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Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 8, pages 430–441 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Humans impact terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, yet many broad-scale studies have found no systematic, negative biodiversity changes (for example, decreasing abundance or taxon richness). Here we show that mixed biodiversity responses may arise because community metrics show variable responses to anthropogenic impacts across broad spatial scales. We first quantified temporal trends in anthropogenic impacts for 1,365 riverine invertebrate communities from 23 European countries, based on similarity to least-impacted reference communities. Reference comparisons provide necessary, but often missing, baselines for evaluating whether communities are negatively impacted or have improved (less or more similar, respectively). We then determined whether changing impacts were consistently reflected in metrics of community abundance, taxon richness, evenness and composition. Invertebrate communities improved, that is, became more similar to reference conditions, from 1992 until the 2010s, after which improvements plateaued. Improvements were generally reflected by higher taxon richness, providing evidence that certain community metrics can broadly indicate anthropogenic impacts. However, richness responses were highly variable among sites, and we found no consistent responses in community abundance, evenness or composition. These findings suggest that, without sufficient data and careful metric selection, many common community metrics cannot reliably reflect anthropogenic impacts, helping explain the prevalence of mixed biodiversity trends.

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Fig. 1: Locations and ecological quality of 1,365 river sites across Europe.
Fig. 2: Continental-scale trends in ecological quality.
Fig. 3: Continental-scale links between ecological quality, community metrics and biomonitoring indices.
Fig. 4: Country-scale trends in ecological quality.
Fig. 5: Country-scale links between ecological quality, community metrics and biomonitoring indices.
Fig. 6: Site-scale links between ecological quality and community metrics.

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Data availability

All community metrics, biomonitoring indices and ecological quality data needed to reproduce our analyses are publicly available from Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24486769.

Code availability

All code used for our analyses is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. England for assistance with calculating ecological quality and the biomonitoring indices in the UK. Funding for authors, data collection and processing was provided by the European Union Horizon 2020 project eLTER PLUS (grant number 871128). F.A. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant numbers 310030_197410 and 31003A_173074) and the University of Zurich Research Priority Program Global Change and Biodiversity. J.B. and M.A.-C. were funded by the European Commission, under the L‘Instrument Financier pour l’Environnement (LIFE) Nature and Biodiversity program, as part of the project LIFE-DIVAQUA (LIFE18 NAT/ES/000121) and also by the project ‘WATERLANDS’ (PID2019-107085RB-I00) funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIN) and Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) ‘A way of making Europe’. N.J.B. and V.P. were supported by the Lithuanian Environmental Protection Agency (https://aaa.lrv.lt/) who collected the data and were funded by the Lithuanian Research Council (project number S-PD-22-72). J.H. was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant number 331957). S.C.J. acknowledges funding by the Leibniz Competition project Freshwater Megafauna Futures and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung or BMBF; 033W034A). A.L. acknowledges funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-115830GB-100). P.P., M.P. and M.S. were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GA23-05268S and P505-20-17305S) and thank the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and the state enterprises Povodí for the data used to calculate ecological quality metrics from the Czech surface water monitoring program. H.T. was supported by the Estonian Research Council (number PRG1266) and by the Estonian national program ‘Humanitarian and natural science collections’. M.J.F. acknowledges the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, through the projects UIDB/04292/2020 and UIDP/04292/2020 granted to the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, LA/P/0069/2020 granted to the Associate Laboratory Aquatic Research Network (ARNET), and a Call Estímulo ao Emprego Científico (CEEC) contract.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of River Ecology and Conservation, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Gelnhausen, Germany

    James S. Sinclair, Ellen A. R. Welti & Peter Haase

  2. Conservation Ecology Center, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, VA, USA

    Ellen A. R. Welti

  3. Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Florian Altermatt

  4. Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Florian Altermatt

  5. IHCantabria – Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de la Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

    Mario Álvarez-Cabria & José Barquín

  6. Freshwater and Marine Solutions, Finnish Environment Institute, Oulu, Finland

    Jukka Aroviita

  7. Institute of Ecology, Nature Research Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Nathan J. Baker, Diana Osadčaja & Vaidas Palinauskas

  8. Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Praha, Czech Republic

    Libuše Barešová

  9. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences – DISAT, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Luca Bonacina & Riccardo Fornaroli

  10. FEHM-Lab (Freshwater Ecology, Hydrology and Management), Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Facultat de Biologia, Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Núria Bonada

  11. FEHM-Lab (Freshwater Ecology, Hydrology and Management), Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA), CSIC, Barcelona, Spain

    Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles

  12. Department of Hydrobiology, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary

    Zoltán Csabai

  13. Balaton Limnological Research Institute, Tihany, Hungary

    Zoltán Csabai

  14. Fisheries Ecosystems Advisory Services, Marine Institute, Newport, Ireland

    Elvira de Eyto

  15. Environmental Research and Innovation Department, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Alain Dohet, Lionel L’Hoste & Sarah Vray

  16. Water Development Department, Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Gerald Dörflinger & Iakovos Tziortzis

  17. Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Oslo, Norway

    Tor E. Eriksen & Benjamin Kupilas

  18. Department of Aquatic Ecosystems, Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Vesela Evtimova & Violeta Tyufekchieva

  19. Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Associated Laboratory ARNET, Coimbra, Portugal

    Maria J. Feio

  20. INRAE, UR RiverLy, centre de Lyon-Villeurbanne, Villeurbanne, France

    Martial Ferréol

  21. Department Community and Ecosystem Ecology, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany

    Mathieu Floury & Sonja C. Jähnig

  22. Univ Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, ENTPE, UMR 5023 LEHNA, Villeurbanne, France

    Mathieu Floury

  23. Department of Animal Sciences and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Marie Anne Eurie Forio, Peter L. M. Goethals & Rudy Vannevel

  24. Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Jani Heino

  25. Faculty of Biology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Daniel Hering, Armin W. Lorenz & Peter Haase

  26. Ecology and Genetics Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Kaisa-Leena Huttunen & Timo Muotka

  27. Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Sonja C. Jähnig

  28. Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

    Richard K. Johnson & Brendan G. McKie

  29. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden

    Lenka Kuglerová

  30. Institute of Landscape Ecology, Chair for Applied Landscape Ecology and Ecological Planning, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Benjamin Kupilas

  31. Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain

    Aitor Larrañaga

  32. Department of Water, Atmosphere and Environment, Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Patrick Leitner & Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber

  33. Oulanka Research Station, University of Oulu Infrastructure Platform, Kuusamo, Finland

    Riku Paavola

  34. Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Pařil, Marek Polášek & Michal Straka

  35. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Oslo, Norway

    Francesca Pilotto

  36. NIVA Denmark (Norwegian Institute for Water Research), Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jes J. Rasmussen

  37. iES Landau, Institute for Environmental Sciences, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany

    Ralf B. Schäfer

  38. Eurac Research, Institute for Alpine Environment, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy

    Alberto Scotti

  39. APEM Ltd, Stockport, UK

    Alberto Scotti

  40. Institute of Biology, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia

    Agnija Skuja

  41. T.G. Masaryk Water Research Institute, p.r.i., Brno, Czech Republic

    Michal Straka

  42. School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Rachel Stubbington

  43. Chair of Hydrobiology and Fishery, Centre for Limnology, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Elva vald, Estonia

    Henn Timm

  44. Flanders Environment Agency, Aalst, Belgium

    Rudy Vannevel

  45. Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Aquatic Ecology, Debrecen, Hungary

    Gábor Várbíró

  46. LFI – The Laboratory for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Bergen, Norway

    Gaute Velle

  47. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Gaute Velle

  48. Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Ralf C. M. Verdonschot

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  1. James S. Sinclair
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Contributions

J.S.S. and P.H. conceived the study. E.A.R.W. cleaned the data, and J.S.S. performed the analyses. J.S.S. and P.H. wrote the majority of the manuscript. F.A., M.A.-C., J.A., N.J.B., L. Barešová, J.B., L. Bonacina, N.B., M.C.-A., Z.C., E.d.E., A.D., G.D., T.E.E., V.E., M.J.F., M. Ferréol, M. Floury, M.A.E.F., R.F., P.L.M.G., J.H., D.H., K.-L.H., S.C.J., R.K.J., L.K., B.K., L.L., A.L., P.L., A.W.L., B.G.M., T.M., D.O., R.P., V.P., P.P., F.P., M.P., J.J.R., R.B.S., A.S.-K., A. Scotti, A. Skuja, M.S., R.S., H.T., V.T., I.T., R.V., G. Várbíró, G. Velle, R.C.M.V. and S.V. provided invertebrate data or contributed to calculating ecological quality values for their respective countries, and all edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James S. Sinclair.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

A. Scotti is affiliated with APEM, which is an environmental consultancy company, although they provided no funding for this study. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Steve Ormerod, Adam Yates and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Year-to-year changes in ecological quality.

Differences in the predicted (a) EQRs and (b) EQCs between each year and the previous year during 1993–2019. For example, the 1993 values are the absolute differences in the predicted EQRs/EQCs between 1992 and 1993. Thus, values closer to 0 indicate less change between successive years. Predicted values for the EQRs and EQCs were obtained from their respective generalized additive mixed models (that is, the fitted relationships in Fig. 2).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Country-scale links between ecological quality, community metrics, and biomonitoring indices.

Redundancy Analyses (RDAs) of the relationship between the Ecological Quality Ratios (EQRs; black arrows) and the community metrics and biomonitoring indices for (a) Finland (FI), (b) Ireland (IE), (c) Luxembourg (LU), (d) Norway (NO), and (e) the United Kingdom (UK). The community metrics comprise abundance (Nind), richness (Ntaxa), evenness (EvPie), Shannon diversity (H), and temporal turnover between consecutive years (TurnY) and compared to the first year (Turn1). The biomonitoring indices comprise the total abundance (EPTind), proportion (EPT%), and richness (EPTtaxa) of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera, in addition to the Community Temperature Index (CTI), the proportion of littoral taxa (Plit), and the Rhithron feeding type index (RETI; all indices are described in the Methods and Extended Data Table 1). Metrics and indices are coloured from orange to blue based on their loadings on RDA axis 1, with blues indicating stronger relationships to ecological quality.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Site-scale links between ecological quality and biomonitoring indices.

Relationship between the temporal slope of the Ecological Quality Ratio (EQR) at each site and the slope of (a) the richness of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPTtaxa), (b) EPT abundance (EPTind), (c) the proportion of EPT taxa (EPT%), (d) the Average Score Per Taxon (ASPT) index, (e) the Community Temperature Index (CTI), (f) the proportion of littoral taxa (Plit), (g) the Saprobic Index (SI), and (h) the Rhithron feeding type index (RETI). Sites are coloured by country and sites with matching ecological quality and biodiversity trends are in the gray shaded areas, whereas opposing relationships are in the white areas.

Extended Data Table 1 List and description of invertebrate biomonitoring indices
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Site-scale variability in the relationship between ecological quality and community metrics
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–4 and Supplementary Figs. 1–9.

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Sinclair, J.S., Welti, E.A.R., Altermatt, F. et al. Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 430–441 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02305-4

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