scholarly journals The European Union Water Framework Directive and the ecological status assessment of inland waters

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Hutorowicz ◽  
Agnieszka Napiórkowska-Krzebietke
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ave Ansper ◽  
Krista Alikas

The European Parliament and The Council of the European Union have established the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) for all European Union member states to achieve, at least, “good” ecological status of all water bodies larger than 50 hectares in Europe. The MultiSpectral Instrument onboard European Space Agency satellite Sentinel-2 has suitable 10, 20, 60 m spatial resolution to monitor most of the Estonian lakes as required by the Water Framework Directive. The study aims to analyze the suitability of Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument data to monitor water quality in inland waters. This consists of testing various atmospheric correction processors to remove the influence of atmosphere and comparing and developing chlorophyll a algorithms to estimate the ecological status of water in Estonian lakes. This study shows that the Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument is suitable for estimating chlorophyll a in water bodies and tracking the spatial and temporal dynamics in the lakes. However, atmospheric corrections are sensitive to surrounding land and often fail in narrow and small lakes. Due to that, deriving satellite-based chlorophyll a is not possible in every case, but initial results show the Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument could still provide complementary information to in situ data to support Water Framework Directive monitoring requirements.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Pasztaleniec

AbstractAlthough the phytoplankton indices describing the response of phytoplankton to the eutrophication have been developed and used for many years in the routine lake monitoring programme in some countries, the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) [EC, 2000] stimulated the development and improvement of quite a number of the current WFD-compliant phytoplankton-based methods. This paper is a review of the current phytoplankton-based methods for assessing the ecological status of European lakes. The particular attention was paid to the ways of solving problems arising from the need to reflect the complex and dynamic plankton algal communities on a numerical scale in order to gain reliable information about the state of the ecosystem.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 1361-1372
Author(s):  
Alan D. Tappin ◽  
Alba Navarro-Rodriguez ◽  
Sean D. W. Comber ◽  
Paul J. Worsfold

UK implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directive (for the 2015–2021 cycle) Ecological Status (ES) classification for river phosphorus is based on the calculation of reference conditions for reactive phosphorus (RP) using river alkalinity measurements.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Chilińska

Harmonisation of the laws of the Member States regarding the protection of the environment is one of the tasks of the European Union. Poland joined EU in 2004 and took on various commitments for the improvement of water status. In particular, the Water Framework Directive was a major breakthrough in the assessment of aquatic ecosystems. For the classification of stratified and non-stratified lakes Ecological State Macrophyte Index (ESMI) has been used. In Poland, the method for assessing the ecological status of lakes based on macrophytes has been developed for routine water monitoring shortly after joining the European Union. This index is one of the biological elements in the assessment of ecological status. It considers the whole plant communities in the reservoir. The key factor that ESMI reacts to is anthropopressure, which manifests itself as eutrophication. However, it is crucial that the lakes are also subject to different pressures. In this situation, the ESMI rating becomes only an indicative method. The article describes the role, process of evaluation and the most common problems related to ESMI.


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