Ana C. Brito

University of Lisbon | UL · MARE-Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. However, this may come with a cost, as increasing aquatic production is likely to impose changes in the environment. To ensure ecosystem sustainability, it is essential to think on this larger scale. This study aims to use the Delft3D model suite to evaluate the ecological carrying cap...

The European sardine (Sardina pilchardus) is the most abundant and socio-economically important small pelagic fish species in Western Iberia Upwelling Ecosystem. As a result of a long series of low recruitments, sardine biomass off Western Iberia has greatly reduced since the 2000s. Recruitment of small pelagic fish is mainly dependent on environme...

The Western Iberian Coast (WIC) is characterized by a dynamic coastal upwelling system with interactions between oceanographic features and continental river run‐off. The present study investigates the spatio‐temporal variability in the concentrations of Chlorophyll a (Chl a ) and turbidity, and their relationships with physical and other biogeoche...

Climate change is causing mean sea surface temperatures (SST) to increase worldwide. However, this increase has not been temporally or spatially uniform, with variations observed depending both on the period considered and the geographic region. In this context, this paper aims to quantify relevant changes in SST along the Western Iberian Coast ove...

Invasive species can trigger profound effects on recipient ecosystems, namely through the food web. Despite being recognized as one of the worst invasive species, little is known about the feeding ecology of the Mozambique tilapia Oreochromis mossambicus. To understand how this invasive species might impact food webs, we applied metabarcod-ing to a...

Inland and coastal waters provide key ecosystem services and are closely linked to human well-being. In this study, we propose a semi-analytical method, which can be applied to Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) images to retrieve high spatial-resolution total suspended solids (TSS) concentration in a broad spectrum of aquatic ecosystems ran...

Bivalves are usually cultured in land tanks connected directly to estuarine and coastal waters. This type of aquaculture exposes the cultured species to possible toxic blooms that often affect these natural ecosystems. The effects of toxic algae on humans have been the subject of many studies. However, information on the effects of these toxic spec...

The effects of climate change on the estuarine environment are not fully understood. In temperate regions, droughts are expected to increase in frequency and severity, due to lower precipitation, and the mean sea level is expected to rise. This study aimed to assess how the estuarine environment will be affected by river flow's reduction, mean sea...

Bivalves accumulate toxins produced by microalgae, thus becoming harmful for humans. However, little information is available about their toxicity to the bivalve itself. In the present work, the physiological stress and damage after the ingestion of toxic dinoflagellate species (Gymnodinium catenatum) and a diatom species (Skeletonema marinoi, whic...

The ever-growing demand for sea cucumbers is a threat to these echinoderms and their habitats; however, a way to relieve stock pressure lies in meeting demand through aquaculture. As such, this study aimed to improve the growth and survival percentage of Holothuria arguinensis during larval development, settlement and juvenile growth. Three diets o...

Estuaries act as nursery for several species, including commercial species. However, these systems are also deeply affected by anthropogenic activities (both directly and by climate change). Phytoplankton is one of the main estuarine primary producers and one of the main bases of the estuarine trophic webs. Phytoplankton responds to several environ...

Aquaculture is one of the food industries that most evolved in recent years in response to increased human demand for seafood products, which has led to a progressive stock threat in nature. With a high seafood consumption per capita, Portugal has been exploring its coastal systems to improve the cultivation of fish and bivalve species with high co...

Mangroves act as buffer areas for marine systems, providing a barrier to contamination from continental sources by retaining metal pollutants. This study evaluates metal and semimetal contamination in the water column and sediments of four mangroves located on the volcanic island of São Tomé. Several metals had a widespread distribution, with occas...

The Northern Antarctic Peninsula (NAP) shows shifts in phytoplankton distribution and composition along its warming marine ecosystems. However, despite recent efforts to mechanistically understand these changes, little focus has been given to the phytoplankton seasonal succession, remaining uncertainties regarding to distribution patterns of emergi...

The demand for sea cucumbers from the NE-Atlantic is increasing as a consequence of the depletion of stocks that historically supplied Asian markets. Some species from the NE-Atlantic are already showing overfishing signs due to either inefficient policies or their total absence, and they do not offer any margins of sustainability to sea cucumber f...

Portugal’s vast coast has great socioeconomic potential, characterized by high hydrodynamic and geomorphologic diversity. The growth of phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, is shaped by environmental characteristics. The goal was to evaluate the main drivers of phytoplankton dynamics and identify coastal areas with high biomass. Four s...

Estuaries have long been preferred sites of human settlement due to the benefits regarding proximity to fresh water and the ocean. As such, these environments have been subject to increasing anthropogenic pressures, resulting in issues of pollution and contamination. However, since the second half of the 20th century an environmental concern has re...

Since the early 1980's there has been an increase in sea cucumber harvest and trade, mainly due to Asiatic market pressure. In the Indo-Pacific regions, the collapse of various stocks of these echinoderms has already occurred due to overfishing. In Europe, sea cucumber exportation depends exclusively on wild stock harvesting, which has demonstrated...

The estuarine phytoplankton communities are known to respond rapidly to environmental changes, being considered an important water quality indicator; thus, it is crucial to fully under-stand its natural variability. The objective of the present study was to assess the spatial variability of both physicochemical variables and the phytoplankton commu...

In the last decade, the depletion of natural resources, associated with the loss of ecosystem services (ES), has been considered a consequence of management policies which use the economic performance of the benefits derived from the natural environment as an indicator, while the natural capital is neglected. A natural capital approach (NCA) can id...

Although regional studies and projections suggest the deterioration of estuaries as a consequence of climate change, it is still difficult to fully understand the importance of such changes in estuarine systems. This limitation is particularly important considering their high dynamism and the lack of temporally extended in situ databases with a goo...

Estuaries are highly productive ecosystems, which are strongly affected by several anthropogenic pressures. Phytoplankton is a key element for assessing the ecological quality status in these transitional waters. Moreover, understanding physico-chemical and biological drivers is crucial to disentangle their effect on the structure of phytoplankton...

Biological invasions are considered one of the main extinction drivers of native species worldwide. Invasive species have detrimental effects on local ecosystems by means of competition, predation, habitat modification and nutrient cycling, as well as disease spreading. Along with ecological impacts, there are socioeconomic consequences to human po...

Holothuria mammata is one of the most valuable species of sea cucumber, as well as one of the main target species harvested in the Mediterranean and NE-Atlantic regions. This study aims to describe the reproductive cycle of H. mammata in a coastal area of southwest Portugal. Monthly samplings were carried out for 19 months, with the concomitant col...

Cockles are amongst the most exploited bivalve species in Portugal, playing an important ecological and socioeconomic role in coastal ecosystems. Two sympatric species of cockles, Cerastoderma edule ( Linnaeus, 1758 ) and Cerastoderma glaucum ( Bruguière, 1789–1792 ) may co-occur in estuaries and coastal lagoons in mixed populations along the Europ...

Physico-chemical and biological parameters along the Portuguese coast were analyzed to evaluate the potential to produce aquatic species of economic interest. Water samples were collected in 2018 and 2019 in five different areas of the Portuguese coast. Currents data were collected between 2018 and 2020 and historical waves height data from 1988 to...

In mesotidal estuaries, the spatial and temporal variation of physicochemical and biological parameters, and thus water quality, is strongly influenced by tidal dynamics. Hence, to improve monitoring and management strategies , it is imperative to understand how tidal conditions affect water quality parameters and the overall water quality assessme...

Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) underestimation by global satellite algorithms in the Southern Ocean has long been reported, reducing their accuracy, and limiting the potential for evaluating phytoplankton biomass. As a result, several regional Chl-a algorithms have been proposed. The present work aims at assessing the performance of both global and regional...

Salinity is one of the oldest parameters being measured in oceanography and one of the most important to study in the context of climate change. However, its quantification by satellite remote sensing has been a relatively recent achievement. Currently, after over ten years of data gathering, there are still many challenges in quantifying salinity...

As alterações climáticas podem influenciar as variações a longo termo nos estuários. Localizados na interface entre os rios e os oceanos, estes sistemas são altamente dinâmicos e influenciados por processos hidrológicos, atmosféricos e biogeoquímicos. A comunidade fitoplanctónica responde rapidamente a alterações no meio ambiente, sendo considerada...

The Ecosystem Service Framework discloses the ecosystem’s benefits to society and provides support to preserve threatened systems while considering the economic and social dimensions of the communities more dependent on its resources. Mangroves provide important and valuable goods and services to communities, at different spatial and temporal scale...

To establish effective water quality monitoring strategies in estuaries, it is imperative to identify and understand the main drivers for the variation of water quality parameters. The tidal effect is an important factor of the daily and fortnightly variability in several estuaries. However, the extent of that influence on the different physicochem...

Coastal systems provide many cultural ecosystem services (CES) to humans. Fewer studies have focused solely on CES, while those comparing CES across countries are even rarer. In the case of shellfish, considerable ecosystem services focus has been placed on nutrient remediation, with relatively little on the cultural services provided, despite stro...

While primary productivity is more stable in oceanic regions, it may vary to a great extent with the proximity to coasts, where mesoscale processes may intertwine and shape phytoplankton community composition and biomass. Sometimes, this may lead to the development of anomalous phytoplankton blooms (i.e., episodic blooms that exceed several times t...

The application of Water Quality Indexes (WQI) is an essential part of the water framework directive. One of the main factors of variability in transitional waters is the tidal effect, but knowledge of its effect on WQI is still scarce. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate such effect on the existing metrics (e.g. Chlorophyll’s P90...

There is an increasing demand for sea cucumbers, for human consumption, mainly from Asian markets and, as a consequence, NE-Atlantic species are now new targets for exploitation and exportation. Holothuria mammata is one of the most valuable species in Europe. However, the lack of historical economic interest in this species in most European countr...

As tarefas do projeto têm vindo a ser todas executadas, no entanto com atrasos em algumas, por motivos diferentes. A tarefa da governança participativa (Tarefa 8) teve início com grande atraso, pelas dificuldades na contratação. Os resultados desta tarefa são essenciais para a capacitação do setor da apanha de bivalves e para dar suporte à elaboraç...

Holothuria arguinensis, Holothuria mammata and Holothuria forskali are three common sea cucumber species found in the NE Atlantic, traded in international markets and susceptible to capture. Allometric relationships reveal if the scaling relationships between biometric characters are proportional with growth, being a useful tool to understand speci...

The Tagus Estuary is one of the largest estuaries in Europe and merges large urban and industrial areas. Understanding phytoplankton community variability is key for an appropriate assessment of the estuarine ecological status. The objective of the present study was to assess the importance of the tidal influence over the phytoplankton community an...

The intensive exploitation of sea cucumbers, mainly exported to Asian seafood markets, has contributed to deplete natural populations of several species. In Europe, the aquaculture production of these echinoderms is minimal, reflecting the low scientific production on the topic. In Portugal, like in Mediterranean countries, there are native species...

Monitoring water quality parameters and their ecological effects in transitional waters is usually performed through in situ sampling programs. These are expensive and time-consuming, and often do not represent the total area of interest. Remote sensing techniques offer enormous advantages by providing cost-effective systematic observations of a la...

Phytoplankton bloom phenology studies are fundamental for the understanding of marine ecosystems. Mismatches between fish spawning and plankton peak biomass will become more frequent with climate change, highlighting the need for thorough phenology studies in coastal areas. This study was the first to assess phytoplankton bloom phenology in the Wes...

Mangroves are some of the most productive coastal systems on the planet and provide valuable ecosystem services (ES). They are especially important in threatened ecosystems and developing countries, where they are likely to have direct impacts on local communities. An approach based on ES allows assessing ecosystems across the domains of ecology, s...

The circulation in estuaries promotes the transport of organisms, nutrients, oxygen and sediments. Simultaneously, the mixture of fresh and salt water leads to variations of the physicochemical and biological components of the region. Therefore, it is important to further understand the hydrodynamic patterns of an estuary as one of the bases to und...

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) aims at evaluating the ecological status of European coastal water bodies (CWBs). This is a rather complex task and first requires the use of long-term databases to assess the effect of anthropogenic pressure on biological communities. An in situ dataset was assembled using concomitant biological, i.e., chlorophy...

Um dos fatores de variação mais importante em águas de transição é o ciclo de maré, mas o seu efeito sobre as métricas utilizadas para a classificação do estado de massas de água é ainda pouco estudado. O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar a influência da maré nos resultados da classificação de diferentes métricas. Duas estações com diferentes níve...

The high demand of sea cucumbers in international markets, mostly based in Asia, has left a deep impact on the natural stock of many species, leading to an investment in aquaculture techniques in order to mitigate these impacts. This study aimed to determine the effects of stock density in rearing broodstock of Holothuria (Panningoturia) forskali D...

The phytoplankton comprises different shapes and sizes, having different impacts on the biogeochemical cycles. The development of models for Phytoplankton Size Classes ( is based mainly on the empirical relationship between marker pigments and chlorophyll a The present study sought to investigate the PSC's spatial variability along the Portuguese c...