Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 7
A 20-Year View of Monitoring
Ecological Quality in English
and Welsh Rivers
Ian P. Vaughan and Stephen J. Ormerod
Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, UK
Introduction
programmes. This is driven primarily by the
importance of the resources that rivers provide
and the potential conflict between different forms
of use, such as the discharge of wastewater or
industrial effluent and the supply of drinking
water. Monitoring also addresses a range of
other requirements, including assessment and
reporting on the condition of sites, habitats
and species designated under nature conservation
legislation (Cowx
et al
., 2009). These drivers may
require regular, repeat surveys with relatively high
resolution sampling over large geographical areas
to pinpoint improvements or declines in condition.
As a consequence, the datasets generated by
routine river monitoring are much larger than
most other project-based sources of environmental
surveillance or impact data which may provide
more detail, but tend to be short term and more
restricted in spatial extent.
This chapter considers monitoring data and
some of the contributions they can make to river
research and management. This is illustrated using
two major river monitoring schemes operated in
England and Wales since 1990 - by summarizing
their results and demonstrating how the data
from these and other schemes are not only
extremely valuable in their own right, but could
also support river research and management in the
future.
The period 1990-2010 was a time of major
change in UK river management. It included the
reorganization of statutory environmental agencies
in 1995-1996, the introduction of new legislation,
notably the European Habitats Directive and
Water Framework Directive (WFD; Council of the
European Communities, 1992, 2000), and major
investment by water companies to control point-
source pollution. There was also growing concern
about the ecological impacts of climate change
and the physical modification of rivers (Vaughan
et al
., 2009). Systematic river monitoring is
essential to answer questions about the extent and
consequences of change. It provides information
on the current state of the environment, including
the spatial distribution of biological communities
and environmental attributes, and the changes
that may have occurred over time (Yoccoz
et al
.,
2001). Collectively, these provide the fundamental
information for environmental management: what
is being managed and what has changed in
response to management interventions and other
factors (Yoccoz
et al
., 2001).
In the UK, rivers are among the most intensively
monitored ecosystems, both with respect to the
range of attributes monitored and the spatial
and temporal coverage of sampling and survey
