Abstract

It is important that legislation on water quality issues of freshwaters is not in conflict with nature conservation purposes. So far, it is however unknown how the assessment of ecological status according to for example the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Community relates to the status of lakes according to the Habitat Directive (HD) or to national environmental objectives including, e.g., the protection of important wetland areas and red-listed species. We used lake macrophyte classification schemes of Norway, Sweden, and Finland and a total of 1,014 lakes to evaluate the possible conflict between these directives and national legislation. The classification schemes represent mainly trophic indices penalizing lakes with elevated phosphorous concentrations. In general, high ecological status according to the WFD did not mean high number of red-listed species or high status according to the HD or other national environmental objectives. In Sweden 78%, in Norway 47%, and in Finland 29% of lakes with red-listed species were classified as lakes of moderate or worse ecological status based on the macrophyte classification scheme. These lakes thus did not fulfill the demands of the WFD. Restoration of surface water toward fulfilling the demands requires in practice a reduction of the trophic status. This might potentially result in for example the loss of red-listed species. To avoid such potential conflicts, we primarily suggest revising the national quality assessment systems toward implicitly incorporating nature conservation aspects, e.g., the number of red-listed species in a multi-metric assessment system.

Keywords

Aquatic vegetation; Water Framework Directive; Habitat Directive; Red-listed species; Natura 2000 areas; Fennoscandia

Published in

Hydrobiologia
2010, Volume: 656, number: 1, pages: 107-115
Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

• Ecke, Frauke

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Luleå University of Technology

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG6 Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-010-0424-3

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/39995