1. Summary of the activities of the Central/Baltic River GIG
ECOSTAT Meeting
Ispra, 15-16th March 05
Summary of the activities of the Central/Baltic River GIG
CNR-IRSA

2. Results of the pilot exercise
Completed for 6 stream types (involving 11 countries)
Pilot consisted of:
- calculating ICM metrics: [ASPT (tolerance metric); Log10 (Sel_EPTD +1) (abundance/habitat); 1-GOLD (abundance/habitat); Total number of Families; number of EPT Families (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera); Shannon/Weaver diversity index]
- combining ICMs into a ICMi
- correlating ICMi to national metrics  transform National Boundaries into ICMi values by linear regression
France C1

3. Main Items discussed - Definition of Reference condition
- Relationship between ICMi/ICMs and National metrics
- Agreement on using ICMi approach

4. Main Items discussed

5. Summary Results of the pilot exercise

6. % of samples shifting after harmonization (without benchmarking referring to the median value of WFD compliant methods)

7. Indirect comparison & harmonization via ICMi & benchmark data
Comparison of National datasets (test datasets) against a trans-national classification (based on samples from whole EU)
The median values of the ICMi obtained in the test and benchmark datasets for classes Good and High were compared
Good Status samples – C1
0.16 p
0.89
<0.005
0.62
0.31
0.07
0.12
0.015
<0.005
Statistical comparison by Mann-Whitney U test

8. Statistical comparison by Mann-Whitney U test
High Status samples – C1 p p
0.87
0.04
0.09
0.036
0.22
0.16
0.27
Statistical comparison by Mann-Whitney U test
General Results
only 33% of countries adjust H/G boundary
only 44% of countries adjust G/M boundary
the repositioning of boundaries involves usually minor changes (10% of sites moving from one class to another)

9. % of samples shifting after harmonization (with benchmarking)

10. Thanks for the attention