David G. Armanini

• PhD
• Managing Director at Canadian Rivers Institute

To unveil possible changes in diatom communities in Cypriot streams over the last ten years or so, we selected samples from the years 2020, 2021, and 2022 for the “recent” dataset (N = 119) and samples from the years 2010 and 2011 for the “historical” dataset (N = 108). Biotic homogenization has become a truly global phenomenon. Here we show that,...

Mediterranean streams are naturally highly-stressed environments mainly due to wide seasonal and inter-annual fluctuations in water quantity. This natural pressure will be exacerbated by climate change and is a significant challenge when establishing efficient assessment methods. We studied environmental parameters (hydromorphology, hydrology, phys...

Bioassessment assumes that ecological conditions remain stable in the absence of environmental changes. Evidence suggests this assumption may hold for reference streams, but knowledge gaps remain for impacted streams. Our study quantified interannual variation of benthic macroinvertebrate communities, monitored for at least 14 years in eight impact...

There has been a trend toward increasing anthropocentrism in definitions of river health through the explicit inclusion of societal valuation of ecosystem services provided by rivers. New frameworks and associated indicators of river health are therefore required to centralize ecosystem services within river assessment and management activities. He...

Understanding the physical and biological mechanisms contributing to flow velocity–ecology relationships is crucial for successful river management. The application of an ecological traits‐based approach offers the potential to explore mechanistic linkages between aquatic communities and a hydrological gradient. To date, however, studies focused on...

In this chapter, we present a combination of methodologies for investigating multiple stressor effects of effluent discharge on river ecosystems. We focus on the integration of laboratory, field, and experimental manipulation studies that help identify cause-and-effect relationships and generate weight-of-evidence ecological risk assessments for ri...

The assessment of ecological quality in Mediterranean area needs to account for the key role played by hydrological stability. Biological, physico-chemical and hydromorphological data were collected in Republic of Cyprus in correspondence to the biomonitoring stations between 2005 and 2011, totaling more than 500 samples collected along a gradient...

Recent environmental flows research has focused on the question of ”How much water does a river need?” and the development of methods for the development and assessment of sustainable strategies. Application methods include traditional hydrological and hydraulic rating methods that only incorporate historical streamflow data to habitat simulation a...

Riverine bioassessment relies on the assumption that temporal variability in biological data is well understood, yet this assumption has often remained untested. Inter-annual variability of macroinvertebrate community persistence and compositional stability was studied over a period of 15 years (1997-2011) in eight impaired streams in southwestern...

Best management practices (BMPs) are increasingly being promoted as a solution to the potentially adverse effects agriculture can have on aquatic systems. However, the ability of BMPs to improve riverine systems continues to be questioned due to equivocal empirical evidence linking BMP use with improved stream conditions, particularly in regard to...

Globally, wetlands are degrading rapidly, and yet the development of tools for wetland biomonitoring using macroinvertebrates has lagged behind those developed for rivers. Partly, this relates to the specific challenges of sampling wetlands, due to their structural complexity, and to date, most studies have attempted to use methods and metrics deri...

It is now widely accepted that modern assessment systems cannot rely on the assumption that community composition is stable through time and that the vast majority of the observed changes are mechanisticly linked to anthropic activities. Long term biological datasets collected in southern Ontario using the Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CA...

Freshwater resources are under increasing threat from anthropogenic activities. Increasing societal demands have led to substantial flow alterations in rivers across Canada and globally. Flow alteration can impact the physical attributes of rivers which in turn results in ecological changes that can impact the health of river ecosystems. In additio...

Within Canada, hydro-electric power is the leading source of energy for households and industry. It is thus critical to understand and minimize its ecological impacts, by developing management guidelines for hydropower operations. Flow peaking is a common practice at hydroelectric facilities as hydropower generation often tracks the demand in elect...

GenGIS is free and open source software designed to integrate biodiversity data with a digital map and information about geography and habitat. While originally developed with microbial community analyses and phylogeography in mind, GenGIS has been applied to a wide range of datasets. A key feature of GenGIS is the ability to test geographic axes t...

Degenerate cases for the Linear Axes Analysis algorithm. a) Multiple samples may be taken from the same geographic locations. b) Sample sites may have the same longitudinal coordinates. c) Multiple pairs of sample sites may have a projection line with the same slope. d) Sample sites may be collinear. In cases b–d, sample sites are laid out along th...

Supplementary Material. (DOCX)

GenGIS is free and open source software designed to integrate biodiversity data with a digital map and information about geography and habitat. While originally developed with microbial community analyses and phylogeography in mind, GenGIS has been applied to a wide range of datasets. A key feature of GenGIS is the ability to test geographic axes t...

GenGIS is free and open source software designed to integrate biodiversity data with a digital map and information about geography and habitat. While originally developed with microbial community analyses and phylogeography in mind, GenGIS has been applied to a wide range of datasets. A key feature of GenGIS is the ability to test geographic axes t...

Anthropogenic pressure on flow regimes has been recognized as a significant threat to the health of rivers in Canada and elsewhere. Yet while we know that the historical hydrological conditions prevailing at river sites can be assigned to runoff regime types, the implications of this hydrological structure on biological community composition have b...

Evaluation of the ecological status of river sites in Canada is supported by building models using the reference condition approach. However, geography, data scarcity and inter-operability constraints have frustrated attempts to monitor national-scale status and trends. This issue is particularly true in Atlantic Canada, where no ecological assessm...

Agricultural land use can place heavy demands on regional water resources, strongly influencing the quantity and timing of water flows needed to sustain natural ecosystems. The effects of agricultural practices on streamflow conditions are multifaceted, as they also contribute to the severity of impacts arising from other stressors within the river...

Widespread alteration of flow regimes requires guidelines for the protection of river ecosystems based on sound science. Preservation of the biodiversity within river ecosystems and sustaining natural ecological functions are key aspects of their management. However, the relationship between the biota and flow-related phenomena is poorly understood...

The linkage of trait responses to stressor gradients has potential to expand biomonitoring approaches beyond traditional taxonomically based assessments that identify ecological effect to provide a causal diagnosis. Traits-based information may have several advantages over taxonomically based methods. These include providing mechanistic linkages of...

Hydromorphological features are crucial in structuring habitats for freshwater organisms. The quantification of these variables is often performed through accurate measuring or detailed estimation, but their assessment is not always feasible for river management purposes. Economic and time constraints often lead to difficulty in creating simple sum...

Chironomid larvae and pupae were studied in selected Mediterranean rivers with the aim of identifying pool and riffle taxa assemblages and of analysing their response to ecological quality gradients. Macroinvertebrate samples were collected in six Italian rivers along a pool-riffle sequence in three seasons following a multihabitat sampling techniq...

The importance of local hydraulic conditions on the structuring of freshwater biotic communities is widely recognized by the scientific community. In spite of this, most current methods based upon invertebrates do not take this factor into account in their assessment of ecological quality. The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of lo...

RIASSUNTO - Quadro sinottico delle informazioni disponibili in letteratura sugli Efemerotteri europei (Hexapoda: Ephemeroptera) - Un numero sempre crescente di studi ha per oggetto la valutazione degli effetti dei mutamenti climatici sulle componenti biologiche degli ecosistemi d’acqua dolce. Nel corso del progetto Eurolimpacs l’ordine degli Efemer...

RIASSUNTO - Tassocenosi a Ditteri Chironomidi in fiumi mediterranei (Cilento, Sud Italia): ecologia e implicazioni per il biomonitoraggio - In sei fiumi del Cilento (Sud Italia), sono stati condotti campionamenti multihabitat proporzionali di macroinvertebrati, allo scopo di indagare la riposta della tassocenosi a Chironomidi alle pressioni ambient...

RIASSUNTO Nella prima parte del presente contributo vengono elencati gli aspetti generali a cui prestare attenzione in relazione al campionamento di fauna bentonica fluviale. Tali aspetti riguardano sia le fasi immediatamente precedenti il campionamento sia alcuni accorgimenti da mettere in pratica durante e subito dopo il campionamento. Viene inol...

RIASSUNTO Vengono forniti gli elementi di dettaglio utili per la caratterizzazione degli habitat fluviali e per operare il campionamento di invertebrati bentonici secondo la tecnica multihabitat proporzionale. Nella prima parte, sono presentate una lista dei microhabitat minerali e biotici con relative immagini fotografiche e una lista dei tipi di...

The hydromorphological mapping of rivers habitat: the CARAVAGGIO methodology on the San Giovanni stream The CARAVAGGIO (Core Assessment of River hAbitat VAlue and hydro-morpholoGIcal cOndition) method for the assessment of hydro-morphological and habitat features in rivers is briefly presented. The method, derived from the U.K. River Habitat Survey...

RIASSUNTO Un aspetto fondamentale ai fini della classificazione ecologica dei corsi d’acqua ai sensi della Direttiva Quadro sulle Acque (WFD, 2000/60/EC) è la definizione di quadri regionali e di tipologie fluviali. Nel presente lavoro viene presentato un approccio per la regionalizzazione degli ecosistemi a scala europea e vengono brevemente descr...