Assessing the Conservation Status of Alder-Ash Alluvial Forest and Atlantic Salmon in the Natura 2000 River Network of Cantabria, Northern Spain

摘要

A major aim of nature conservation is to prevent the loss of habitats and the extinction of species by maintaining and restoring biological communities and their associated ecosystem functions (Primack, 2008). To achieve this successfully, a key requirement is the ability to assess the integrity and functioning of ecosystems under different environmental scenarios. During the last 20 years major advances have been made in assessing river ecosystem integrity and establishing the impact of human activities (Karr, 1999; Bonada et al., 2006; Poquet et al., 2009; Vaughan, 2010; Fernndez et al., 2011). Several of these assessment methods have been developed in response to environmental legislation; good examples are the Habitats Directive (HD; Council of the European Communities, 1992) and Water Framework Directive (WFD; Council of the European Communities, 2000) in Europe and the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in the United States. Notwithstanding these legal obligations, habitat loss, ecosystem degradation and loss of freshwater biodiversity have continued to accelerate (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Dudgeon et al., 2006).