Nationwide Analysis Reveals Differential Effects of Crop Types on River Biota

River health, as indicated by riverine biota, can be strongly impacted by agricultural land use of catchments. The differential effects of land use practices related to crop types on individual riverine organism groups, however, remained largely unexplored. Here we used a Germany-wide dataset of 7748 sites, where macroinvertebrates, macrophytes and diatoms have been sampled and assessed with multimetric indices. These were related to the adjacent land use by generalized linear mixed models. For all organism groups, effects of agriculture were stronger than those of urban land use. For macroinvertebrates and macrophytes, strongest negative effects were found for pesticide intensive permanent crops, while intensively fertilized crops (maize, intensive cereals) affected diatoms most severely. These differential effects highlight the relevance for combining monitoring results obtained with different organism groups, and the urgency to buffer rivers against agricultural impacts originating from the catchments and ideally expand sustainably managed agriculture.