A new broad typology for rivers and lakes in Europe: Development and application for large-scale environmental assessments

Solheim, Anne Lyche; Globevnik, Lidija; Austnes, Kari; Kristensen, Peter; Moe, S. Jannicke; Persson, Jonas; Phillips, Geoff; Poikāne, Sandra; Bund, Wouter van de; Birk, Sebastian

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134043

Cited by 80 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Setting more accurate nutrient RCs in lowland rivers is important for both ecological and economic reasons. On average, 67% of the lowland rivers in Finland, Norway and Sweden have been reported to be in less than good ecological state (Lyche Solheim et al 2019 ), 2 and in Denmark, where almost all rivers are lowland rivers, 61% are reported to be in less than good state 1 . The G/M boundaries are often linked to the RCs, and uncertainty of these values can have severe impacts—too high RCs and G/M boundaries for nutrients may result in enhanced eutrophication and risks of harmful algal blooms (Carvalho et al 2013 ), whereas too strict RCs and G/M boundaries may cause implementation of unnecessary nutrient reduction measures with significant economic consequences (Davis et al 2015 , Phillips et al 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can be done either directly, for example, by multiplying the nutrient RC with a constant or by evaluating whether a suggested G/M boundary, which is often established from dose–response relationships using nutrient-sensitive biology, is within a reasonable distance from the RC, i.e. showing only “slight” deviation from RC (Bald et al 2005 ; Carvalho et al 2008 , Huser and Fölster 2013 , Lyche Solheim et al 2008a , 2019 ). Biological data are often used to link tolerance levels for biological quality elements to nutrients or related stressors, such as the Saprobic Diatom Index for diatoms (Rott et al 2003 ), the Periphyton Index for trophic status for non-diatom algae (Schneider and Lindstrøm 2011 ), the Trophic Diatom Index for phytobenthos (Kelly and Whitton 1995 ) and the ASPT index for benthic invertebrates (Armitage et al 1983 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparing nutrient reference concentrations in Nordic countries with focus on lowland rivers

Skarbøvik

Aroviita

Fölster

et al. 2020

Ambio

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Reference conditions of water bodies are defined as the natural or minimal anthropogenically disturbed state. We compared the methods for determining total phosphorus and total nitrogen concentrations in rivers in Finland, Norway and Sweden as well as the established reference conditions and evaluated the possibility for transfer and harmonisation of methods. We found that both methods and values differed, especially for lowland rivers with a high proportion of agriculture in the catchment. Since Denmark has not yet set reference conditions for rivers, two of the Nordic methods were tested for Danish conditions. We conclude that some of the established methods are promising but that further development is required. We moreover argue that harmonisation of reference conditions is needed to obtain common benchmarks for assessing the impacts of current and future land use changes on water quality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing nutrient reference concentrations in Nordic countries with focus on lowland rivers

Skarbøvik

Aroviita

Fölster

et al. 2020

Ambio

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“…When making comparisons of threshold concentrations between countries it is important to use similar water body types. The WFD leaves countries to determine their own water body typology, based on WFD Annex II type descriptors (System A or B), which has resulted in the description of >1500 national types of water bodies across Europe (Lyche Solheim et al, 2015, Lyche Solheim et al, 2019), too many for effective comparison. To simplify this those freshwater types that shared a similar descriptors (underlying geology, altitude, catchment size for rivers, surface area and mean depth for lakes) were grouped into European ‘broad types’ (Lyche Solheim et al, 2015, Lyche Solheim et al, 2019) (Tables S3 and S4).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nutrient criteria for surface waters under the European Water Framework Directive: Current state-of-the-art, challenges and future outlook

Poikāne

Kelly

Herrero

et al. 2019

Science of The Total Environment

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153

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The aim of European water policy is to achieve good ecological status in all rivers, lakes, coastal and transitional waters by 2027. Currently, more than half of water bodies are in a degraded condition and nutrient enrichment is one of the main culprits. Therefore, there is a pressing need to establish reliable and comparable nutrient criteria that are consistent with good ecological status.This paper highlights the wide range of nutrient criteria currently in use by Member States of the European Union to support good ecological status and goes on to suggest that inappropriate criteria may be hindering the achievement of good status. Along with a comprehensive overview of nutrient criteria, we provide a critical analysis of the threshold concentrations and approaches by which these are set. We identify four essential issues: (1) Different nutrients (nitrogen and/or phosphorus) are used for different water categories in different countries. (2) The use of different nutrient fractions (total, dissolved inorganic) and statistical summary metrics (e.g., mean, percentiles, seasonal, annual) currently hampers comparability between countries, particularly for rivers, transitional and coastal waters. (3) Wide ranges in nutrient threshold values within shared water body types, in some cases showing more than a 10-fold difference in concentrations. (4) Different approaches used to set threshold nutrient concentrations to define the boundary between “good” and “moderate” ecological status. Expert judgement-based methods resulted in significantly higher (less stringent) good-moderate threshold values compared with data-driven approaches, highlighting the importance of consistent and rigorous approaches to criteria setting.We suggest that further development of nutrient criteria should be based on relationships between ecological status and nutrient concentrations, taking into account the need for comparability between different water categories, water body types within these categories, and countries.

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“…Panel A shows the data for all spatially aligned (chemical-ecological) chemical pollution and ecological status data across Europe (46,997 XY-points). The other panels show the results for subsets of sites, discriminated via the classification of broad river types, by catchment size 46 . Table 1 summarizes the outcomes of the statistical analyses for separate broad river types (RT1-RT10, and for all sites together).…”

Section: (4) Does Chemical Pollution Act As Factor That Limits Maintamentioning

confidence: 99%

Chemical pollution imposes limitations to the ecological status of European surface waters

Posthuma

Zwart³

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Aquatic ecosystems are affected by man-made pressures, often causing combined impacts. The analysis of the impacts of chemical pollution is however commonly separate from that of other pressures and their impacts. This evolved from differences in the data available for applied ecology vis-à-vis applied ecotoxicology, which are field gradients and laboratory toxicity tests, respectively. With this study, we demonstrate that the current approach of chemical impact assessment, consisting of comparing measured concentrations to protective environmental quality standards for individual chemicals, is not optimal. In reply, and preparing for a method that would enable the comprehensive assessment and management of water quality pressures, we evaluate various quantitative chemical pollution pressure metrics for mixtures of chemicals in a case study with 24 priority substances of Europe-wide concern. We demonstrate why current methods are sub-optimal for water quality management prioritization and that chemical pollution currently imposes limitations to the ecological status of European surface waters. We discuss why management efforts may currently fail to restore a good ecological status, given that to date only 0.2% of the compounds in trade are considered in European water quality assessment and management.

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A new broad typology for rivers and lakes in Europe: Development and application for large-scale environmental assessments

Cited by 80 publications

References 19 publications

Comparing nutrient reference concentrations in Nordic countries with focus on lowland rivers

Comparing nutrient reference concentrations in Nordic countries with focus on lowland rivers

Nutrient criteria for surface waters under the European Water Framework Directive: Current state-of-the-art, challenges and future outlook

Chemical pollution imposes limitations to the ecological status of European surface waters

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