Looking beyond the shores of the United Kingdom: addenda for the application of River Habitat Survey in Southern European rivers

River Habitat Survey (RHS) is a system which records and quantifies the physical and vegetational structure of river channels and their immediate floodplains. In the United Kingdom, where it has been applied since the 1990s, it has brought an understanding of state of rivers nationally and has proved to be a useful part of scientific investigation. It is now obvious that such a method should be applied more widely, especially in the European context, where river data is lacking for many countries and there is a need for a standard, internationally comparable method. In this paper an extension to the basic survey method is presented, with the aim of improving the detail and quality of data collected for highly dynamic, braided rivers, more common in the rest of Europe, particularly the south, than in the UK itself. The changes to the survey form included the recording of secondary flow and substrate types for each transect, in addition to the usual recording of primary types. Where more than one wetted channel was present data were collected for both the main and secondary channels. These were common in the areas studied, for instance in autumn 2000 secondary channels were found at 9 out of 11 sites in northern Italy and 4 out of 11 sites in the south. Additionally, the results showed that with the recording of both primary and secondary flow types for each transect the average number of flow types found per site was increased by between 1 - 2.2. For substrate types the average increase per site was close to 1. Certain flow types, in particular ‘chute’ and ‘no perceptible’, and substrate types, for example ‘sand’, tended to be under-represented by the basic survey method. The relevance and implications of these results are discussed with respect to the southern European situation and the point is made that the detail required from RHS depends on the original motivation for choosing to apply it. Where it is part of a detailed biological or ecological study the extra information provided by the extended form presented here is potentially useful.

[1]  F. H. Dawson,et al.  Groundwater dominated rivers , 1999 .

[2]  F. H. Dawson,et al.  Quality assessment using River Habitat Survey data , 1998 .

[3]  P. J. Boon,et al.  Towards an integrated approach to classifying and evaluating rivers in the UK , 1998 .

[4]  S. Ormerod,et al.  Use of a new standardized habitat survey for assessing the habitat preferences and distribution of upland river birds , 1997 .

[5]  S. Manel,et al.  Alternative methods for predicting species distribution: an illustration with Himalayan river birds , 1999 .

[6]  Peter J.A. Fox,et al.  An account of the derivation and testing of a standard field method, River Habitat Survey , 1998 .

[7]  O. Moog,et al.  A Europe-wide system for assessing the quality of rivers using macroinvertebrates: the AQEM Project*) and its importance for southern Europe (with special emphasis on Italy) , 2001 .

[8]  Andrea Buffagni,et al.  The Development of a System to Assess the Ecological Quality of Streams Based on Macroinvertebrates – Design of the Sampling Programme within the AQEM Project , 2003 .

[9]  Other.  Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of The Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a Framework for Community Action in the Field of Water Policy (Water Framework Directive) , 2000 .

[10]  D. Sear,et al.  The geomorphological basis for classifying rivers , 1998 .

[11]  J. Wright,et al.  River classification using invertebrates: RIVPACS applications , 1998 .

[12]  F. H. Dawson,et al.  Using river habitat survey for environmental assessment and catchment planning in the U.K. , 2000, Hydrobiologia.

[13]  J. Jeffers,et al.  The statistical basis of sampling strategies for rivers: an example using river habitat survey , 1998 .

[14]  C. L. Padmore.  The role of physical biotopes in determining the conservation status and flow requirements of British rivers , 1998 .

[15]  M. Naura,et al.  Principles of using River Habitat Survey to predict the distribution of aquatic species: an example applied to the native white-clawed crayfishAustropotamobius pallipes , 1998 .

[16]  Convergence of field survey protocols for SERCON (System for Evaluating Rivers for Conservation) and RHS (River Habitat Survey) , 1998 .

[17]  C. L. Padmore.  Physical biotopes in representative river channels :identification, hydraulic characterisation and application , 1997 .