Fish-based River Integrity Index: A first attempt in developing a water quality index for the assessment of the Greek rivers

摘要

After the implementation of the Water Framework Directive 2000/60, biotic indices became an important tool aiming at assessing the water quality of all water bodies, such as lakes, transitional, coastal and groundwater, and the restoration of their ecological integrity. Due to the fact that fish is one of the most important taxa for the assessment of the river quality in the present study an attempt was made to develop and apply a Fish-based River Integrity Index (FRII) for the assessment of the Greek riverine systems, which may also be applied for the assessment of other Balkan or Mediterranean rivers. Due to the high importance of the Balkan's Peninsula fish fauna in terms of endemicity, the assessment of the riverine systems is considered as sine qua non. The proposed index consists of multiple metrics, which attempt to describe the biological and demographical traits of the fish fauna. More specific the FRII is composed by seven metrics, of which three metrics were describing "Fish fauna composition and abundance'', three were describing the Reproduction strategies of the species, while the remaining one metric related to the "Habitat preferences''. (C) 2017 European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier Sp. z o.o. All rights reserved.