Assessing the Ecological Status of European Rivers and Lakes Using Benthic Invertebrate Communities: A Practical Catalogue of Metrics and Methods

The Water Framework Directive requires that the ecological status of surface waters be monitored and managed if necessary. A central function in ecological status assessment has the Biological Quality Elements—organisms inhabiting surface waters—by indicating human impact on their habitat. For benth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWater (Basel) Vol. 13; no. 3; p. 346
Main Authors Vitecek, Simon, Johnson, Richard, Poikane, Sandra
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2021
Subjects
Aquatic ecosystems
Austria
Benthic fauna
bioassessment
Biodiversity
Biological monitoring
Biomonitoring
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Ecology
Ecosystem management
Ecosystems
Ekologi
general degradation index
Human impact
Human influences
Invertebrates
Lakes
Management
Methods
Natural resources
Netherlands
River ecology
Rivers
saprobic index
Surface water
Water
Water management
Netherlands
Austria
Denmark
Sweden
Bulgaria
Ireland
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Summary:The Water Framework Directive requires that the ecological status of surface waters be monitored and managed if necessary. A central function in ecological status assessment has the Biological Quality Elements—organisms inhabiting surface waters—by indicating human impact on their habitat. For benthic invertebrates, a wide array of national methods are used, but to date no comprehensive summary of metrics and methods is available. In this study, we summarize the benthic invertebrate community metrics used in national systems to assess the ecological status of rivers, (very) large rivers, and lakes. Currently, benthic invertebrate assemblages are used in 26 national assessment systems for rivers, 13 assessment systems for very large rivers, and 21 assessment systems for lakes in the EU. In the majority of systems, the same metrics and modules are used. In the Red Queen’s race of ecosystem management this may be a disadvantage as these same metrics and module likely depict the same stressors but there is growing evidence that aquatic ecosystems are subject to highly differentiated, complex multiple stressor impacts. Method development should be fostered to identify and rank impacts in multi-stressor environments. DNA-based biomonitoring 2.0 offers to detect stressors with greater accuracy—if new tools are calibrated.
ISSN:2073-4441
2073-4441
DOI:10.3390/w13030346