Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Masters of Science (Research)

Department

Biological and Pharmaceutical Sciences

First Advisor

Fiona O’Flynn

Second Advisor

Lynda Weekes

Third Advisor

LaTina Steele

Abstract

The Milltown, Feohanagh, and Owenmore river basins located on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland were studied to see how variation in land use and land cover (LU/LC) affected water quality and the macroalgal communities at each river’s respective fluvial outflow. Abundance and composition of macroalgae in river and coastal water bodies have been designated as an indicator of water quality according to the Water Framework Directive 2000. The results of this study found that the Feohanagh’s macroalgal community had the highest species richness for most months while the Milltown had the highest Shannon Diversity Index. The Owenmore’s community was consistently the lowest for both species’ richness and diversity. In QGIS (Madeira ver. 3.4.15), the CORINE Land Cover classification database from 2018 was used to determine the LU/LC percentages for each of the three basins. The Milltown’s river basin was mainly composed of pasture and the Owenmore had mainly peat bogs. The Feohanagh’s basin has a mix of peat bog and pasture. The Canonical Analysis of Principal Coordinates (CAP) was used to find the macroalgal community’s relationship with the LU/LC percentages and the water quality measurements. This found that the Feohanagh’s macroalgal community was being influenced equally by peat bog and pasture. However, the analyses did not show that the predominant LU/LC types in the Milltown and Owenmore’s basin were influencing the macroalgal communities the most. In terms of the water measurements, the analyses suggested that the Feohanagh was more influenced by the seawater, while the Milltown was influenced more by the river water. These results suggest that there is a relationship between LU/LC and macroalgal communities. However, further research on the effect of point and nonpoint sources of pollution and abiotic factors for these rivers may give better indication as to what extent they put pressure on macroalgal communities.

Comments

Further supervisors: Kirk Batholomew, Mark Beekey

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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