Abstract:
Ecosystem responses to increasing human pressures are complex and diverse, affecting organisms across all trophic levels. This has prompted the development of methods that integrate information across many indicators for environmental management. Legislative frameworks such as the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), specifically prescribe that integrated assessme nt (IA) of ecological status must consider indicators representing various biological and supporting quality elements. We present a general approach for an IA system based on a piece-wise linear transformation of indicator distributions to a standardized scale, allowing for integrating information from multiple and diverse indicators through a policy-dependent aggregation scheme. Uncertainties associated with monitoring data used for calculating indicators and their propagation throughout the integration scheme allow for confidence assessment at all levels of the hierarchical integration. Specific pressures leading to ecological impact can be identified through the most impaired indicators in the hierarchical and transparent aggregation scheme. The IA and its confidence are facilitated though the development of an online tool that accesses information from monitoring databases and presents the outcome at all levels of the assessment, ensuring consistency and transparency in the calculations for all potential stakeholders. We demonstrate the versality and applicability of the approach using indicators and aggregation principles from the Swedish national guidelines for assessing ecological status of rivers, lakes and coastal waters according to the WFD. Although the approach and the tool were developed specifically for the WFD ecological status assessment in Sweden, the generality of the approach implies that it can easily be adapted to the WFD assessment methods of other countries as well as other policies, where an integrated assessment is required.
摘要:
生态系统对不断增加的人类压力的反应是复杂多样的,影响所有营养水平的生物。这促使人们开发了将信息整合到许多环境管理指标中的方法。立法框架,如欧洲水框架指令(WFD),特别规定,生态状况的综合评估(IA)必须考虑代表各种生物学和支持质量要素的指标。我们提出了一种基于指标分布到标准化尺度的分段线性变换的IA系统的通用方法,允许通过依赖于策略的聚合方案整合来自多个不同指标的信息。与用于计算指标的监测数据相关的不确定性及其在整个集成方案中的传播允许在分层集成的所有级别进行置信度评估。可以通过分层和透明的汇总计划中最受损的指标来确定导致生态影响的特定压力。通过开发一种在线工具,可以访问监测数据库中的信息,并在所有级别的评估中呈现结果,从而促进了IA及其信心。确保所有潜在利益相关者计算的一致性和透明度。我们使用瑞典国家河流生态状况评估指南中的指标和汇总原则,证明了该方法的普遍性和适用性。根据WFD的湖泊和沿海水域。尽管该方法和工具是专门为瑞典的WFD生态状况评估而开发的,该方法的普遍性意味着它可以很容易地适应其他国家的WFD评估方法以及其他政策,需要综合评估的地方。