Freshwater Biology and Ecology Handbook: Practitioners' Guide to Improving and Protecting River Health: Focus on Invertebrate Monitoring and Assessment

Description:

This handbook provides an overview of the biological and ecological methods used to assess the status of the freshwater environment, with a focus on invertebrate methods. Good river health is the key outcome and aim of this work. The handbook describes how biological methods are used in the UK to improve and protect freshwater quality by delivering the Water Framework Directive. The principles underlying that delivery are constants and feed forward into possible reshaped UK approaches in the future.

The book is aimed at students, operational ecologists (including citizen scientists), nascent environment protection agencies (including those joining the European Union), and policy makers in the UK.

* Chapter 1 provides an overview, including the legal framework for freshwater biological monitoring

* Chapter 2 is a practitioner’s guide to the standard methods for invertebrate sampling and data collection

* Chapter 3 provides an understanding of current river invertebrate classification methodologies, focussing on RIVPACS and surveillance & operational monitoring.

* Chapter 4 looks at other sampling methods for investigative monitoring

* Chapter 5 looks at indices and data analyses for investigations, including the increasing contribution from citizen science programmes.

* Chapter 6 considers the reporting methods used in the UK and the EU, specifically with links to investment programmes, driven by the monitoring and assessment information. It also provides links to publicly available datasets.

The focus is on river invertebrate methodologies and on status classification, using the UK’s RIVPACS approach to provide a working example of what is needed to set up a biological monitoring programme for a national initiative, a river catchment or a specific tributary. Public participation through citizen science initiatives and are increasingly important for gathering data and presenting evidence, and those methods are also described. Most invertebrate methods use similar key principles, and we expect users to modify and adapt methods to their specific situations as needed.

Several important biological and ecological methods are not covered in this handbook, including fish, macrophyte, diatom, DNA, and river habitat assessments, river restoration methodologies, still-water methods, and statistic and computing methods. We would like other specialists to work in collaboration with FWR and FBA to add additional chapters or sections to expand its coverage.

The core elements described here are the basis for training programmes and university teaching, to provide the expertise to consolidate the improvement of river health into the future. We also hope that they provide a useful insight for civil servants, water managers, specialists, and river conservation groups working to improve and protect our invaluable freshwater environment.

In making this publication free of charge and for public good, we hope to accelerate the development and use of biological monitoring and assessments to improve the understanding of freshwater systems around the world.