| DARES and DALES: Diatom Assessment of River
and Lake / Loch Ecological Status
The objective of DARES and DALES is to develop
statistically-robust monitoring tools to enable the Environment
Agency, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Environment
and Heritage Service (Northern Ireland) to assess ecological
status of freshwaters using benthic diatoms. DARES and DALES are
separate projects but with shared management and some partners
common to both projects. The work programme of each project falls
into two broad stages: the compilation of a comprehensive database
of diatom counts and associated chemical information, and the
analysis of these data to develop a predictive tool.
We have included some
resources and links on these pages that may be of interest to the
wider hydrobiological community.
DARES is collaborative
project funded by the UK
Environment Agency and
the Scottish & Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research (SNIFFER).
Funding from the Agency's Water Framework Directive Programme and
Contribution from SNIFFER allows the extension of this work to
cover Scotland and Northern Ireland. DALES is funded by the
Environment Agency.
Project EMC(03)01/WFD 30:
Diatoms as Monitors of the Ecological Status of Rivers (DARES -
Diatom Assessment of River Ecological Status) is a
consortium-based approach involving Bowburn Consultancy, the Universities of Bristol,
Newcastle and Ulster and the Natural History Museum.
DALES is part of EID(03)01 Development of a phytobenthos
classification tool for lakes and lochs. Consortium members are
Bowburn Consultancy, ECRC-ENSIS and the Universities of Bristol
and Newcastle. |
