BIO‐SAFE: assessing the impact of physical reconstruction on protected and endangered species

Abstract

Assessing actual and potential biodiversity of river-floodplain ecosystems on the basis of policy and legislation concerning endangered and protected species is necessary for consistency between different policy goals. It is thus a prerequisite to sustainable and integrated river management. This paper presents BIO-SAFE, a transnational model that quantifies the relevance of species and ecotopes, characteristic of the main channels and floodplains of the rivers Rhine and Meuse, on the basis of international treaties and directives and national Red Data Lists. BIO-SAFE was developed into a tool for biodiversity assessment with regard to design and evaluation of physical planning projects, Environmental Impact Assessments and comparative landscape-ecological studies. It was conceived to be applicable in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.Taxonomic groups involved are higher plants, birds, herpetofauna, mammals, fish, butterflies, and dragonflies and damselflies. The linkage of habitat requirements of species to ecotopes allows the user to derive information at the level of several ecotope types and scales. The model requires input data on presence of species and/or surface area of ecotopes. BIO-SAFE has been applied to flood risk reduction projects along the rivers Rhine and Meuse. Results show that BIO-SAFE yields quantitative information regarding the degree to which actual situations, reconstruction designs and developments of species and ecotope composition meet national and international agreements on biodiversity conservation.Attuning biodiversity conservation and flood risk reduction measures is a major issue in applied ecology and spatial planning. Assessments with BIO-SAFE can help find an optimal balance. Because of its policy-based character, BIO-SAFE yields information that is complementary to ecological biodiversity indices, single-species habitat models and ecological network analysis. The development of BIO-SAFE was based on species characteristic of rivers and floodplains, but the method can easily be applied to other ecosystems as well.

Impact of value-driven scenarios on the geomorphology and ecology of lower Rhine floodplains under a changing climate

“…Therefore, with a high sedimentation rate, landscaping measures like lowering of the floodplain will have to be repeated more often. Thirdly, the potential biodiversity values improve for the green and yellow scenario and decrease for the orange scenario, which is in line with expectations about effects of various types of landscaping measures (De Nooij et al, 2004). Finally, potential toxicological effects of cadmium contamination in the floodplain soil, as computed by SpaCE-S, were revealed for 4-5 out of 10 wildlife species.…”

“…The pollutants, such as heavy metals, are incorporated in the ecological food-chain (Torres and Johnson, 2001). The hydrodynamics and inundation frequency also influence the ecotope distribution (Deil, 2005), while the ecotope distribution in turn determines the potential biodiversity (De Nooij et al, 2004). Altogether, these and other studies revealed the complex biogeomorphological interactions that characterize these floodplain environments.…”

“…4. Evaluation of the potential values for protected and endangered flora and fauna species using BIO-SAFE (Lenders et al, 2001;De Nooij et al, 2004).…”

“…Lenders et al (2001) andDe Nooij et al (2006) describe the model setup, validation and a sensitivity analysis. The model was developed for the floodplains of the Rivers Rhine and the Meuse in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium and is based on policy and legal criteria (De Nooij et al, 2004). For the present study only a few functions of BIO-SAFE were used.…”

Towards sustainable flood risk management in the Rhine and Meuse river basins: synopsis of the findings of IRMA‐SPONGE

“…General targets for nature development must therefore be set in an early stage of the development of flood protection strategies. This target can be the protection of rare species, the enhancement of biodiversity (De Nooij et al, 2004), restoration of natural river processes (e.g. in the form of cyclic rejuvenation: Duel et al, 2001;Baptist et al, 2004, the optimization of nutrient retention (Hoekstra et al, 2002), or still other objectives.…”