TOWARDS A REGIONALIZATION OF AQUATIC HABITAT: DISTRIBUTION OF MESOHABITATS AT THE SCALE OF A LARGE BASIN

摘要

Integrated management of aquatic ecosystems is a common concern for water resources managers as well as for researchers. The 1992 French Water Act aims to preserve the biotic and ecological integrity of aquatic ecosystems as part of water management schemes, creating needs for new methodologies for studying these systems. This paper describes the partitioning of the Loire basin (105000 km~2, France) into hydro-ecoregions tested at the mesohabitat scale. The following null hypothese were examined in the four largest hydro-ecoregions of the basin: (1) differences in mesohabitat types distribution do not exist between regions; (2) the longitudinal structure of mesohabitat types distribution is not different between regions; and (3) the factors governing distribution and longitudinal evolution of mesohabitats distribution are not different between regions.