The sustainable management of estuarine and coastal ecosystems requires robust frameworks due to the presence of multiple physical and chemical stressors. In this study, we assessed whether ecological health decline, based on community structure composition changes along a pollution gradient, occurred at levels below guideline threshold values for copper, zinc and lead. Canonical analysis of principal coordinates (CAP) was used to characterise benthic communities along a metal contamination gradient. The analysis revealed changes in benthic community distribution at levels below the individual guideline values for the three metals. These results suggest that field-based measures of ecological health analysed with multivariate tools can provide additional information to single metal guideline threshold values to monitor large systems exposed to multiple stressors.

中文翻译：

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社区结构数据的整合揭示了在大河口†低于泥沙指标阈值的可观察到的影响†

由于存在多种物理和化学压力源，对河口和沿海生态系统的可持续管理需要强大的框架。在这项研究中，我们根据铜，锌和铅的指导阈值以下的水平，评估了根据沿污染梯度变化的社区结构组成而发生的生态健康下降。对主要坐标（CAP）进行规范分析用于表征沿金属污染梯度的底栖生物群落。分析显示底栖生物群落分布的变化水平低于三种金属的个别指导值。