Does the Ecoregion Approach Support the Typological Demands of the Eu ‘water Framework Directive’?

Moog, Otto; Schmidt‐Kloiber, Astrid; Ofenböck, Thomas; Gerritsen, Jeroen

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-0993-5_2

Cited by 34 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Moog et al (2004) concluded that a finer spatial resolution required a finer taxonomic resolution which is in concordance with the hierarchical approach described by Frissell et al (1986). The strength and amount of detailed information that can be extracted from species-level data was already shown by several authors (e.g., Resh & Unzicker, 1975;Moog et al, 1997;Lenat & Resh, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Data composition and taxonomic resolution in macroinvertebrate stream typology

Verdonschot¹

2006

The Ecological Status of European Rivers: Evaluation and Intercalibration of Assessment Methods

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In the EU water framework directive (WFD) a typological framework is defined for assessing the ecological quality of water bodies in the future. The aim of this study was to test the effect of data composition and taxonomic resolution on this typology. The EU research projects AQEM and STAR provided 1660 samples of 48 stream types sampled all over the major geographical gradients in Europe. These stream types fit the WFD typological demands and fit to the major European geographic regions (ecoregions). The samples included gradients from reference conditions to samples with bad ecological quality. Despite standardisation, there were large differences between the participating countries concerning the number of taxa, the number of specimens, and the taxonomic resolution. The macroinvertebrate data were analysed by using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA). The distribution patterns using all samples, only reference samples, and only degraded samples showed that the use of species-level (or 'best available taxonomic' level) performed better at a practical (fine) scale in comparison to family-level. The analyses further showed that even the use of a standardised protocol can not easily overcome (i) differences in site conditions that force the researcher to deviate from the protocol as well as (ii) the experiences of the researcher(s) and (iii) the available taxonomic knowledge.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Data composition and taxonomic resolution in macroinvertebrate stream typology

Verdonschot¹

2006

The Ecological Status of European Rivers: Evaluation and Intercalibration of Assessment Methods

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“…Hawkins et al (2000) indicated that genus/species-level data produce stronger classifications than family-level data, but the contrary is also true. In contrast, Moog et al (2004) concluded that finer spatial resolution requires finer taxonomic resolution and Verdonschot (2006b) showed that family-level data provides a less distinct separation of reference sites. In the present study, the family-level was sufficient to discriminate stream-types and provided some type-specific indicator taxa.…”

Section: Ecological Meaning Of the Mondego Stream Typesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Recent studies tested the concordance between several landscape classifications and the variability of stream communities at different spatial scales, from the European (e.g., Moog et al, 2004;Heino and Myrka, 2006;Verdonschot, 2006a), ecoregion (Sandin and Johnson, 2000;Moog et al, 2004) and country levels (e.g., Dodkins et al, 2005), to smaller regions (e.g., Heino and Mykra, 2006;Sa´nchez-Montoya et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Water Framework Directive stream types biologically relevant? The case of the Mondego river, Portugal

Chaves

Costa

Chainho

et al. 2011

Ann. Limnol. - Int. J. Lim.

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-Typology schemes are useful in partitioning natural spatial variability and thus helping implementing bioassessment methods. They have become widely accepted in Europe after the publication of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The major objective of this study was to test if six Portuguese predefined physical stream-types (using System-B of the WFD) are concordant with macroinvertebrate assemblages collected in 31 undisturbed sites in a Portuguese river basin. A top-down (stream types defined by physical attributes) and a bottom-up approach (river classes defined by biological communities) were used. No significant differences were found in the mean number of taxa and abundance of different physical stream types and few taxa are characteristic of specific stream types. Discriminant analysis (DA) considering family-level composition revealed that all stream-types were significantly different and the cross-validation process showed that all stream-types had more than 50% of their samples correctly assigned. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach based on a correspondence analysis (CA) showed some overlap of the macroinvertebrate communities of pre-defined stream types, indicating that variations in the macroinvertebrate community structure was primarily related to altitude, mineralisation and a temporal gradient. DA crossvalidation and CA results suggest that tested stream types do not account for natural temporal changes known to affect macroinvertebrate communities in this Mediterranean basin and that the WFD typology should account for these natural variations. The exclusion of natural variability could indicate impairment when it does not exist or no impairment when it does exist (type I and II statistical errors).

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“…However, correlations have commonly been weak between ecoregions or stream and river types and biogeographic patterns of freshwater organisms (Hawkins et al, 2000a;Hawkins and Vinson, 2000;Newall and Wells, 2000;Heino et al, 2002;McDonald et al, 2005;Davy-Bowker et al, 2006;Dauwalter et al, 2008). Effectiveness of ecoregions or abiotic typologies in accounting for natural variation in lotic bioassessment therefore has been questioned (McCormick et al, 2000;Moog et al, 2004;Cao et al, 2007;Hering et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%