Page 152 - Freshwater-Biology-and-Ecology-Handbook

CHAPTER 3 3.1.2 – 3.1.3 3.1.2 The solution: RIVPACS community prediction

In October 1977 the River Communities
Project started to investigate whether the
The key conclusion was that similar communities existed
natural invertebrate communities in different
wherever environmental conditions were the same.
streams were each unique or whether the same
predict the invertebrate community.
communities were found in any river where the
same environmental conditions existed. If you know the environmental conditions, you can

Invertebrates were sampled from a wide range of After identifying the combination of environmental
unpolluted rivers across the UK and at these sites a wide parameters that most closely distinguished the invertebrate
range of environmental parameters were measured. To communities, a predictive model was developed, known as
ensure comparability, standard methods for sampling and RIVPACS (River Invertebrate Prediction and Classification
analysis were devised and these are the standard methods System).
described in Chapter 2. The invertebrate communities
were characterised by their species composition and Early developments of RIVPACS are described in Wright
abundances. Because the communities change throughout et al. (2000). (44) Using the current version of RIVPACS
the year, samples were collected in spring, summer and to predict river communities, ie species composition, is
autumn. All macroinvertebrate taxa in the samples were described in Chapter 5 Section 3.2.1.
identified to species or as far as was practicable at the time,
and their abundances recorded.

Figure 3.8
Front cover of Wright et al. (2000),
the key reference for RIVPACS (44)

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