Assessing the ecological status of the Hr��arsl��kur River

The ecological status of rivers is of major importance for the surrounding aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. In order to identify potential threats to the ecology of rivers it is important to assess and monitor the status of the ecology of rivers. In the present book we applied a river classification method to a case study in Southern Iceland. The method has been used in Austria and Switzerland and accordingly had to be adapted to Icelandic conditions. For this purpose we developed four categories of ecological status and categorised all river sections of the case study accordingly. We used the Hróarslækur river close to the town of Hella as a representative case study to test our method. Besides classifying the river sections we also measured electrical conductivity and water temperature to assess some preliminary water quality observations. Our study concludes by assessing the overall ecological status of the Hróarslækur river. The weighted ecological evaluation of all river sections of the Hróarslækur fall into the highest ecological class defined indicating the good ecologically condition of the river.