Development of sediment quality guidelines for freshwater ecosystems

The development of Sediment Quality Guidelines (SQGs) is one of the remaining challenges for a better protection of aquatic biodiversity and in particular sediment dwelling organisms. So far, sediment quality assessment in Flanders was based on a comparison of chemical concentrations to the geometric mean of the concentrations at 12 reference sites. The study described in this paper addressed the need for more science-based guidelines. The...