The Ecological Status of European Rivers: Evaluation and Intercalibration of Assessment Methods: (188 Developments in Hydrobiology)

The monitoring of benthic diatoms, macrophytes, macroinvertebrates and fish will be the backbone of future water management in Europe. This book describes and compares the relevant methodologies and tools, based on a large data set covering rivers in most parts of Europe. Seven sections on "Stream and River Typologies", "Linking Organism Groups", "Macrophytes and Diatoms", "Hydromorphology", "Tools for Assessing European Streams with Macroinvertebrates", "Intercalibration and Comparison" and "Errors and Uncertainty in Bioassessment Methods" with altogether 36 articles provide scientists and water managers with a unique insight into background and application of state-of-the-art monitoring tools.

Table of Contents:
The ecological status of European rivers: evaluation and intercalibration of assessment methods.- The ecological status of European rivers: evaluation and intercalibration of assessment methods.- The STAR project: context, objectives and approaches.- The STAR project: context, objectives and approaches.- Stream and River Typologies.- Stream and river typologies — major results and conclusions from the STAR project.- Evaluation of the use of Water Framework Directive typology descriptors, reference sites and spatial scale in macroinvertebrate stream typology.- Data composition and taxonomic resolution in macroinvertebrate stream typology.- Relationships among biological elements (macrophytes, macroinvertebrates and ichthyofauna) for different core river types across Europe at two different spatial scales.- A comparison of the European Water Framework Directive physical typology and RIVPACS-type models as alternative methods of establishing reference conditions for benthic macroinvertebrates.- Linking Organism Groups.- Linking organism groups — major results and conclusions from the STAR project.- Detection of ecological change using multiple organism groups: metrics and uncertainty.- Indicators of ecological change: comparison of the early response of four organism groups to stress gradients.- Biological quality metrics: their variability and appropriate scale for assessing Streams.- Macrophytes and Diatoms.- Macrophytes and diatoms — major results and conclusions from the STAR project.- Macrophyte communities in unimpacted European streams: variability in assemblage patterns, abundance and diversity.- Macrophyte communities of European streams with altered physical habitat.- European river plant communities: the importance of organic pollution and the usefulnessof existing macrophyte metrics.- Assessment of sources of uncertainty in macrophyte surveys and the consequences for river classification.- Uncertainty in diatom assessment: Sampling, identification and counting variation.- Hydromorphology.- Hydromorphology — major results and conclusions from the STAR project.- Occurrence and variability of River Habitat Survey features across Europe and the consequences for data collection and evaluation.- Preliminary testing of River Habitat Survey features for the aims of the WFD hydro-morphological assessment: an overview from the STAR Project.- Tools for Assessing European Streams with Macroinvertebrates.- Tools for assessing European streams with macroinvertebrates: major results and conclusions from the STAR project.- Cook book for the development of a Multimetric Index for biological condition of aquatic ecosystems: experiences from the European AQEM and STAR projects and related initiatives.- The AQEM/STAR taxalist — a pan-European macro-invertebrate ecological database and taxa inventory.- The PERLA system in the Czech Republic: a multivariate approach for assessing the ecological status of running waters.- Intercalibration and Comparison.- Intercalibration and comparison — major results and conclusions from the STAR project.- Comparison of macroinvertebrate sampling methods in Europe.- The STAR common metrics approach to the WFD intercalibration process: Full application for small, lowland rivers in three European countries.- Direct comparison of assessment methods using benthic macroinvertebrates: a contribution to the EU Water Framework Directive intercalibration exercise.- Intercalibration of assessment methods for macrophytes in lowland streams: direct comparison and analysis of common metrics.- Errors andUncertainty in Bioassessment Methods.- Errors and uncertainty in bioassessment methods — major results and conclusions from the STAR project and their application using STARBUGS.- Effects of sampling and sub-sampling variation using the STAR-AQEM sampling protocol on the precision of macroinvertebrate metrics.- Sample coherence — a field study approach to assess similarity of macroinvertebrate samples.- Estimates and comparisons of the effects of sampling variation using ‘national’ macroinvertebrate sampling protocols on the precision of metrics used to assess ecological status.- Assessing the impact of errors in sorting and identifying macroinvertebrate samples.- Influence of macroinvertebrate sample size on bioassessment of streams.- Influence of seasonal variation on bioassessment of streams using macroinvertebrates.