Typology in Mediterranean transitional waters: new challenges and perspectives

Abstract

ABSTRACT1. Transitional waters are ecotones between terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems, being characterized by high spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability.2. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) posed to the scientific community the challenge to classify these ecosystems into a small number of types, while retaining a functional classification of ecosystem types.3. A niche theory approach is proposed to identify the limiting forcing factors organizing biological quality elements, i.e. the limiting niche dimensions.4. The analysis of a macro-invertebrate dataset from published papers on 36 Italian lagoons suggested a two-level typological classification of Mediterranean lagoons.5. Basic ecological theories, such as niche and island biogeography theories, have fundamental implications for the process of developing a typological classification for all aquatic ecosystems, as required by the WFD.

Environmental Variability and Macrophyte Assemblages in Coastal Lagoon Types of Western Greece (Mediterranean Sea)

“…Several criteria have been used to define the typology of transitional waters such as salinity, substrate type, formation, isolation, size, morphology, etc. [7,8]. Recently, a classification approach of coastal lagoons of Western Greece was conducted by Christia et al [9] who revealed four different types, based on criteria defined by the system B of WFD 2000/60/EE and other descriptors indicated as either…”

Biodiversity and Conservation of Coastal Lagoons

“…In lentic ecosystems, zoobenthos is very important compared with the pelagic communities of animals, particularly in shallow systems and coastal areas. Surface area, water salinity, and outlet width and length, can actually be considered the key limiting, dimensions defining the environmental niche space for benthic macroinvertebrates in lagoon ecosystems (Basset et al, 2006b). Fish are the main organisms of nekton, i. e. all the organisms that actively swim in the water.…”

Aquatic science and the water framework directive: a still open challenge towards ecogovernance of aquatic ecosystems

“…The term 'transitional waters' had already been in use since at least the early 1980s but it was introduced as a common term in the scientific literature by the Directive to cluster together all water types that were neither freshwater nor marine (WFD, CE2000/60, 2000; Basset and Abbiati, 2004;McLusky and Elliott, 2007) (Figure 2(a)). The introduction of the term by the WFD stimulated a wide discussion Tagliapietra and Volpi Ghirardini, 2006;McLusky and Elliott, 2007;Basset and Carrada, 2007) and the term is now in wide use by the scientific community. By addressing the question of the heuristic Figure 1.…”