Water Air Soil Pollut (2015) 226:189 DOI 10.1007/s11270-015-2445-z The Importance of the Mining Subsidence Reservoirs Located Along the Trans-Regional Highway in the Conservation of the Biodiversity of Freshwater Molluscs in Industrial Areas (Upper Silesia, Poland) Iga Lewin & Aneta Spyra & Mariola Krodkiewska & Małgorzata Strzelec Received: 23 November 2014 /Accepted: 1 May 2015 # The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract The objectives of the survey were to analyse mining subsidence reservoirs located in urbanised and the structure of the mollusc communities in the mining industrialised areas provide refuges for rare and legally subsidence reservoirs that were created as a result of protected species and that they play an essential role in land subsidence over exploited hard coal seams and to the dispersal of alien species as well. determine the most predictive environmental factors that influence the distribution of mollusc species. The reser- Keywords Mollusc community. Rare species . voirs are located in urbanised and industrialised areas Transportation routes . Anthropogenic reservoirs . along the Trans-Regional Highway, which has a high Anodonta cygnea . Environmental factors volume of vehicular traffic. They all have the same sources of supply but differ in the physical and chemical Abbreviations parameters of the water. In total, 15 mollusc species P.ant Potamopyrgus antipodarum were recorded including four bivalve species. Among R.aur Radix auricularia them Anodonta cygnea is classified as Endangered ac- R.bal Radix balthica cording to the Polish Red Data Book of Animals and L.sta Lymnaea stagnalis also as Near Threatened according to the European Red P.acu Physella acuta List of Non-marine Molluscs. Eleven of the 15 mollusc P.cor Planorbarius corneus species are included on the European Red List of Non- F.fra Ferrissia fragilis marine Molluscs as Least Concern. Conductivity, pH P.pla Planorbis planorbis and the concentration of calcium were the parameters A.spi Anisus spirorbis most associated with the distribution of mollusc species. G.alb Gyraulus albus Canonical correspondence analysis showed that G.cri Gyraulus crista Potamopyrgus antipodarum, Radix balthica, Physella U.pic Unio pictorum acuta, Gyraulus crista and Pisidium casertanum were A.cyg Anodonta cygnea associated with higher conductivity and lower pH A.ana Anodonta anatina values. A. cygnea, Anodonta anatina and Ferrissia P.cas Pisidium casertanum fragilis were negatively influenced by these parameters of the water. The results of this survey showed that the : : : I. Lewin (*) A. Spyra M. Krodkiewska M. Strzelec 1 Introduction Department of Hydrobiology, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, The University of Silesia, 9 Bankowa Street, 40-007 Katowice, Poland The development of transport, including the construc- e-mail: [email protected] tion of roads, strongly interferes with the natural 189 Page 2 of 12 Water Air Soil Pollut (2015) 226:189 environment and causes dangerous changes in aquatic Anthropogenic water bodies, especially subsidence ecosystems. These are mostly dependent on the volume ponds, originate on urban areas that have been impacted of traffic and are caused not only by the noise and by mineral extraction, industrialisation, urbanisation pollution that come from vehicles but also by the impact and the development of additional land uses (Drecker of the different elements of road infrastructure on the et al. 1995; Álvarez-Fernández et al. 2005;Wangetal. environment (Sriyaraj and Shutes 2001;Kołodziejczyk 2008; Zealand and Jeffries 2009). Land subsidence con- et al. 2009). During the construction of roads, the sur- tinues on sites that are still impacted by heavy industry face of the water reservoirs that are located along trans- (e.g. southern Poland and southeast Northumberland), portation routes is reduced. Reservoirs that are located which causes natural aquatic environments to disappear near to the roads that are being constructed are rebuilt when new water reservoirs are created (Meng et al. and converted into storage or infiltration reservoirs, and 2009; Jeffries 2012). Despite the fact that these water they remain under the influence of traffic. bodies are exposed to pollution, they create refuges for The impacts of roads on water bodies are diverse and many species of plants and animals, which often include the most important, apart from the traffic, include, e.g. rare species (Wood et al. 2001;Woodetal.2003). This the presence of denivelation in the form of road em- is particularly important in the case of reservoirs that are bankments and excavations and open drainage ditches located along the numerous, large transportation routes (Barrett et al. 1998;Luetal.2009) which constitute on which the high intensity of vehicular traffic causes serious impediments to the occurrence of aquatic vege- these reservoirs to be vulnerable to contamination. tation. The source of the impacts that are associated with Reservoirs along transportation routes may provide the the formation of impurities include roadsides, slopes, only breeding habitats for amphibians, dragonflies and engineering facilities and other objects that are associ- molluscs as well as being refuges in human-dominated ated with roads (e.g. gas stations, services areas and landscapes for rare species and those that are protected parking). Emissions along transport routes with heavy by law (Le Viol et al. 2012;Jeanmouginetal.2014). traffic as well as dry deposits and atmospheric precipi- Many water bodies that were developed for technical tation that are rich in dust of automotive and industrial anthropogenic uses are also refuges for biodiversity, but origin also play important roles (Sriyaraj and Shutes their potential roles have not yet been seriously 2001). The reasons for the negative impact of road investigated. infrastructure on surface water and groundwater are The objectives of our survey were to analyse the various pollutants such as organic compounds, heavy structure of the mollusc communities in the mining metals, fumes, dust from the abrasion of tires and sub- subsidence reservoirs located along the transportation stances that are used for de-icing road surface (Wang routes in an industrial area in terms of the number of et al. 2003; Pawluk et al. 2011), which pass into the species, density, dominance, constancy pattern and bio- water reservoirs with surface runoff despite the use of diversity; to determine which environmental factors in- different types of infiltration devices and devices for the fluence the structure of mollusc communities; and to retention of rainwater runoff. The accumulation of evaluate the ecological conservation value of the mining heavy metals in the bottom sediments of anthropogenic subsidence reservoirs that support molluscs including water bodies, lakes and rivers can lead to the hazardous rare, threatened and alien species. and highly unpredictable contamination of natural eco- systems (Dmochowski and Dmochowska 2011), which affects the occurrence of freshwater benthos fauna, es- pecially gastropods and bivalves. The construction of 2MaterialsandMethods the roads in wetland areas also causes the massive destruction of the habitats of amphibians due to the 2.1 Study Area movement and storage of redundant soils (Kurek et al. 2011). These impacts are compounded when Upper Silesia is the most urbanised and industrialised the distance between the water bodies and the road region in Poland. This area constitutes one of the largest issmall(lessthan200m)orwhentheyarelocated coal basins in the world. Upper Silesia has almost no along the road like the mining subsidence natural water bodies; anthropogenic reservoirs, includ- reservoirs. ing mining subsidence reservoirs, are the most common. Water Air Soil Pollut (2015) 226:189 Page 3 of 12 189 The study was carried out from 2009 to 2011 (three The collected material was transported to the times each year in May, August and October) in four laboratory in plastic containers. The samples were mining subsidence reservoirs (Upper Silesia, Southern washed using a 0.5-mm mesh sieve and then pre- Poland) that were created as a result of the land subsi- served in 75 % ethanol. Molluscs were identified to dence over exploited hard coal seams (Fig. 1). These the species level based on their morphological and reservoirs are located along the Trans-Regional anatomical features according to Glöer and Meier- Highway (T-R H), which connects the cities in the Brook (1998), Glöer (2002) and Jackiewicz (2000). agglomeration that have a high volume of vehicular The nomenclature follows Glöer and Meier-Brook traffic in urbanised and industrialised areas. The reser- (1998)andGlöer(2002). The density of molluscs voirs all have the same sources of supply (Table 1). was estimated as the number of individuals per square metre. Samples of water and bottom sedi- ments were collected from each mining subsidence 2.2 Sampling Procedure reservoir before the sampling of molluscs. Analyses of physical and chemical parameters of the water— The samples were collected at a distance of 1 m temperature, conductivity, total dissolved solids and from the banks of the reservoirs. The depth of pH—were measured in the field using a portable HI collecting samples ranged from 20 to 70 cm. The 9811–5 meter (Hanna Instruments) and dissolved samples of molluscs were collected according to oxygen using a CO-401 oxygen meter (Elmetron). quantitative methods by placing a quadrat