Responses of fish to nationwide improvements in the water quality of a densely populated and heavily modified country over four decades

Abstract

Globally, fish have been severely affected by the widespread, chronic degradation of fresh waters, with a substantial proportion of species declining in abundance or range in recent decades. This has especially been the case in densely populated countries with an industrial heritage and intensive agriculture, where the majority of river catchments have been affected by deteriorations in water quality and changes in land use. This study used a spatially and temporally extensive dataset, encompassing 16,124 surveys at 1180 sites representing a wide range of river typologies and pressures, to examine changes in the fish populations of England's rivers over four decades (1980s–2010s). The analyses revealed gradual, nationwide increases in mean fish species richness and diversity across the range of pressure gradients. In the majority of cases, increases were most pronounced in the 1980s, since when any further changes have been comparatively minor, but there were no declining trends across the full time series. There were also temporal, nationwide changes in fish assemblage structure, driven largely by variations in the densities of brown trout Salmo trutta or roach Rutilus rutilus, but no consistent increases in the abundance of sensitive, pollution-intolerant species in response to improvements in wastewater treatment and, consequently, water quality. Although the increases in fish species richness and diversity over the last four decades are encouraging, subtle and contrasting changes in the abundance of a range of species require further investigation, and causal relationships between fish assemblage structure and putative drivers should be modelled at a national scale. This study is the first to examine long-term, nationwide trends in the freshwater fish populations of England, and significantly advances our understanding of the ecological health of rivers in densely populated and heavily modified countries.