Clyde re-built: when will river invertebrate communities return to a preindustrial condition?

摘要

The River Clyde has been described in the past as one of the worst polluted rivers in Britain. Since then, considerable improvements in water quality have been made, which contributed to the return of Atlantic salmon to the river system in the early 1980s. Using long-term river invertebrate data collected over a 32 year period (1975-2006) by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and computer generated predictions (River Invertebrate Classification Tool) of river invertebrate communities, we examined the historic and current biological status of the River Clyde and make predictions about the future condition of the river system. We found that river invertebrate community richness had significantly increased over the study period and that the River Clyde has the potential to reach a pre-industrial condition by the year 2020. Our results also highlight the importance of considering long-term change when investigating biological recovery.