Monday, May 26, 2008 - 3:45 PM
94

First audit of macroinvertebrate samples from an EU-water framework directive monitoring programme

Peter Haase, Karin Schindehütte, and Andrea Sundermann. Department of Limnology and Conservation, Senckenberg, Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Clamecystrasse 12, Gelnhausen 63571, Germany

The EU-Water Framework Directive (WFD) demands that all water bodies achieve a good or high ecological status by 2015. The ecological status is to be measured using different organism groups. Although the determined status is used to decide on (cost-intensive) restoration measures an audit scheme has not been implemented in the EU-WFD monitoring programme by now. We conducted the first audit of an EU-WFD conform monitoring programme based on 494 macroinvertebrate samples from streams and rivers in Germany. The samples were taken by 8 different operators on behalf of the federal state Hesse using the EU-WFD conform methodology. We audited samples at three different levels: 1) a plausibility check, where we identified conspicuous taxa from all 494 taxa lists; 2) a sorting audit of 10% of the samples, and 3) an identification audit of 20% of the samples (10% by random, 10% based on the results of the plausibility check). The plausibility check revealed an average of 8.3% conspicuous taxa. In the sorting audit 29% of the specimens and every fifth taxon (20.6%) had been overlooked. In the identification audit 30% of taxa differed from the results of the auditors. The official German EU-WFD conform assessment system of macroinvertebrates consists of 3 modules (saprobic, acidification, general degradation). When comparing the data from the operators with the results of the auditors, we found that in 34% of the investigated taxa lists a different quality class resulted at least in one module. The result for all modules and therefore the final assessment result shows different ecological quality classes in 16% of the samples. Results of biological monitoring programmes are often used by water managers to infer mitigation measures of streams and rivers. Because those measures are often cost-intensive the underlying assessment results must be reliable. The results of our audit clearly show a significant impact of human error on monitoring data. To improve the reliability of assessment results and to avoid unnecessary mitigation measures the implementation of an adequate auditing scheme in (freshwater) monitoring programmes is essential.


Web Page: audit, assessment, monitoring, macroinvertebrates, EU-Water Framework Directive

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