What urban lakes and ponds quality is about? Conciliating water quality and ecological indicators with users’ perceptions and expectations about urban lakes and ponds quality in urban areas

Abstract

ABSTRACT Urban lakes and ponds (L&Ps) provide numerous ecological and social services for local populations living in urban areas. Their monitoring and management are mostly based on water quality and ecological indicators and poorly consider public preferences and expectancies related to these artificial ecosystems. Even fewer studies bring together expert indicators and public expectations to inform management objectives for urban lakes. Based on an interdisciplinary study, this paper compares an expert assessment of the ecological quality of three urban L&Ps located in the Ile-de-France area with the public perception of these lakes. This approach permits us to explore the compatibilities and incongruences between the various ways in which scientists, managers and urban users assess urban L&P quality. Based on these data, we discuss how it could be possible to define management objectives that integrate quality indicators and expect these objectives to be used in a territorial approach that might allow to obtain a better adequacy between social users’ expectations and the ecological status of these L&Ps.