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Article
Open AccessOf causes and symptoms: using monitoring data and expert knowledge to diagnose the causes of stream degradation
Ecological status assessment under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) often integrates the impact of multiple stressors into a single index value. This hampers the identification of individual stress...
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Article
Open AccessDirect and indirect effects of salinisation on riverine biota: a case study from river Wipper, Germany
Salinisation has direct and detrimental physiological effects on freshwater organisms, yet little is known about its indirect effects. Here, we present a study that investigated the primary and secondary effec...
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Article
Open AccessPossible seasonal and diurnal modulation of Gammarus pulex (Crustacea, Amphipoda) drift by microsporidian parasites
In lotic freshwater ecosystems, the drift or downstream movement of animals (e.g., macroinvertebrates) constitutes a key dispersal pathway, thus sha** ecological and evolutionary patterns. There is evidence ...
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Article
Open AccessEffects of agricultural land use on river biota: a meta-analysis
Agriculture, the world’s most dominant land use type, burdens freshwater biodiversity with a multitude of stressors such as diffuse pollution and hydromorphological alteration. However, it is difficult to dire...
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Article
Open AccessThe hierarchy of multiple stressors’ effects on benthic invertebrates: a case study from the rivers Erft and Niers, Germany
A variety of anthropogenic stressors influences the ecological status of rivers wordwide. Important stressors include elevated concentrations of nutrients, salt ions, heavy metals and other pollutants, habitat...
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Article
Open AccessEye fluke infection changes diet composition in juvenile European perch (Perca fluviatilis)
Intraspecific diet specialization, usually driven by resource availability, competition and predation, is common in natural populations. However, the role of parasites on diet specialization of their hosts has...
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Article
Impacts of multiple stressors on freshwater biota across spatial scales and ecosystems
Climate and land-use change drive a suite of stressors that shape ecosystems and interact to yield complex ecological responses (that is, additive, antagonistic and synergistic effects). We know little about t...
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Article
Open AccessHidden parasite diversity in a European freshwater system
Parasites comprise a huge part of the biodiversity on earth. However, on a local scale, not much is known about their diversity and community structure. Here, we assess the diversity of larval trematode commun...
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Article
Differentiating the effects of climate and land use change on European biodiversity: A scenario analysis
Current observed as well as projected changes in biodiversity are the result of multiple interacting factors, with land use and climate change often marked as most important drivers. We aimed to disentangle th...
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Article
Assessment and recovery of European water bodies: key messages from the WISER project
The EU-funded research project WISER (“Water bodies in Europe: Integrative Systems to assess Ecological status and Recovery”) developed new assessment methods required by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD)...
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Article
Effects of physico-chemistry, land use and hydromorphology on three riverine organism groups: a comparative analysis with monitoring data from Germany and Austria
The majority of studies comparing the response of biotic metrics to environmental stress in rivers are based on relatively small, homogeneous datasets resulting from research projects. Here, we used a large da...
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Article
Open AccessEcological status assessment of European lakes: a comparison of metrics for phytoplankton, macrophytes, benthic invertebrates and fish
Data on phytoplankton, macrophytes, benthic invertebrates and fish from more than 2000 lakes in 22 European countries were used to develop and test metrics for assessing the ecological status of European lakes...
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Article
Upstream river morphology and riparian land use overrule local restoration effects on ecological status assessment
River restoration is a central issue of present-day River Basin Management. Unfortunately, many studies have shown limited ecological improvements, hypothesizing catchment influences and missing donor populati...
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Article
Open AccessLessons from practice: assessing early progress and success in river rehabilitation
This article comprises a literature analysis of 41 river rehabilitation projects to assess the short-term (5 years) ability of indicator groups to demonstrate progress towards river rehabilitation goals. Posit...
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Article
Identifying and prioritising services in European terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems
Ecosystems are multifunctional and provide humanity with a broad array of vital services. Effective management of services requires an improved evidence base, identifying the role of ecosystems in delivering m...
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Article
Towards an assessment of multiple ecosystem processes and services via functional traits
Managing ecosystems to ensure the provision of multiple ecosystem services is a key challenge for applied ecology. Functional traits are receiving increasing attention as the main ecological attributes by whic...
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Article
Ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation: concepts and a glossary
The RUBICODE project draws on expertise from a range of disciplines to develop and integrate frameworks for assessing the impacts of environmental change on ecosystem service provision, and for rationalising b...
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Article
Research needs for incorporating the ecosystem service approach into EU biodiversity conservation policy
Using a range of different methods including extensive reviews, workshops and an electronic conference, 70 key research recommendations and 12 priority research needs to integrate the ecosystem services approa...
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Article
Functional traits as indicators of biodiversity response to land use changes across ecosystems and organisms
Rigorous and widely applicable indicators of biodiversity are needed to monitor the responses of ecosystems to global change and design effective conservation schemes. Among the potential indicators of biodive...
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Article
Indicators for biodiversity and ecosystem services: towards an improved framework for ecosystems assessment
Ecosystem assessment and monitoring requires the development and application of suitable indicators, i.e. they need to be (i) reliable and capable of simplifying complex relationships, (ii) quantifiable and tr...
