Significance of the study Uncontrolled human activities are clearly slowly endangering the ecosystem in Setiu district.

Recently, aquaculture activities that are taking place here are gradually decreasing the quality of the environmental conditions. Besides that, the conversion of mangrove forests into agricultural land for oil palm is also resulting threat to the mangrove forests. Sedimentation load and pesticide run-off into the lagoons water are increasing due to the conversion. Sadly, the clearing of the mangrove forests will surely cause poor consequences in a long term. Focusing on widely agriculture activities in proposed project area, this sector has directly increased the temperature in atmosphere from several sources such as agricultural soil management, enteric fermentation, manure management and carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel consumption. Tackle and Hofstrand (2008) states that nitrous oxide (N2O) emission account for about 60% from agriculture sector which N2O is produced naturally in soils through microbial processes. Meanwhile, the level of methane emissions is influenced by feed quality and feed intake during enteric fermentation and manure management. Emission of methane in manure management occurred during the anaerobic decomposition of manure whereas for enteric management, generally the higher methane was produced as lower feed quality and higher feed intake (Tackle & Hofstrand, 2008). Hence, an effective and proactive action should be taken into account in order to overcome the critical environmental problems. Fortunately, there is a useful community of meiobenthos. Meiobenthos community structure is very important and useful as a benchmark for sustainable development as they serve as sensitive indicators towards the environmental pollution due to their small size, interstitial existence, naturally occurring high abundances, short

generation times and asynchronous reproduction (Higgins & Theil, 1988). Other than that, health status of the environment could be obtained by structuring community structure of meiobenthos. A number of factors has caused a great difference between community structure in disturb and pristine area like food availability that influence species of harpacticoid copepods. For instance, high density of detritus feeders indicates that the area is not in a good condition as compared to the area which has a high density of diatom or microalgae grazers. Thus, this phenomenon describes the status of the environment during any disturbance. For instance, the human activities such as clearing forest or agriculture activities that are taking place in the area that may disturb the ecosystem. Therefore, only certain species like detritus feeders can adapt with the unfavorable conditions since microalgae had been destroyed in their habitat due to the impact from the activities. In addition, the decreasing of dissolve oxygen concentration and the

increasing of salinity are included to the factors that will cause reducing of harpacticoid copepods density and also directly giving a hint to the environment condition (Warwick & Gee, 1984; Tietjen 1969). According to Warwick (1981), among the two dominant groups of meiobenthos, copepods are more sensitive to environmental stress than nematodes, so that the high nematode/copepod ratios might be indicative of polluted situations. The use of nematodes and copepods in this way is especially attractive because they are the two most abundant meiofaunal taxa and both belong to the 'hard' meiofauna, which they do not shrivel up and lose their identity after fixation and preservation in formalin. Raffaelli (1987) suggested that the ratio usually used to a variety of stresses, both natural and anthropogenic especially organic pollution which the ratio increases with.

Based on a new reported study in Malaysia, harpacticoid demonstrate dormant stage as response towards environmental stress. Usually, this kind of response is an adaptation in order to survive in stressful condition (Santer, 1998). Harpacticoid also represent the potential oil droplet species during lethal condition in order to protect them. Hence, these evidences are strong enough to prove that one of the most abundant taxa in meiobenthos; harpacticoid copepods are the most recommended and potential to be the best indicator for global warming effects. In addition, harpacticoid are very valuable species in aquaculture industry as they could be culture as an alternative diet during dormant state. Capability of meiobenthos especially harpacticoid to detect early damage of the environment provides nature guidelines for developing the area with sustain. Therefore, monitoring of community structures of meiobenthos should be carried out periodically to ensure that the developments are always sustained towards healthy and productive wetland environments.