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The validation of common European class boundaries for river benthic macroinvertebrates to facilitate the intercalibration process of the Water Framework Directive

  • EUROPEAN SURFACE WATERS
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Abstract

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires that all the water bodies in Europe be protected and enhanced to achieve Good Ecological Status by 2015. The intercalibration of the biological monitoring results of Member States has to be carried out in relation to classification tasks to guarantee a common understanding of ‘Good Ecological Status’ at a European level. An intercalibration exercise was carried out within the framework of different Geographical Intercalibration Groups (GIGs), each composed of a group of countries that share similar river types and have a discrete geographical range. By means of the intercalibration exercise, common European boundaries were proposed for river invertebrate assessment methods within each GIG. The purpose of this study was to validate the boundaries proposed for the formal intercalibration exercise. A benchmark data set was used, which comprised data, collected in different European countries that satisfied WFD requirements. The data set included a set of reference sites and provided evidence of a high degree of comparability among countries. The STAR Intercalibration Common Metric index (STAR_ICMi) was calculated for benchmark samples and was selected as the index in which national assessment boundaries were expressed. It was applied for the intercalibration exercise in two GIGs. For the STAR_ICMi, the coefficient of variation was also calculated, demonstrating a comparable variability with indices that are based on species level identification. A fixed percentile of reference samples STAR_ICMi values was selected as the boundary between High and Good status. The range from this fixed percentile to the lowest possible value was divided into four equal parts to obtain the remaining class boundaries. The resulting High/Good and Good/Moderate boundaries were compared to the boundaries proposed by GIGs and proved to be in line with those defined in the intercalibration exercise. Even if, for the intercalibration exercise, some procedures to check the Member States (MS) data sets where put into practice, it is the responsibility of each state to guarantee the WFD compliancy of their reference conditions and methods. Accordingly, the process of validation explained in this article, or similar ones, can be an important step forward and demonstrate the comparability of the actual boundaries.

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Acknowledgements

This article was written in the context of the project ‘Scientific support for the River Intercalibration process’, funded by the Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability (Contract Number 381667FISC). Parts of the data were collected within the frame of the European projects AQEM (Contract number EVK1-CT1999-00027) and STAR (Contract number EVK1-CT-2001-00089). Data from Cyprus were collected with the support of Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment of Cyprus (Tender NOTICE: 62/2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNR-IRSA, Water Research Institute, Via del Mulino, 19, 20047, Brugherio, MB, Italy

    Stefania Erba, Raffaella Balestrini & Andrea Buffagni

  2. CEH, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Dorset, DT2 8ZD, UK

    Mike T. Furse

  3. Water Development Department, 100-110 Kennenty Avenue, Pallouriotissa, 1047, Lefkosia, Cyprus

    Andreas Christodoulides

  4. Department of Hydrobiology, BOKU – University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna, 1180, Vienna, Austria

    Thomas Ofenböck

  5. European Commission – Joint Research Centre, Via E. Fermi, 2749, 21027, Ispra, VA, Italy

    Wouter van de Bund

  6. CEMAGREF, 3 bis Quai Chauveau – CP 220, 69336, Lyon Cedex 09, France

    Jean-Gabriel Wasson

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  1. Stefania Erba
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  2. Mike T. Furse
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  3. Raffaella Balestrini
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  4. Andreas Christodoulides
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  7. Jean-Gabriel Wasson
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  8. Andrea Buffagni
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Correspondence to Stefania Erba.

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Guest editors: P. Nõges, W. van de Bund, A. C. Cardoso, A. Solimini & A.-S. Heiskanen

Assessment of the Ecological Status of European Surface Waters

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Erba, S., Furse, M.T., Balestrini, R. et al. The validation of common European class boundaries for river benthic macroinvertebrates to facilitate the intercalibration process of the Water Framework Directive. Hydrobiologia 633, 17–31 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-009-9873-y

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