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ECOSTAT Discussion Paper on Monitoring Requirements
under the Water Framework Directive[1]

Introduction

  1. Article 8 of the WFD establishes the requirements for the monitoring of surface water status, groundwater status and protected areas. Monitoring programmes are required to establish a coherent and comprehensive overview of water status within each river basin district. The programmes have to be operational at the latest by 22 December 2006, and must be in accordance with the requirements of Annex V.
  2. The purpose of this paper is to provide an brief overview on existing guidance concerning monitoring requirements in surface water bodies. In addition potential gaps should be identified. Furthermore proposals on organisational aspects of future tasks on monitoring requirements, where solutions on an EU-level seem to be appropriate, are introduced by this paper.

Existing Guidance

  1. The guidance document on monitoring (No 7) serves as the basis to design monitoring programmes for surface water and groundwater in accordance with Article 8 and 11 and Annex V of the WFD. Amongst other things this comprehensive guidance provides assistance
  2. In the common understanding of the monitoring requirements of the WFD
  3. How to monitor water bodies concerning surveillance, operational and investigative monitoring
  4. For the selection of monitoring sites
  5. For the selection of quality elements and parameters
  6. How to tailor the monitoring frequencies taking into account the appropriate levels of confidence and precision

In addition the guidance document on ecological classification (No 13) provides assistance on achieving adequate confidence and precision in classification using monitoring data.

New Activities

  1. New developments in the implementation strategy, which could not be foreseen in the monitoring guidance in all technical details, might lead to potential gaps in the setting of common rules for all aspects of the establishment of monitoring programmes. On the EU-level the following new activities can be identified:
  2. The daughter Directive on priority substances
  3. The daughter Directive on groundwater
  4. State of play of the intercalibration exercise
  5. Eutrophication guidance, values and ranges for eutrophication relevant physico-chemical quality elements

It might be assumed that some of these activities will rise the necessity to provide further guidance on the establishment of monitoring programmes.

  1. In 2005 the main part of the intercalibration exercise (IC) will be carried out using all available biological methods and common metrics within the geographical intercalibration groups (GIG’s). In the light of the experiences with the IC some relevant monitoring issues could be expected for further (re)consideration. Important issues might be:
  2. Is there a need for further guidance on sampling?
  3. The biological quality elements naturally show a high dynamic. Are common rules on temporal and spatial monitoring necessary?
  4. Is there a need for further harmonisation of the different biological methods applied?
  5. Possibly some biological methods will be used on a transboundary level (GIG-level or in international river basin districts). Standardisation of such methods could be useful?

In addition not only biological but also physico-chemical and hydromorphological issues could be expected. For example, having derived typespecific values for nutrients the development of appropriate monitoring frequencies and temporal design (winter values?) might be essential (or is a minimum frequency of 4 per year sufficient?).

  1. The daughter Directives on priority substances and groundwater are still under development.

Conclusion and Recommendation

  1. Further guidance on monitoring is not needed at this stage because the new activities mentioned in items 4-6 are still under development. Nevertheless the organisational aspects of future tasks on new monitoring requirements should be addressed. It is proposed by this paper that all activities concerning item 5 should be addressed to the WG 2.A.

[1] Prepared by ECOSTAT working group leaders (version 1.3, 27th September 2004)