Technical assessment of the Portuguese national programme for dams with high hydropower potential (PNBEPH)

The Portuguese National Programme for Dams with High Hydropower Potential (PNBEPH) foresees the construction of 10 new hydropower installations in several river basins. Among other relevant impacts that fall out of the scope of this study, hydropower projects can have an important impact on water quality - mainly on hydro-morphological conditions for aquatic life to sustain. According to the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the deadline for achieving a good status of surface waters is 2015. In the meantime, Member States should avoid taking action that could jeopardize the achievement of the objectives of the directive, notably the general objective of good status of water bodies. Derogations for building new infrastructure projects (notably dams) are possible under Article 4.7, if certain strict conditions are met and an assessment is done according to these conditions. These conditions include amongst others that there are no significantly better environmental options, the benefits of the new infrastructure outweigh the benefits of achieving the WFD environmental objectives and all practicable mitigation measures are taken to address the adverse impact of the status of the water body. In addition, the justification for those modifications should be included in the river basin management plans due to be adopted in December 2009 after public consultation

Assessment of land-use impact on macroinvertebrate communities in the Zwalm river basin (Flanders, Belgium) using multivariate analysis and Geographic Information Systems.

Relationships between land-use and river water quality assessed by means of biological and physical-chemical variables and habitat characteristics were analysed for the Zwalm River basin in Flanders (Belgium). The research focussed on three zones within this river basin, each characterized by different land uses, and consequently, different types of pollution, mainly of diffuse origin. Environmental data have been integrated within a Geographic Information System. Possible relationships between aquatic ecosystem and land-use variables were searched for by means of multivariate analysis

Interpretability-preserving genetic optimization of linguistic terms in fuzzy models for fuzzy ordered classification: An ecological case study

AbstractFuzzy ordered classifiers were used to assign fuzzy labels to river sites expressing their suitability as a habitat for a certain macroinvertebrate taxon, given up to three abiotic properties of the considered river site. The models were built using expert knowledge and evaluated on data collected in the Province of Overijssel in the Netherlands. Apart from a performance measure for crisp classifiers common in the aquatic ecology domain, the percentage of correctly classified instances (% CCI), two performance measures for fuzzy (ordered) classifiers are introduced in this paper: the percentage of correctly fuzzy classified instances (% CFCI) and the average deviation (AD). Furthermore, results of an interpretability-preserving genetic optimization of the linguistic terms, applying once binary encoding and once real encoding, are presented

Assessment of Land-Use Impact on Macroinvertebrate Communities in the Zwalm River Basin (Flanders, Belgium) Using Multivariate Analysis and Geographic Information Systems

Relationships between land-use and river water quality assessed by means of biological and physical-chemical variables and habitat characteristics were analysed for the Zwalm River basin in Flanders (Belgium). The research focussed on three zones within this river basin, each characterized by different land uses, and consequently, different types of pollution, mainly of diffuse origin. Environmental data have been integrated within a Geographic Information System. Possible relationships between aquatic ecosystem and land-use variables were searched for by means of multivariate analysis

Monitoring of macroinvertebrate communities for the ecological evaluation of valuable upstream brooks in Flanders, Belgium.

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