Biodiversity of macrozoobenthos in a large river, the Austrian Danube, including quantitative studies in a free-flowing stretch below Vienna: a short review

The Danube is ca. 2850 km in length and is the second largest river in Europe. The Austrian part of the Danube falls 156 metres in altitude over its 351 km length and, since the early 1950s, the river has been developed into a power-generating waterway, so that the continuity of the river is now interrupted by ten impounded areas. Only two stretches of the original free-flowing river are left, the Wachau region (above river-km 2005, west of Vienna) and the region downstream from the impoundment at Vienna (river-km 1921). Most of the recent theories and concepts related to invertebrates, in the context of the ecology of running waters, are based on studies on small streams, whereas investigations of large rivers have played a minor role for a long time, mainly due to methodological difficulties. The authors' recent detailed studies on macroinvertebrates in the free-flowing section of the Danube below Vienna, provide an excellent opportunity to survey or restate scientific hypotheses on the basis of a large river. In this review the main interest focuses on the investigation of biodiversity, i.e. the number of species and their relative proportions in the whole invertebrate community, as well as major governing environmental factors. The article summarises the species composition, the important environmental variables at the river cross-section and the effect of upstream impoundment on the riverbed and its fauna

Ecosystem study Altenworth: impacts of a hydroelectric power-station on the River Danube in Austria

The Danube, with a length of c. 2850 km, is the second largest river inEurope. It rises in the Black Forest (Germany), discharges into the BlackSea (Romania, former USSR) and crosses five other countries: Austria,Czechoslovakia, Hungary, former Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria (Fig. 1). Nearly90 million people live in its catchment area of c. 805 300 km². Includingits tributaries, twelve countries and about 447 million people are linked tothe Danube. These figures show the extraordinary internationalimportance of this river

Biodiversity of macrozoobenthos in a large river, the Austrian Danube, including quantitative studies in a free-flowing stretch below Vienna: a short review

The Danube is ca. 2850 km in length and is the second largest river in Europe. It rises in the Black Forest of Germany and discharges into the Black Sea (Romania and Ukraine). The catchment includes 12 other countries: Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia & Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria and Moldova (Fig. 1), and nearly 90 million people live in the catchment area of ca. 805 300 km2..These numbers illustrate and emphasise the enormous international importance of this river

Quantitative Charakterisierung der Lebensgemeinschaft in Fliessgewässern und ihre Abhängigkeit von Umweltvariablen

Anhand der Beziehung zwischen der Struktur des Lebensraumes und der Besiedlungsstruktur der Massenformen der Tiergemeinschaft bei Stromkilometer 2005 der Donau, des Schlüpfens aus dem Ei von zehn Steinfliegenarten und des Lebenszyklus einer Köcherfliegenart wird gezeigt welche Voraussetzungen erfüllt werden müssen, um das wissenschaftliche Management für Fließgewässer weiterentwickeln zu können.1051181