The future of European water management: Demonstration of a new WFD compliant framework to support sustainable management under multiple stress.
TL;DR: A new biological assessment approach specifically designed to safeguard sustainable water management under multiple stress is presented, fully compliant with the WFD and currently applied in the assessment of aquatic plant communities in Danish streams.
About: This article is published in Science of The Total Environment.The article was published on 2019-03-01. It has received 16 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Water Framework Directive & Ecological assessment.
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Aarhus University1, University of Duisburg-Essen2, James Hutton Institute3, University of Lisbon4, University of Dundee5, Norwegian Institute for Water Research6, Finnish Environment Institute7, National Technical University8, Ecologic Brands, Inc.9, Catalan Institute for Water Research10, Environment Agency11, Leibniz Association12
TL;DR: This analysis highlights that there is great potential to enhance assessment schemes through strategic design of monitoring networks and innovation, such as earth observation, and further integrate with other sectoral policies.
260 citations
Cites background from "The future of European water manage..."
...Substituting taxonomic approaches with trait-based approaches may not provide a complete solution to identifying cause-effect, but they do represent ecosystem functioning better and allow managers to rank current stressors and select appropriate mitigation measures for recovery (Baattrup-Pedersen et al., 2019)....
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TL;DR: There is not much evidence that they reliably pick up the effects of other significant pressures such as hydromorphology or toxic contamination, so it is recommended that countries re-examine those pressures which affect different water categories in the country.
57 citations
TL;DR: The WFD-MEEG methodology, proposed by the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Greece, and the Canadian Council of Ministers of Environment Water Quality Index (CCME-WQI) are comparatively applied to evaluate the chemical status of a major transboundary river and the results showed that the physicochemical parameters were within the natural range.
30 citations
TL;DR: While the WFD was adopted to succeed and replace management practices targeting individually non-compliant element, findings indicate that little had changed in the way measures were developed, which makes the case for what it was introduced for.
28 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the relevance of riparian vegetation for river hydromorphology, focusing on its contribution to streamflow and sediment regime conditions, is reviewed and synthesized, and the authors present promising approaches for the characterization and assessment of vegetation units and indicators at multiple scales to support management and restoration measures.
26 citations
References
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TL;DR: The successes and problems encountered with implementation of the WFD over the past 10 years are reviewed and recommendations to further improve the implementation process are provided.
817 citations
TL;DR: An overview of 297 assessment methods for the status of European surface waters is presented, based on a questionnaire survey addressing authorities in all countries implementing the WFD, and the strength of relationships differed significantly between organism groups and water categories.
765 citations
DOI•
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the European Environment Agency (EEA) Environmental Action Plan (EAP) 2017-2018 for the management of water quality in the Mediterranean region.
Abstract: Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated ; European Environment Agency.
278 citations
TL;DR: It is timely to assess critically existing biomonitoring approaches to help ensure future programmes operate within a sound scientific framework and cost-effectively, as well as highlighting potentially rewarding new approaches and technologies that could complement existing methods.
Abstract: Summary It is critical that the impacts of environmental stressors on natural systems are detected, monitored and assessed accurately in order to legislate effectively and to protect and restore ecosystems. Biomonitoring underpins much of modern resource management, especially in fresh waters, and has received significant sums of money and research effort during its development. Despite this, the incorporation of science has not been effective and the management tools developed are sometimes inappropriate and poorly designed. Much biomonitoring has developed largely in isolation from general ecological theory, despite the fact that many of its fundamental principles ultimately stem from basic concepts, such as niche theory, the habitat template and the r–K continuum. Consequently, biomonitoring has not kept pace with scientific advances, which has compromised its ability to deal with emerging environmental stressors such as climate change and habitat degradation. A reconnection with its ecological roots and the incorporation of robust statistical frameworks are key to progress and meeting future challenges. The vast amount of information already collected represents a potentially valuable, and largely untapped, resource that could be used more effectively in protecting ecosystems and in advancing general ecology. Biomonitoring programmes have often accumulated valuable long-term data series, which could be useful outside the scope of the original aims. However, it is timely to assess critically existing biomonitoring approaches to help ensure future programmes operate within a sound scientific framework and cost-effectively. Investing a small proportion of available budgets to review effectiveness would pay considerable dividends. Increasing activity has been stimulated by new legislation that carries the threat of penalties for non-compliance with environmental targets, as is proposed, for example, in the EU's Water Framework Directive. If biomonitoring produces poor-quality data and has a weak scientific basis, it may lead either to unjustified burdens placed on the users of water resources, or to undetected environmental damage. We present some examples of good practice and suggest new ways to strengthen the scientific rigour that underpins biomonitoring programmes, as well as highlighting potentially rewarding new approaches and technologies that could complement existing methods.
270 citations
TL;DR: European hydrophytes are classified into ‘attribute groups’ based on the possession of homogenous sets of characteristics, and the correspondence between these attribute groups, or individual attributes, and habitat use is explored to explore trade‐offs between resistance and resilience traits.
Abstract: SUMMARY
1
Here we classify selected European hydrophytes into ‘attribute groups’ based on the possession of homogenous sets of characteristics, and explore the correspondence between these attribute groups, or individual attributes, and habitat use.
2
Non-hierarchical clustering was used to assign 120 species to twenty groups based on a matrix of categorical scores for literature- and field-derived information covering seventeen intrinsic morphological and life-history traits. Subdivision of some of these traits produced a total of 58 attributes (i.e. modalities). The robustness of this classification was confirmed by a high rate of reclassification (92%) under multiple discriminant analysis (MDA). The phylogenetic contribution was explored using ordination methods with taxonomy at family level acting as a covariable.
3
Our approach differed from earlier classifications based on growth or life form because we regarded growth form plasticity as a property of the species and its range of growing conditions, rather than of each individual population, and we considered additional (e.g. regenerative) traits. However, some conventional life form groups were preserved (i.e. utricularids, isoetids, hydrocharids and lemnids).
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Some parallels existed with established theory on terrestrial plant growth strategies, but we used strictly intrinsic attributes relevant specifically to hydrophytes and our groups could not be decomposed into three or four primary strategies. Only finer levels of partitioning appear to be of fundamental and applied ecological relevance in hydrophytes.
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A principal components analysis ordination based on 26 attributes related to physical habitat utilization separated species and their attribute groups along axes relating to: (a) flow, substratum grade and organic matter content, scour frequency, and sedimentation; and (b) depth, water level stability and biotic disturbance. A MDA applied to species ordination scores indicated only a modest overall correspondence between attribute groups and habitat use (54% correct reclassification). Poor reclassification was the result of intergroup overlap (indicating alternative sets of attributes for a given habitat) or high intragroup variance in habitat utilization (indicating commonality of attributes between different habitats). These results are interpreted in terms of trade-offs between resistance and resilience traits, ‘functional plasticity’ in traits, phylogenetic dependence in some groups and methodological constraints. The predictive potential of hydrophyte groups and their limitations are discussed.
6
Redundancy analysis revealed a highly significant correlation between traits and habitat use (P < 0.01). Our attribute matrix explained 72% of variation in physical habitat use with eight attributes (i.e. turions, anchored emergent leaves, high or low body flexibility, high root:shoot biomass ratio, free-floating surface or free-floating submerged growth form, and annual life history) explaining half of this variation.
7
Most attributes were mapped in accordance with habitat template predictions, although tests were confounded by the underlying correlation between spatial and temporal heterogeneity. The main features were: (a) a trade-off between resistance-type traits (related to stream lining, flexibility and anchorage) in more spatially heterogenous riverine and littoral zone habitats, and resilience type traits (i.e. turions, very small body size and free-floating growth forms) in spatially simple, rarely disturbed habitats, such as backwaters and canals; and (b) a shift from high investment competitive traits with a low reproductive output in deep stable habitats to classically ruderal and desiccation resistance traits in shallow fluctuating habitats.
197 citations