Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England

Maintaining and improving water quality is key to the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems, which provide important benefits to society. In Europe, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines water quality based on a set of biological, hydro-morphological and chemical targets, and aims t...

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Autores principales: Ziv, Guy, Mullin, Karen, Boeuf, Blandine, Fincham, William, Taylor, Nigel, Villalobos-Jiménez, Giovanna, von Vittorelli, Laura, Wolf, Christine, Fritsch, Oliver, Strauch, Michael, Seppelt, Ralf, Volk, Martin, Beckmann, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5119820/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27875562
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166950
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author Ziv, Guy
Mullin, Karen
Boeuf, Blandine
Fincham, William
Taylor, Nigel
Villalobos-Jiménez, Giovanna
von Vittorelli, Laura
Wolf, Christine
Fritsch, Oliver
Strauch, Michael
Seppelt, Ralf
Volk, Martin
Beckmann, Michael
author_facet Ziv, Guy
Mullin, Karen
Boeuf, Blandine
Fincham, William
Taylor, Nigel
Villalobos-Jiménez, Giovanna
von Vittorelli, Laura
Wolf, Christine
Fritsch, Oliver
Strauch, Michael
Seppelt, Ralf
Volk, Martin
Beckmann, Michael
author_sort Ziv, Guy
collection PubMed
description Maintaining and improving water quality is key to the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems, which provide important benefits to society. In Europe, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines water quality based on a set of biological, hydro-morphological and chemical targets, and aims to reach good quality conditions in all river bodies by the year 2027. While recently it has been argued that achieving these goals will deliver and enhance ecosystem services, in particular recreational services, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating so. Here we test the hypothesis that good water quality is associated with increased utilization of recreational services, combining four surveys covering walking, boating, fishing and swimming visits, together with water quality data for all water bodies in eight River Basin Districts (RBDs) in England. We compared the percentage of visits in areas of good water quality to a set of null models accounting for population density, income, age distribution, travel distance, public access, and substitutability. We expect such association to be positive, at least for fishing (which relies on fish stocks) and swimming (with direct contact to water). We also test if these services have stronger association with water quality relative to boating and walking alongside rivers, canals or lakeshores. In only two of eight RBDs (Northumbria and Anglian) were both criteria met (positive association, strongest for fishing and swimming) when comparing to at least one of the null models. This conclusion is robust to variations in dataset size. Our study suggests that achieving the WFD water quality goals may not enhance recreational ecosystem services, and calls for further empirical research on the connection between water quality and ecosystem services.
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spelling pubmed-51198202016-12-15 Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England Ziv, Guy Mullin, Karen Boeuf, Blandine Fincham, William Taylor, Nigel Villalobos-Jiménez, Giovanna von Vittorelli, Laura Wolf, Christine Fritsch, Oliver Strauch, Michael Seppelt, Ralf Volk, Martin Beckmann, Michael PLoS One Research Article Maintaining and improving water quality is key to the protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems, which provide important benefits to society. In Europe, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) defines water quality based on a set of biological, hydro-morphological and chemical targets, and aims to reach good quality conditions in all river bodies by the year 2027. While recently it has been argued that achieving these goals will deliver and enhance ecosystem services, in particular recreational services, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating so. Here we test the hypothesis that good water quality is associated with increased utilization of recreational services, combining four surveys covering walking, boating, fishing and swimming visits, together with water quality data for all water bodies in eight River Basin Districts (RBDs) in England. We compared the percentage of visits in areas of good water quality to a set of null models accounting for population density, income, age distribution, travel distance, public access, and substitutability. We expect such association to be positive, at least for fishing (which relies on fish stocks) and swimming (with direct contact to water). We also test if these services have stronger association with water quality relative to boating and walking alongside rivers, canals or lakeshores. In only two of eight RBDs (Northumbria and Anglian) were both criteria met (positive association, strongest for fishing and swimming) when comparing to at least one of the null models. This conclusion is robust to variations in dataset size. Our study suggests that achieving the WFD water quality goals may not enhance recreational ecosystem services, and calls for further empirical research on the connection between water quality and ecosystem services. Public Library of Science 2016-11-22 /pmc/articles/PMC5119820/ /pubmed/27875562 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166950 Text en © 2016 Ziv et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ziv, Guy
Mullin, Karen
Boeuf, Blandine
Fincham, William
Taylor, Nigel
Villalobos-Jiménez, Giovanna
von Vittorelli, Laura
Wolf, Christine
Fritsch, Oliver
Strauch, Michael
Seppelt, Ralf
Volk, Martin
Beckmann, Michael
Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England
title Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England
title_full Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England
title_fullStr Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England
title_full_unstemmed Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England
title_short Water Quality Is a Poor Predictor of Recreational Hotspots in England
title_sort water quality is a poor predictor of recreational hotspots in england
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5119820/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27875562
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166950
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