Correlation between the abundance of macrobenthic communities with temporal and spatial factors: a case study of Qarasu River, Ardabil

Water pollution is a major global problem that affects plants and living organisms. Factors affecting water pollution include industrial, agricultural, and human pollutants. Qarasu river is very important in terms of pollution due to the use of river water in the agriculture and aquaculture sectors. In this research, the effect of intensive fish farms and the riverbed material was investigated on the abundance of macrobenthic communities. For this purpose, four stations 1) the station upstream and before the fish farms (as control station), 2) the station between the fish farms, 3) the last station of the farms, and 4) the downstream station at a distance of 4 km from the last farm were selected. A sampling of the macrobenthos and riverbeds was done in two seasons, winter and spring, and their frequency was calculated in the sampling stations and months. The highest abundance was related to the family’s Chironomidae (1456 numbers per m2) and Simolidae (2737 numbers per m2) from the Diptera order, which were observed in the effluent of station 2 and station 4 in the winter season, respectively. In addition, the type of the river bed was determined to find the correlation with macrobenthic species. The identified macrobenthos was classified into trophic groups and the relationship with the type of substrate was determined using the Pearson correlation. The correlation of different macrobenthic species with sampling stations and months was found using Canoco software and CCA statistical analysis. The present study showed that the effluent from intensive fish farms had an effect on the abundance of macrobenthos in the Qarasu River, which could be due to the increase in nutrients in the river water from the release of the effluent, and decrease in temperature and decrease in the decomposition of nutrients in the winter season. Therefore, based on the findings, the presence of different functional macrobenthic groups is affected by the type of riverbed and different seasons of the year.