Relationships among bottom sediment, benthic fauna, and suspended sediment concentration at a sandy shoreline, Hamana-ko (Honshu, Japan): Implications for sediment entrainment

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  • Ross Robert M.
    Institute of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, Shizuoka University
  • Imada Yoshiko
    Institute of Geosciences, Faculty of Science, Shizuoka University

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  • Relationships among bottom sediment ben

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The relationships among sedimentary texture, suspended sediment concentration, and benthic community were analyzed from shallow subtidal environments at Hamana Bay, Japan. Meiofaunal communities of the upper centimeter of the bottom sediment are dominated by nematodes and harpactacoid copepods; iuvenile gastropods and bivalves, ostracodes, and tardigrads are locally abundant. Sessile and slow-moving mobile macrofauna of the top few centimeters of bottom sediment are dominated by polychaetes and the gastropod Umbonium moniliferum, all of which are quite variable in distribution. Both macrofaunal and meiofaunal community composition are moderately correlated with sedimentary texture and depth. Sediment in all locations analyzed was fine to medium sand, with mud concentrations less than 3% of the sample by weight. <br> Suspended sediment concentrations (SSC) varied over two orders of magnitude, from 3.7 to 152.5 mg/l. SSC does not correlate statistically significantly with any individual variablc, but is best related to biotic components such as nematode abundance and mobile macrofaunal abundance. There is a relatively strong relationship between SSC and the first axes of principal components analyses of the biotic assemblages and the sedimentary textural properties, even independent of current conditions at the time of collection. That is, a linear combination of the biotic and sedimentary variables representing a high percentage of variability in the data provides the best predictor of SSC. Generally, samples with few mobile epifauna, large numbers of polychaete tubes, and large numbers of nematodes (which may produce large quantities of organic exudates) are associated with lower SSC, while the highest SSC values are found in areas with relatively large numbers of mobile macrobenthos.

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