Assessment of the impact of human sewage effluent on benthic communities at Macquarie Island

Metadata record for data expected from ASAC Project 996 See the link below for public details on this project. The study investigated the effects of the small sewage outfall on algal epifauna in the isthmus area. No impacts were detected and patterns of community structure were tentatively explained by local differences in wave exposure gradients. From the abstract to the referenced paper: As part of a wider programme investigating the effects of human presence on Antarctic and sub-Antarctic ecosystems, this study evaluated the impact of the small sewage outfall at Macquarie Island on the epifauna living within turfs of the intertidal red alga Chaetangium fastigiatum. Sampling was conducted during early December (austral summer) in both 1996 and 1997 at six sites, two sites within each of three adjacent bays. The site closest to the outfall was 3m from the point of discharge. Data analyses at the population and community levels failed to demonstrate a significant effect of the outfall. Small scale spatial patterns, probably related to wave exposure, and inter-annual variation in recruitment, are suggested as the main causes of variation in patterns of epifaunal dominance during the study. The site codes used in this dataset are: GCS - Garden Cove South GCN - Garden Cove North GBS - Bay 1 South GBN - Bay 1 North CS - Bay 2 North CN - Bay 2 South At each site 5 replicates were taken. The numbers are total individuals of each species that were found in each Chaetangium sample. This is a basic, though standard, species-abundance matrix. The fields in this dataset are: Species Site Year