AQUAFLORA: A predictive model based on diatoms and macrophytes for streams water quality assessment

According to the Water Framework Directive phytobenthos (diatoms) and macrophytes are part of the same biological element, the aquatic flora, which should be used in monitoring programs for rivers ecological assessment. However, they have been treated separately over time, and different indices are used to reach an Ecological Quality Status. Here we build a predictive model (the AQUAFLORA) based on communities composed of diatoms and macrophytes, with the aim of determining if these two elements of the aquatic flora could be combined in a single model to evaluate the streams ecological quality. For that we used biological and environmental information from 200 reference and 171 disturbed sites distributed through the entire Portuguese mainland territory. After clustering analysis, 5 biological reference groups significantly different (ANOSIM Global R=0.685; p