Technical review of the potential use of benthic macroinvertebrate biomonitoring, using the reference condition approach in the setting, monitoring and assessment of agri-environmental performance standards

The Reference Condition Approach is increasingly used to assess the ecological status of inland waters. In this report the advantages and disadvantages of this approach are discussed and a new methodology is presented. The advantage of this new approach is that it is flexible, dynamic, allows the inclusion of more data and can easily be combined with other approaches. The report concludes with a description of the multivariate Principal Response Curves technique and its use to detect trends in biological data. In the closing discussion a case is made for the adoption of species traits rather t... Mehr ...