Biomonitoring of Heavy metals in Wetland Ecosystem by taking Cattle Egret Bubulcus ibis Linnaeus as Bioindicator

Abstract

newline Industrialization, urbanization and development in agriculture of the last century newlinehave uplifted the toxicity level our environment. With such kind of development in South newlineAsian developing countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, most destroying newlineecological problem is environmental pollution. Contaminants like heavy metal released to newlineenvironment are generating bad effects on ecosystem including local extinction of certain newlinespecies. Conserving biodiversity in this urbanizing world has become a significant issue newlinewith highly increasing human population. Various global environmental conventions newlinesuggested this type of conservation in urban areas as one of the innovative ways to newlineconserve biodiversity. Urban population covers near to half of the entire world, thus we newlinehave to focus on urban biodiversity conservation to achieve all the levels of biodiversity. newlineMedium to large forest patches present inside the urban residents represents a healthy urban newlinearea. Water and soil are the two most important components of ecosystem. With the newlinedevelopment of the society, the pollution is also increasing in soil and water from various newlinesources. The quality of life in water bodies is dependent on their physicochemical newlineproperties and biodiversity. These physicochemical properties are being disturbed by newlinecontinuous addition of industrial, municipal and agricultural wastes which make them unfit newlinefor different organisms. Wetlands are used by birds for various purposes like breeding, newlinenesting and roosting, foraging and social interaction with other organisms. By occupying newlineseveral trophic levels in nutrient cycle of wetland, aquatic birds become an important newlinecomponent of wetland ecosystem. Though food chain is the main link between wetland newlinequality and ecosystem health, water bird activities are the key indicators towards it. newlineExcessive deposition of heavy metals in the last few decades and its negative impact on the newlineecosystem and environment is the global concern. These heavy metals come from various newlinenatural geological cycles and some anthropogenic activities. The sudden expansion of newlineindustrial and urban areas introduced a sudden increase in metal concentration in the newlineenvironment. These heavy metal concentration increases in each succeeding feeding guild. newlineBirds reside at top of the food chain and have long life, high bioaccumulative power and newline2 newlineSummary newlinesensitive to environmental change which make the bio monitoring species. Among the nondestructive newlinemethods, using feather as biomonitoring unit can be a great help for the newlineresearchers due to the easy availability, transfer and storage. newlineThe objectives of this research are: newline1. Survey on Avifaunal diversity of selected wetlands in Odisha. newline2. Relationship among physicochemical parameters of soil and water in different newlinewetlands. newline3. Assessment of heavy metal contamination in Wetland Ecosystem by taking Cattle newlineEgret (Bubulcus ibis, Linnaeus) as Bioindicator. newlineThis study was performed in different environmental segments of Odisha, India. newlineEight different heronries were identified from all over the state. We sampled those eight newlineplaces from different districts of Odisha considering their different exposure to newlinecontamination, presence of breeding egret colonies and sampling suitability. The study was newlinecarried out during October 2015 to September 2018. Different vantage points are used to newlinecount the birds in the walkpath. Tally count was applied to minimize the error of individual newlinenumbers. Diffferent equipments like DSLR camera and 10×50x binocular was used for newlinesurveying birds. After photographic documentation, species identification was done using newlinefield guides. The data obtained from the field survey were analyzed to determine species newlinerichness and diversity of each habitat using several diversity indices. All these physicochemical newlineanalysis were done by using analytical techniques as described by standard newlinemethods for