Multimetric assessment of freshwater macroinvertebrate communities in Flanders, Belgium

One of the objectives of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD; EU, 2000) is to attain a good status for all surface waters in the European Union by the end of 2015. To this end, the ecological status of natural surface waters should be assessed, based on a number of biological quality elements which depend on the category of surface water (rivers, lakes, transitional waters or coastal waters). For each of these elements, member states must choose or develop a classification method, taking into account a set of parameters depending on the quality element and on the surface water category... Mehr ...