Biological assessment of some wadable rivers in Turkey using fish data: a statistical approach
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Biological assessment of some wadable rivers in Turkey using fish data: a statistical approach Mehmet Borga Ergönül1,2 · Jan Breine2 · Ericia Van den Bergh3 · Hümeyra Bahçeci4 Received: 31 January 2019 / Accepted: 15 November 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract In this study, we present a preliminary multimetric fish-based index (Index of Biotic Integrity; IBI) developed using a reliable statistical approach for some wadable rivers in four river basins in Turkey. Fish and abiotic data were collected according to standard methods. A total of 33 fish species were caught in the whole sampling area. Fish species were assigned to different guilds. Candidate metrics were selected from the literature and metric values were calculated. Sampling sites were preclassified into habitat status classes representing various levels of anthropogenic pressures. The responsivity of the candidate metrics was tested with linear mixed regression models. Correlation tests were performed to avoid redundancy among responsive metrics. Finally, six metrics (Shannon–Wiener diversity index, relative percentage of intolerant, invasive alien, invertivorous, and rheophilic individuals and number of benthic species) were selected. Selected metrics were scored using the continuous scoring approach. The IBI values were calculated by summing up the final metric scores. Then the IBI values were transformed into ecological quality ratio (EQR) values. We did not observe a “high” integrity class in the whole sampling area. The index was proven to be responsive to anthropogenic pressures and environmental variables tested using several approaches, including correlation analysis, graphical examination of the final metrics patterns and comparing the EQR classes with the habitat status assignment. The index, with minor adjustments, has a potential to be used as an assessment tool for different data sets in wadable rivers in Turkey. Furthermore, the statistical design used here can be applied to other river basins in Turkey or any other country with similar data limitations. Keywords Biotic integrity · River management · Environmental degradation · Fish-based index · Ecological status
* Mehmet Borga Ergönül [email protected] 1
Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Ankara University, 06100 Ankara, Turkey
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Instituut voor Natuur- en Bosonderzoek, Dwersbos 28, Linkebeek, 1630 Brussels, Belgium
3
Instituut voor Natuur- en Bosonderzoek, Kliniekstraat 25, 1070 Anderlecht, Belgium
4
Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Eskişehir Road, Ankara, Turkey
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1 Introduction Degradation of aquatic habitats, disturbance of vegetation, deforestation, water pollution, fragmentation, and alteration of natural hydrological regime in aquatic ecosystems lead to drastic changes in the biological communities, physicochemical parameters, and hydromorphological characteristics of water bodies (Fausch et al. 1990; Freund and Petty 2007; Falcone et al. 2010; Teixeira-de Mello et al. 2016). There
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