Relationship of Sediment Oxygen Demand in the Nearshore Arabian Gulf and Benthic Foraminifera: Developing Protocols for Biomonitoring

Under current conditions of climate change and anthropogenic activities, such as population growth along the coastlines, oxygen depletion in the Arabian Gulf is only expected to increase in the near future. As a result, we expect to observe major changes in the benthic fauna of coastal areas. There is an urgent need to develop accurate and cost-effective analytical techniques to monitor the environmental factors impacting the benthic communities that we observe today. Living benthic foraminifera are increasingly used as a model organisms for monitoring and characterizing changes in the natural marine environments. In this study, we propose to develop a methodology for correlating sediment oxygen demand (SOD) measurements with population distributions in benthic foraminiferal fauna. Once in place, these methodologies could be used for monitoring oxygen depletion in coastal area. Furthermore we will identify foraminiferal proxies that can be used for biomonitoring in oxygen-depleted coastal environments. We will conduct preliminary investigations as part of the methodology development at a disturbed site (Askar Boat Harbour) where there have been ongoing foraminiferal studies. To the best of our knowledge, there are no published studies investigating the relationship between benthic foraminiferal fauna and SOD measurements. We envision that the proposed methodologies will be become adopted by researchers in the marine benthic research community.