Preparing European freshwaters for a saltier future
This report aims to address the overlooked issue of increasing salinization in European water bodies, which poses a threat to biodiversity, ecosystem integrity and food and water security. Using a European-wide dataset that includes information on salinity, salinization drivers, and aquatic macroinvertebrate communities (selected as a potential Biological Quality Element for monitoring salinization's impact) we explore ecologically relevant salinity criteria and identify potential salinization indicators. We also assess the potential interactions between salinization and climate change in freshwater ecosystems focusing on the Oder River and Turkish lakes as two case studies. In this report policy-makers and water managers can find a model-based extent of river salinization at the EU-scale, invertebrate-based metrics to monitor freshwater salinization, salinization criteria that can protect freshwater biodiversity and information on the potential interaction of salinization and climate change in rivers and lakes. There is an important take-home message from this report: we need to develop standards for salinization (i.e. increase in salinity) rather than for salinity per se. This is because salinity has both natural and anthropogenic causes, but the effect that they have on biota is very different. Also, the changes in relative ion concentrations could be even more important than the differences in total salinity. This is because different ions have different toxicities. Thus, ion-specific standards should be developed taking into account natural ion mixtures and the ecological impacts derived from their alteration.
CANEDO ARGUELLES Miguel;
BEKLIOGLU Meryem;
CRABOT Juliet;
CUNILLERA-MONTCUSI David;
FREE Gary;
HERNANDEZ-CARRASCO Daniel;
KELLY Martyn G.;
MOYANO SALCEDO Alvaro J.;
SCHAFER Ralf B.;
POIKANE Sandra;
2025-03-06
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC141037
978-92-68-25279-6 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 40249,
OP KJ-01-25-157-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC141037,
10.2760/7705629 (online),
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