Tools for bioindicator assessment in rivers: The importance of spatial scale, land use patterns and biotic integration

A multiple index integrating different levels of organization

“…A sub-set of 22 indicators was extracted to assess ecological quality. A previous study revealed the selected indicators to be sensitive to gradients of disturbance at different spatial scales in the rivers of northern Portugal (Cortes et al, 2013). Chironomid pupal exuviae were collected at each sampling site following the European Standard protocol (CEN, 2006) using a hand net (250 mm mesh).…”

Ecological Models to Infer the Quantitative Relationship between Land Use and the Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Community

“…The diverse and complex relation between local or riparian and catchment land-use scales was the reason why 11 out of 39 papers studied the impacts of land use at both riparian and catchment scales. The complementary benefit of combining both land-use scales can be seen from the studies done by Weigel [56] and Cortes et al [13]. Weigel [56] found out that the influence of each scale to determine macroinvertebrate distribution was dominant at certain parts of his study area, but not exclusive of each other.…”

“…Several papers studied macroinvertebrate data based on taxa richness (16 papers), using various biotic indices (17 papers), or various diversity indices, such as Simpson's diversity and the Shannon-Wiener index (2 papers), or a combination of biotic and diversity indices (4 papers). In one paper, the authors performed their assessment based on biological, physiological, and ecological macroinvertebrate traits [13], while in two other papers, the assessment was based on the functional feeding group [55,56]. The papers were assessed in terms of input variables included in the models, spatial scale of land-use information, ecological community that is assessed, biological index used, type of ecological model, and country of study.…”

“…The impact of land-use changes due to agriculture can be minimized by reducing the use of agrochemicals, e.g., in small-scale farms [10], or by applying crop rotation and conservation tillage systems [11,12]. The impact that land use poses on surface waters is not limited to river ecosystems [13,14], but also affects ponds [15] and lakes [16,17]. The change in the physico-chemical and hydromorphological characteristics of the impacted river or catchment will consequently affect the richness and abundance of aquatic organisms, such as fish [18,19], macroinvertebrates [20,21], and plants [22,23].…”

Evaluation of ecological quality in peri-urban rivers in Mexico City: a proposal for identifying and validating reference sites using benthic macroinvertebrates as indicators

“…The composition of benthic macroinvertebrates communities is frequently used as an indicator because i) the majority of these organisms are localized and representative of the area where they are collected; ii) their life cycles are relatively long and sensitive to alterations in the environment; iii) they are sensitive to stressors; and iv) they constitute a significant part of the trophic chain (Ferraro and Cole, 1990;Cortes et al, 2013). These organisms may exhibit the influence of pressures on both terrestrial and aquatic environments, and they can be utilized to identify degradation levels in the system prior to employing physicochemical parameters (Sánchez-Montayo et al, 2009).…”