized island in the northern Persian Gulf. 

You can find the full-text of the paper at the link below: 
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cRPz15DSlHQju 

If there are any inquiries, you can find me at "M_oladikelarijani at sbu.ac.ir" or Dr. Mohammad Reza Shokri at "M_shokri at sbu.ac.ir". 

Kind regards, 

Mahshid Oladi, MSc. 
Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran 

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Mahshid Oladi 
Research Assistant 
Marine Biology 
Faculty of Life Sciences and Biotechnology 
Shahid Beheshti University 
Velenjak, Tehran, I.R. Iran