Improvement of the ecological water qualification system of rivers based on the first results of the Hungarian phytobenthos surveillance monitoring

Abstract

Results of an ecological quality ratio-based qualification system, developed on the basis of the analysis of 1,161 benthic diatom dataset of the Hungarian national database, are presented herein. Using Kohonen's Self Organising Map technique, the 25 Hungarian physiographic river types were pooled into six larger distinct categories (diatom river groups). Diatom metrics were tested for their sensitivity to the targeted stressors (nutrients, COD hydromorphological alteration) in each group. The strongest relationships were found in the case of the IPS, SI and TI indices; therefore the average of these metrics (IPSITI) was proposed as a national multimetric index for Hungarian streams. Based on IPSITI values, the ratio of moderate to worse quality water was the highest in those groups containing small rivers. In the case of large, lowland and mid-altitude rivers with fine sediment, the good and moderate ecological status was more characteristic. Applicability of the IPSITI seems to be very useful in case of small-and medium-sized rivers. For these rivers, the index showed a significant relationship with nutrients and organic pollutants. In the case of very large rivers, the stressor-index relationships were not significant because of the insufficient number of samples and the small range of stressors.

The role of phytoplankton diversity metrics in shallow lake and river quality assessment

“…Their watersheds are on the heavily populated and intensively used lowlands, which are seriously impacted by anthropogenic influents (van Dam et al, 2007;Várbíró et al, 2012). In pristine state these water currents were macrophyte dominated, and the phytoplankton must have been dominated by tychoplanktonic and metaphytic elements.…”

A large river (River Loire, France) survey to compare phytoplankton functional approaches: Do they display river zones in similar ways?

“…Furthermore, the European official demand for ecological monitoring (WFD, 2000) has led to the development of new assessment methods for lake phytoplankton (Reynolds, 2005;Padisák et al, 2006) and for benthic diatoms (Stenger-Kovács et al, 2007;Kelly et al, 2009;Jüttner et al, 2012). However, ecoregional differences still pose a major challenge in their application at large spatial scale (Tison et al, 2005;Beltrami et al, 2012;Várbíró et al, 2012). Even if the WFD requires the monitoring of river phytoplankton and accordingly, new assessment methods have been developed Mischke et al, 2011), at the moment, potamoplankton is not included specifically to assess ecological status in rivers.…”

The Influence of Selected Factors on the Distribution of Epilithic Diatoms in a Torrential River the Kamniška Bistrica (Slovenia)

“…For the effective implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) the member states are supposed to provide the unimpacted reference state of the system (KELLY et al 2012, VÁRBÍRÓ et al 2012. The potential of diatoms as bioindicators for the assessment of water quality and reference conditions is well known (ALMEIDA and FEIO 2012) Samples were collected along the river's course in different seasons.…”