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Sammanfattning

The European Water Framework Directive adopted in 2000, despite being prescriptive, has stimulated the development of a diverse array of biological assessment methods in Europe. The multitude of indicators currently used in biomonitoring lacks consistency and thus constrains the comparability of assessments at an international scale. Therefore, there is an argument to define and validate metrics with more universal application that can be applied EU-wide. We explored two metrics based on macrophyte taxonomic composition, the empirically based Intercalibration Common Metric for lake macrophytes (ICMLM) and the expert-based Ellenberg Index (EI), for their ability to detect eutrophication in different types of European lowland lakes. Data from 1474 unique lake-years from 11 countries were used to explore relationships between these metrics and the seasonal mean concentration of total phosphorus (TP) using linear regression.ICMLM gave a linear and relatively strong (R = 0.72, p < 0.0001) response over the entire spectrum of TP concentrations, whereas EI performed best in lakes with the TP concentrations up to 250 mu g L-1 (R = 0.64, p < 0.0001) and was largely insensitive to higher phosphorus concentrations. Both metrics performed better in Nordic lakes than in the Central-Baltic ones. The responses of both metrics to TP were not modified or only very weakly modified by altitude, lake size and mean depth but were significantly affected by alkalinity. The ICMLM-TP relationship was stronger in lakes with water alkalinity > 0.2 meq L-1 and significantly weaker in less buffered lakes. EI performed better in lakes with alkalinity

Nyckelord

Lakes; Macrophyte metrics; Taxonomic composition; Eutrophication

Publicerad i

Ecological Indicators
2014, volym: 45, sidor: 407-415
Utgivare: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

SLU författare

UKÄ forskningsämne

Ekologi

Publikationens identifierare

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.04.049

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/65141