Aquatic Ecology

, Volume 42, Issue 2, pp 293–305 | Cite as

Macroinvertebrate indicators of lake acidification: analysis of monitoring data from UK, Norway and Sweden

  • Ann Kristin Schartau
  • S. Jannicke Moe
  • Leonard Sandin
  • Ben McFarland
  • Gunnar G. Raddum
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Although the acid sensitivity of many invertebrate species in lakes is well known, methods for assessment of lake acidification based on macroinvertebrate samples are less developed than for rivers. This article analyses a number of existing metrics developed for assessment of river acidification, and evaluates their performance for assessment of lake acidification. Moreover, new species-based indicators of lake acidification were developed and tested. The selected dataset contains 668 samples on littoral macroinvertebrates from 427 lakes with almost 60% of the samples from Sweden and the rest from UK and Norway. Flexible, non-parametric regression models were used for explorative analyses of the pressure–response relationships. The metrics have been assessed according to their response to pH, the degree of non-linearity of the response and the influence of humic compounds. Acid-sensitive metrics often showed a threshold in response to pH between 5.8 and 6.5. Highly acid-tolerant metrics were typically dominant across the whole pH range. Humic level had a positive effect for most acid-sensitive metrics. Generally, most metrics showed a more non-linear response pattern for the humic lakes than for clear lakes. The significant relationship between these macroinvertebrate metrics and acidification shows that there is a potential for developing further the assessment systems for ecological quality of lakes based on these metrics, although the metrics explained a low % of the variation (<30%). In order to improve the predictive power of the biotic metrics across the acidified part of Europe, further harmonization and standardisation of sampling effort and taxa identification are needed.

Keywords

Acidification indices Generalised additive regression models (GAM) Humic content Littoral macroinvertebrates pH Water Framework Directive 
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Notes

Acknowledgement

Members of the N-GIG, WG Acidification have given valuable input to the development of new metrics and interpretation of analyses: Ian Fozzard, Willem Goedkoop, Ruth Little. We also thank Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Environment Agency for England and Wales, LFI-Unifob at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency for providing datasets on littoral lake macroinvertebrates and chemistry. This study has been a part of the EU-funded project REBECCA (SSPI-CY-2003-502158) and has also been financially supported by the Norwegian Agency for Pollution control, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Norwegian Institute for Water Research and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Ken Irvine (Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland) has been responsible for the REBECCA Lakes Macroinvertebrate group. The article benefited from constructive comments from Ramesh Gulati and an anonymous reviewer.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ann Kristin Schartau
    • 1
  • S. Jannicke Moe
    • 2
  • Leonard Sandin
    • 3
  • Ben McFarland
    • 4
  • Gunnar G. Raddum
    • 5
  1. 1.Norwegian Institute for Nature ResearchOsloNorway
  2. 2.Norwegian Institute for Water ResearchOsloNorway
  3. 3.Department of Environmental AssessmentSwedish University of Agricultural SciencesUppsalaSweden
  4. 4.Environment Agency, South West RegionExeterUK
  5. 5.Department of Biology, LFI-UnifobUniversity of BergenBergenNorway

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