Adaptive Strategies to Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change on European Freshwater Ecosystems

This Deliverable provides a synthesis of Work package 7 (Indicators of ecosystem healths) and is based on the WP7 contribution to the final periodic report

The objectives of WP7 are to suggest indicators for the effects of climate change on lakes, rivers and wetlands, their pathways, importance, and the magnitude of change. The term "indicator" is used here in a broad sense, i.e. a simply detectable sign of a complex process that can be used as an early warning of ecosystem change. Indicators may be chemical, hydrological, morphological, biological or functional parameters, which reflect key processes influenced by climate change and which are relatively simple to monitor.

In summary, WP7 addressed the following questions:

1. Which parameters are suitable as indicators for climate change effects on freshwater ecosystems?
2. How can the knowledge base on (particularly biological) indicators be extended to improve detection of various stressors and to enable indication of climate change effects?
3. How can extended knowledge on indicators be best integrated into existing assessment and monitoring systems and can climate change effects be incorporated into monitoring programs for freshwater ecosystems
4. How can different types of indicators (chemical, ‘functional’, biological) be used in concert?