Chair: Yuri Artioli

Leticia Cotrim Da Cunha ^(1)*, Helen Soares ⁽¹⁾, Michelle Araujo ⁽¹⁾, Cassia Farias ⁽¹⁾, Claudia Hamacher ⁽¹⁾, Gleyci Moser ⁽¹⁾

¹ Faculdade de Oceanografia, Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro – RJ, 20550-900, Brazil

Background
Large amounts of untreated domestic sewage are discharged into many coastal ecosystems in Brazil, resulting in excessive algal growth and consequent microbial degradation of this biomass. As a consequence, dissolved oxygen becomes subsaturated, along with a decrease in pH and increase in water pCO₂. However, tropical pristine areas may also have high loads of organic matter, as mangrove-fringed estuaries. There, water column metabolism may also lead to pCO₂ supersaturated surface waters.

Methods
Here we assess the interplay between DO, pH, and pCO₂ in four coastal ecosystems in Rio de Janeiro state, SE Brazil. Three of them are heavily impacted by domestic sewage and/or industrial effluents (Guanabara Bay, Canal da Joatinga, R. de Freitas Lagoon), and one is considered relatively preserved (Barra Grande Estuary). They all vary in size and water renewal time.

Findings
Diurnal variability of biogeochemical parameters is extreme in all ecosystems. Seasonal surveys have shown that tidal forcing influences stratification, especially the smaller estuaries, and therefore CO₂ saturation in its surface waters. Biological activity also largely influences the CO₂-system parameters, and it is commonly observed increasing dissolved CO₂ in bottom waters, related to increasing respiration metabolism. Surface waters may remain seasonally undersaturated in CO₂, as in the pristine estuary, the choked urban lagoon or the large Guanabara Bay.

Conclusions
Generally during flood-tide, the acidic/hypoxic conditions are alleviated, while during ebb-tide these organic-matter-rich, low-oxygen, CO₂-saturated waters are exported to the coastal ocean. How these and other “acidic plumes” either from pristine or sewage-polluted ecosystems impact near-shore areas in Brazil remain yet to be assessed.