Biomonitoreo de la calidad del agua en los ríos ibéricos: lecciones aprendidas

Abstract

Biomonitoring of water quality in Iberian rivers: Learned lessons A Decalogue summarizing the experience over 30 years in biomonitoring is provided by the authors with two main focuses, the use of macroinvertebrates as biological indicators, and the design of systems to evaluate the ecological status in rivers and streams. After a general introduction and a summary of the origins of biomonitoring in Spain, the authors examine the papers on this topic published in the Limnetica journal. The authors use the data of such papers to illustrate the points that have to be taken into account in order to design biomonitoring programs, and summarized these ideas in a Decalogue. The Decalogue contents all required steps to produce a proper biomonitoring system that will be normative compliant with the specifications of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The 10 parts of the Decalogue are: 1) how to establish a sampling network; 2) human and material resources available for sampling; 3) definition of the river typologies; 4) how to establish the reference conditions; 5) sampling protocols to be used; 6) biological metrics to be applied; 7) setting the threshold between the different quality classes and its relationship with the pressures; 8) ecological quality maps and output system by using the EQR (Ecological Quality Ratio); 9) quality standards and control; 10) setting the quality objectives and definition of the adequate measures to recover water quality issues. In the Limnetica journal since 1981, a total of 641 papers on aquatic ecology have been published, 42% were on rivers and 18% specifically in biomonitoring. Most of the published papers in biomonitoring used macroinvertebrates (88%), while less than 20% used the reference condition and/or river typology approach to set the quality classesthresholds. However, despite the existence of the WFD since the year 2000, many papers published in Limnetica after 2002 (at this year a Limnetica’s special issue on biomonitoring in Mediterranean streams was published), do not met the requirements of this Directive. Today, given the experience gained in the implementation of the WFD any biomonitoring system developed in Europe must be comparable to the existing ones and especially with the common intercalibration metric (ICM).The Decalogue present the necessary steps for a system to be compliant with the WFD regulations.