Herbicide Impact on Seagrass Communities

Anthropogenic chemical contamination is of concern due to the continuous decline of ecosys‐ tems. Pesticide use impacts whole environmental matrices, especially aquatic ones, because of collecting watershed pollution in streams, rivers, and finally coastal areas. The coastal environment is one of the most vulnerable: global changes (current sea level rising, ocean acidification, global warming) add to land use disruption (soil erosion, chemical uses, urban sprawl) in coastline areas. Moreover, population growth mainly affects this endangered environment because of rural flight and city growth –75% of billions of human beings will live in 100km-large belt around global seas in 2035 [1] imposing urban lifestyle demands. Envi‐ ronmental stress due to such a heterogeneous population repartition will be acute (1) on freshwater, in order to provide it for drinking, industrial and agricultural needs, and (2) on coastal ecosystems because of waste waters and coastline management. Such environmental concerns are critical for tropical countries because of some that are being discovered to be biodiversity hot spots [2].