WGA ECOSTAT
Progress report November 2011-April 2012

for the Strategic Co-ordination Group of 10-11 May 2012

Authors: Wouter van de Bund, Wendy Bonne, Sandra Poikane

1.KEY EVENTS IN THE PERIOD

  • The 23rd ECOSTAT meeting took place 20-21 March 2012 in Ispra

2.UPCOMING KEY EVENTS AND DEADLINES

MEETINGS

  • The following ECOSTAT meeting will be held 18-19 October 2012 in Brussels

WORKSHOP

  • 12-13 June 2012 – Workshop on Hydromorphology and Ecological Status in Brussels

3.PROGRESS CIS WORKPROGRAMME DELIVERABLES

Activity 1 – Intercalibration

The final deadline for delivering results to be included in the Commission Decision was 31 December 2011. New results and remaining open issues were discussed at the ECOSTAT meeting held 20-21 March in Ispra. An overview of the status for the different Biological Quality Elements in the Geographical Intercalibration Groups for the four water categories is provided in Annex I of this report. Many new results were approved by ECOSTAT, but some open issues still remain – see Annex 1 for details.

Technical report

All the intercalibration results will be documented in a series of technical reports. These are being compiled by the intercalibration steering group at JRC, based on the information supplied by the intercalibration groups. Drafts are now available and are open for comments (deadline 31 May). Final versions of the technical reports will be completed in the early autumn of this year, at the same time as the completed draft of the Commission Decision

Scientific Peer Review

On request of the Commission, an independent scientific peer review is being carried out of the second-round intercalibration work, to be completed by 15 July 2012. The review is based on draft technical reports. The peer review panel covers all intercalibration results, checking if the guidance has been adequately applied and whether justifications for deviations from the guidance are acceptable from a scientific point of view. The reviewers are also specifically asked to give their opinion on the identified open issues. The Commission will take the opinions of the review panel into account when drafting the Commission Decision.

Draft Intercalibration Decision Annex

A first draft of the Annex of the Commission decision containing the tables with class boundary values was prepared by JRC in February 2012 ahead of the WFD Article 21 Committee meeting of 7 March. At that time the technical work for some of the BQE groups was not completely finalised and/or endorsed by WGA ECOSTAT. Furthermore, some unresolved open issues remained. The status for each result was indicated by colour codes in the draft.

Numerous comments were received from Member States by the deadline of 30 April. JRC is preparing an updated draft of the Decision Annex taking into account the outcome of the ECOSTAT meeting of 20-21 March and the comments received, again adding colour codes to mark open issues. The updated draft will be distributed ca. 15 May, together with a compilation of the comments received and their follow-up. Member States will again have the opportunity to submit corrections/comments.

In the beginning of September (for the WFD Committee meeting of 25 September) the Commission will distribute a complete draft of the Commission Decision including a consolidated Annex taking into account the recommendations of ECOSTAT, the intercalibration steering group, the scientific review panel, and the comments received from the Member States.

Need for follow-up of the intercalibration exercise

With the approval of the last group of results in February 2012 the technical work of ECOSTAT for the current intercalibration exercise has ended, but it is clear that there are still gaps that are not filled with the new Commission Decision. Even after publication of the Commission Decision the legal obligation for intercalibration of the class boundaries for national assessment method remains; also, there is a need for new Member States to bring their methods in line, and for a procedure allowing Member States to deal with new or updated methods. This issue was discussed at the last ECOSTAT meeting, and it was concluded that there is an urgent need for clarification how this will be done practically.

Intercalibration of ecological potential

At their meeting in Warsaw on 8-9 December 2011 the Water Directors endorsed the document “Good Ecological Potential – Recommendations on assessing and improving comparability” and mandated the Working Group A ECOSTAT to implement the steps proposed in the paper, keeping the SCG and the Water Directors informed along the process. Main conclusion of the document is that a comprehesive intercalibration exercise is not considered possible, but that practical steps can be taken to assist comparability in the spirit of the Directive. A three-step approach is proposed:

  1. a review of the current state of play on defining GEP;
  2. development of an updated methodological framework for defining and assessing GEP
  3. simple comparisons of Member States' definitions of good ecological potential for common uses

As a first step in this process a workshop will be organised 12-13 June in Brussels (see below).

Activity 3 – Ecological Classification

According to the ECOSTAT mandate, specific activities related to hydromorphology are foreseen; these are now foreseen to be carried out in 2012, addressing the following topics:

-Continue information exchange on biological assessment methods sensitive to hydromorphological alterations

-Information exchange on methods to assess minimum ecological flow

-Further information exchange on the comparison of methods fordefining Good Ecological Potential

A workshop will be held 12-13 June 2012, addressing these issues – see separate document.


ANNEX I
WGA ECOSTAT: Intercalibration exercise – progress update
for the SCG meeting 10-11May 2012

This Annex gives an overview of the current state of play in intercalibration including significant delays or problems that have occurred in the IC groups. The information was provided by the intercalibration steering group, reflecting the situation after the ECOSTAT meeting of March 2012. All results are subject to the scientific peer review that will be completed by 15 July 2012.

Progress of the intercalibration work - rivers

For rivers, only few gaps remain (see Table 1). For macrophytes, no results are foreseen for the Alpine and Northern geographical intercalibration groups. For large rivers, technical work was submitted for benthic fauna and phytobenthos; ECOSTAT has approved the results submitted for phytobenthos only. For benthic fauna there was general agreement that the results are not sufficiently mature to be included in the Comission Decision. Fish fauna and macrophytes were not addressed by the large rivers group at all so far.

Remaining open issues for the COM decision - rivers

The following issues are still open:

-In the Mediterranean GIG, Spain does not agree with the conclusion that they have to change class boundaries for benthic fauna following a change in the harmonisation procedure requested by the intercalibration steering group and agreed by all other Member States in the GIG. They argue that the harmonisation procedure that was used initially by the GIG showing that there was no need for a boundary change was correct.

-For the Central-Baltic GIG, Poland and UK have requested that their recently updated methods for benthic fauna are included in the COM decision; both MS have submitted reports showing that their boundaries are in line with the accepted intercalibration results. It seems that there are no scientific/technical problems including those new methods, but the reports were only received after the agreed deadline of 31 December and even after the last ECOSTAT meeting. Including these results may open the door for other MS that want to include updated or new methods in the current Decision, and this will be very difficult to manage.

Table 1: Overview of progress for Rivers intercalibration groups by GIG and BQE; Colours indicate state of progress:Green: Results approved by ECOSTAT with no or minor open issues. Orange: Results proposed, but major open issues remain.Red shaded: Progress reported to ECOSTAT, recommendation not to include in IC Decision. Red: Not addressed. n.a.: BQE not applicable to the GIG

Rivers
Large Rivers / Alpine GIG / Central-Baltic GIG / Med. GIG / North. GIG / Eastern Cont.
GIG
Benthic Fauna / June 2011 / June 2011 / Oct 2011 / June 2011 / June 2011
Phytobenthos / March 2012 / June 2011 / June 2011 / Oct 2011 / June 2011 / Oct 2011
Fish Fauna / June 2011 / June 2011 / June 2011 / June 2011 / June 2011
Macrophytes / n.a. / June 2011 / Oct 2011 / n.a.? / March 2012

Progress of the intercalibration work - lakes

For lakes, still a few major gaps remainthat will not be filled in the current intercalibration exercise (see Table 2). There are 3 main problem areas:

  • Eastern Continental GIG (HU, RO, BG) : despite a considerable progress during 2012, there are no any finalised results for lake assessment methods;
  • Mediterranean GIG: only phytoplankton results are finalised (and only for few countries: CY, ES, PT, IT, so no assessment methods for GR, RO, FR); for macrophytes and benthic invertebrates only method description is reported.
  • Fish IC: only two GIGs (Northern and Alpine GIG) have provided final accepted results, while there has been good progress in the CB GIG that has come to a standstill in absence of a GIG coordinator.

Remaining open issues for the COM decision - lakes

There are no any major issues still open:

–One of the last remaining issues was problems with the FR phytoplankton method (recently FR has discovered some mistakes in the method and consequently has withdrawn it both from the Alpine and Mediterranean GIG results);

–In several cases, the GIGs have reported non-intercalibrated methods (not possible to intercalibrate due to different reasons (e.g., addressing different pressures / habitats or only one method developed in the GIG):

  • Mediteranean Benthic fauna GIG (ES);
  • Mediterranean Macrophytes (ES, FR, IT);
  • Northern benthic fauna (SE method for littoral acidification).

These methods were not included in the draft Decision, following the recommendation from the DG ENV.

Table 2: Overview of progress for Rivers intercalibration groups by GIG and BQE; Colours indicate state of progress: Green: Results approved by ECOSTAT with no or minor open issues. Orange: Results proposed, but major open issues remain.Red shaded: Progress reported to ECOSTAT, recommendation not to include in IC Decision. Red: Not addressed. n.a.: BQE not applicable to the GIG

Lakes
Alpine GIG / Central-Baltic GIG / Eastern Continental GIG / Med
GIG / Northern GIG
Phytoplankton / Jun
2011 / Oct
2011 / Jun
2011 / Oct
2011
Macrophytes / Oct
2011 / Oct
2011 / March
2012
Phytobenthos / March
2012
Fish / March
2012 / March
2012
Benthic Fauna / March
2012 / March
2012 / June
2012

Progress of the intercalibration work – coastal and transitional waters

For coastal and transitional waters, a lot of gaps remain (see Tables 3 and 4), but there are also a considerable amount of successful results.

The following results have been concluded to put forward for inclusion in the Commission Decision:

Phytoplankton

-Baltic Sea CW

  • Few results: 2 of 9 types with full method + 2 types with only chlorophyll a 1st phase results revisited and adjusted
  • JRC has corrected results of 1 of these types after last ECOSTAT meeting – MSs agreed

-Black Sea CW: agreed full method but validation with low confidence

Macroalgae – seagrasses

-Baltic Sea CW

  • only result for 1 out of the 9 types

-Mediterranean Sea CW

  • Macroalgae CW
  • Seagrasses CW
  • Macroalgae/seagrasses TW

-North-East Atlantic

  • Intertidal and subtidal macroalgae CW
  • Seagrasses TW

Benthic invertebrate fauna

-Baltic Sea: results for 4 of 9 types, for 1 type only applicable to some national types

Fish

-North-East Atlantic: agreement at ECOSTAT between MSs and JRC with considerable deviation from 2nd phase guidance (peer review panel evaluation has been requested although it was a very late submission)

For the Black Sea CW the results for macroalgae/seagrasses and benthic invertebrate fauna were not sufficient– this conclusion is approved at ECOSTAT.

Also intercalibration reports have been submitted for the Mediterranean Sea TW phytoplankton and benthic invertebrate fauna, but the results were not considered finally acceptable by the Member States.

Remaining open issues for the COM decision–coastal/transitionalwaters

Phytoplankton

-North-East Atlantic CW+TW

  • Full method 2nd phase IC failed
  • Proposal of MSs to republish 1st phase coastal results (severaldifferent combinations of 3 separate parameters: chlorophyll a – Phaeocystis – taxa cell counts) mainly based on expert judgment, not following 2nd phase guidance) (JRC and peer review panel evaluation has also been requested)

-Mediterranean Sea CW

  • For 2 types no agreement at ECOSTAT: 1MS rejected adjustment in 1 type (1 other MS considers assessment still infeasible) + unjustified split of another type which creates inconsistency
  • Proposal of Greece and Cyprus to republish 1st phase coastal results

Macroalgae – seagrasses

-Baltic Sea CW

  • Proposal of DE to republish 1st phase seagrass result DE-DK, although this was not reported or requested in any Milestone report after the failure of the full method intercalibration (no 2nd phase check done of this single parameter)

-North-East Atlantic

  • No ECOSTAT agreement on opportunistic macroalgae CW-TW
  • Seagrasses CW proposed for publishing by MSs at ECOSTAT - still insufficient according to JRC

Benthic invertebrate fauna

-North-East Atlantic

  • CW: proposal of MSs to republish 1st phase coastal results + 2 new methods (JRC and peer review panel evaluation has also been requested)
  • TW: no agreement at ECOSTAT but some by JRC corrected results have also been submitted for peer review

-Mediterranean Sea CW: 2 MS groups have intercalibrated separately diversity-including and diversity-excluding methods strictly following the 2nd IC guidance. MSs agreed at ECOSTAT to request inclusion in the COM DEC, although comparability between those groups has not been demonstrated.

Table 3: Overview of progress for coastal intercalibration groups by GIG and BQE; Colours indicate state of progress: Green: Results approved by ECOSTAT with no or minor open issues. Orange: Results proposed, but major open issues remain. Red shaded: Progress reported to ECOSTAT, recommendation not to include in IC Decision. Red: Not addressed. n.a.: BQE not applicable to the GIG

COASTAL WATERS
Baltic Sea GIG / North-East Atlantic GIG / Mediterranean Sea GIG / Black Sea GIG
Phytoplankton / Mar 2012
Only 4 types / 1st phase results / Mar 2012 / Mar 2012
Macroalgae and Angiosperms / Mar 2012
Only 1 type / Mar 2012 / Jun 2011
Macrobenthic invertebrate fauna / Jun 2011
Only 4 types / 1st phase results + 2 new methods / Mar 2012

Table 4: Overview of progress for transitional intercalibration groups by GIG and BQE; Colours indicate state of progress: Green: Results approved by ECOSTAT with no or minor open issues. Orange: Results proposed, but major open issues remain.Red shaded: Progress reported to ECOSTAT, recommendation not to include in IC Decision. Red: Not addressed. n.a.: BQE not applicable to the GIG

TRANSITIONAL WATERS
Baltic Sea GIG / North-East Atlantic GIG / Mediterranean Sea GIG
Phytoplankton
Macroalgae and Angiosperms / Mar 2012 / Mar 2012
Macrobenthic invertebrate fauna / n.a. / Mar 2012
Fish fauna / n.a. / Mar 2012

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