caa a22 4500 469106247 CHVBK 20180323133057.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170328e19921201xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/BF00044171 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/BF00044171 An overview of the assessment of aquatic ecosystem health using benthic invertebrates [Elektronische Daten] [Trefor Reynoldson, Janice Metcalfe-Smith] Community structure or species composition of benthic invertebrates has frequently been used in environmental monitoring and assessment of aquatic systems. Three general approaches have been taken: the ‘saprobic' approach, which requires detailed knowledge of taxonomy and is most effective in measuring impacts from sewage effluents; diversity indices, which do not require detailed knowledge of species requirements but ignore information provided by important species and tend to lose information; and biotic indices, which combine both approaches. In the past few years considerable advances have been made by applying multivariate statistical techniques to large data matrices and relating benthic community structure to key environmental variables. Using these techniques it is possible to establish reference communities for a set of environmental conditions, to predict the benthic community that should occur at new sites and thus measure deviation from an expected community type. This suggests that environmental criteria and objectives can be established based on biological variables as opposed to the more traditional chemical approach. Measurement of ecosystem health using functional attributes of benthic invertebrates is generally in the development stage. In the future, functional measures of ecosystem health, such as chronic measures of toxicity or stress, should be incorporated into any assessment process. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992 benthos nationallicence biomonitoring nationallicence community structure nationallicence indices nationallicence Reynoldson Trefor National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada, 867 Lakeshore Road, P.O. Box 5050, L7R 4A6, Burlington, Ontario, Canada aut Metcalfe-Smith Janice National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada, 867 Lakeshore Road, P.O. Box 5050, L7R 4A6, Burlington, Ontario, Canada aut Journal of Aquatic Ecosystem Health Kluwer Academic Publishers 1/4(1992-12-01), 295-308 0925-1014 1:4<295 1992 1 10813 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00044171 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00044171 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Reynoldson Trefor National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada, 867 Lakeshore Road, P.O. Box 5050, L7R 4A6, Burlington, Ontario, Canada aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Metcalfe-Smith Janice National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada, 867 Lakeshore Road, P.O. Box 5050, L7R 4A6, Burlington, Ontario, Canada aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of Aquatic Ecosystem Health Kluwer Academic Publishers 1/4(1992-12-01), 295-308 0925-1014 1:4<295 1992 1 10813 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer