Assessment of the Ecological Status of Streams in Two Carpathian Subregions

Abstract

A multimetric assessment system was developed to determine the ecological status of two types of stream in the Carpathian ecoregion following the requirements of the WFD. The organic pollution gradient was defined using Canonical Correspondence Analysis. Classification based on physical, chemical and biological data divided the tested sites into two stream types with subsequent grouping into several ecological quality classes. From all the metrics tested, 17 for the East Carpathian streams and 15 for the West Carpathian streams, from seven metric categories, were included in the resulting multimetric index. Different kinds of response to degradation (linear, unimodal, exponential) were observed. The Saprobic index (Zelinka and Marvan), Rheoindex (Banning, with abundance classes) and Index of Biocenotic region, showed the best discriminatory ability for both stream types.

The effect of environmental factors on the mayfly communities of headwater streams in the Pieniny Mountains (West Carpathians)

“…Distance from source indirectly determines stream size and correlates with macroinvertebrate taxa richness (Lorenz et al 2004). In most mountain streams, macroinvertebrate diversity increases with stream size (Heino et al 2005;Krno et al 2007). In this study stream size has also been shown to correlate positively with the number of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera species, in both undisturbed and disturbed localities (Paller et al 2006).…”

“…Moreover, it supplies nutrients and organic matter (litter and wood) to the stream ecosystem (Balestrini et al 2004), and thus has an important role in determining the trophic structure in the stream. Particular emphasis has been placed on the role of riparian vegetation in mountain streams in naturally forested catchments, where it is often the most important factor differentiating macroinvertebrate occurrence in the stream ( Vannote et al 1980;Füreder et al 2002;Krno et al 2007). …”

“…The longitudinal distribution of macroinvertebrates is determined by many of environmental parameters on the longitudinal gradient. The main abiotic factors are altitude (Finn & Poff 2005), slope (Breitenmoser-Würsten & Sartori 1995), stream size (Heino et al 2005), development of riparian zone and its vegetation (Roth et al 1996;Townsend et al 2003), current velocity (Burian 1997), substrate type and size (Hawkins et al 1982), water chemistry and nutrient concentration (Krno et al 2007) and water temperature (Ward 1992).…”

“…Local environmental conditions (local and regional characteristics) seem to be very important for macroinvertebrate assemblages on a regional scale, in particular catchment areas (Death & Joy 2004;Krno et al 2007). Geographical location also influences invertebrate communities (Townsend et al 2003), particularly in terms of geology and geomorphology (Johnson & Gage 1997;Hieber et al 2005).…”

Macrophyte and macroinvertebrate patterns in unimpacted mountain rivers of two European ecoregions

“…In Central Europe, we can still find relatively abundant high-quality river ecosystems that remain unaltered by human activity where natural processes still operate on a large scale (Krno et al, 2007;Šporka et al, 2009;Szoszkiewicz et al, 2010a;Wy_ zga et al, 2012;Mazur et al, 2016). Due to the high ecological quality of some rivers in Poland, they are often used for international comparisons (Dynesius & Nilsson, 1994;Antheunisse et al, 2006;Baattrup-Pedersen et al, 2006;Birk & Willby, 2010) and even used as a reference for other countries (Baattrup-Pedersen et al, 2008).…”