Fish and macrophyte assessment of Ciuperca Lake after rehabilitation works (Tulcea City, Romania)

In order to improve the quality of life, in urban ranges, there is a continuous effort for smallscale leisure areas maintenance in the benefit of inhabitants by means of provided environmental, social and psychological services. Nevertheless, much less concern is being given to nature preservation and species diversity that could be an ecological quality indicator for inner-city ecosystems. Therefore, the tendencies are to keep an attractive landscape architecture which, in many ways, cannot be self-sustained without human interventions and permanent costs. Our study case was developed on Ciuperca Lake (Tulcea City, Romania), an anthropic water body, which was recently re-opened as recreational park, along with a sidewalk sector. The lake was desiccated at the end of 2008, the bottom lake was dredged, cleaned and part of the concrete banks on the lake shores were renovated in 2009, and it was re-flooded in 2010. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss on the species assessment after rehabilitation works with the aim of enhancing the importance of indigenous species diversity, within urban recreational areas, as a sustainable way for long term services provision. The surveys were carried out on macrophyte and fish species before (2008) and after (2015) rehabilitation works. Moreover, for the determination of heavy metals content, the fish tissue was analyzed. The results confirm, for both macrophyte and fish taxonomical groups, that there are less species in the lake. In terms of water analysis, none of the chemical parameters exceeds the approved limits.