Hola

Biological pollution

Biological pollution, or biopollution, is a term that defines adverse effects of invasive alien species (IAS) on quality of aquatic and terrestrial environment. Biopollutionis a synonym for "biological invasion impacts" (bioinvasion impacts).
Biopollution may cause adverse effects at several levels of biological organization:
an individual organism (internalbiological pollution by parasites or pathogens),
a population (by genetic change, i.e. hybridization of IAS with a native species),
a community or biocoenosis (by structural shifts, i.e. dominance of IAS,replacement or elimination of native species),
a habitat (by modification of physical-chemical conditions),
an ecosystem (by alteration of energy and organic material flow).

Biopollution mayalso cause decline in naturalness of nature conservation areas, adverse economic consequences and impacts on human health. The notion of "biological pollution" and "biological pollutants" described byElliott (2003)[1] is generally accepted in invasion biology; it was used to develop the concept of biopollution level assessment (Olenin et al., 2007[2]) and criteria for a Good Ecological Statusdescriptor in the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (Olenin et al., 2010)[3]
The magnitude of the bioinvasion impact or biopollution level (Olenin et al., 2007[2]) may be quantified using afree online service BINPAS.

Biopollution level

"Biopollution Level (BPL)" is a quantitative measure of the magnitude of the biological invasion impact, ranging from "no impact" (BPL=0) through"weak" (BPL=1), "moderate" (BPL=2), "strong" (BPL=3) and "massive" (BPL=4) impact.
Initially the method of calculation involves assessing the abundance and distribution range of a non-indigenousspecies (NIS) for a specific area (this can be, for example, an entire regional sea, bay, inlet, lagoon, pond, lake, marina, a sand bank, an aquaculture site etc.). Abundance of a NIS may be ranked as...