Best practice for establishing nutrient concentrations to support good ecological status

The EU Member States, Norway and the European Commission in 2000 have jointly developed a common implementation strategy (CIS) for implementing Directive 2000/60/EC, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) to ensure consistent implementation. The focus is on developing a common understanding of the technical and scientific implications of the WFD. One of the objectives is the development of non-legally binding and practical Guidance Documents on various technical issues of the Directive. These are targeted at experts who are directly or indirectly implementing the WFD in river basins. The structure, presentation and terminology are therefore adapted to their needs and formal, legalistic language is avoided wherever possible. In 2009 CIS Guidance on Eutrophication Assessment (Guidance Document No. 23) was published, providing guidance for evaluating the impacts of nutrient enrichment, a major cause of failure to achieve good status under the WFD. However, an apparently wide range of nutrient boundary values to support good ecological status had been established by the Member States. Water Directors requested that the CIS Working Group ECOSTAT investigate this issue, and the subsequent work has been led by the UK (Freshwaters), Germany (Saline waters) and JRC. The aim of the work was to establish the reasons for differences between Member States in the development and application of nutrient boundaries, leading to the production of this guidance on best practice. This work is an addition to, and not a replacement for, the earlier guidance on eutrophication assessment. In developing this guidance, a number of tasks have been undertaken. The range of nitrogen and phosphorus boundary values in use by Member States, and the methods used to derive those values has been reported separately, for both fresh and saline waters. Further work was undertaken to investigate nutrient pressure-biological response relationships in the different surface water categories. This work was then used to inform the development of this guide and the associated statistical toolkit. During the project a series of workshops were held involving nutrient experts nominated by Member States. These experts contributed to the development and testing of the guidance and toolkit, and provided details of alternative methods of boundary setting in use in some Member States. The purpose of this report is to provide technical guidance to enable Member States to establish new, or review existing, boundaries for phosphorus and nitrogen to support good ecological status. This should facilitate the establishment of comparable and consistent boundaries across all Member States. However it is recognised that alternative methods of arriving at boundary values may be valid, and use of this guidance and the associated statistical toolkit is ultimately a decision for the Member State. The responses of biological elements to nutrient availability are complex, and vary between water categories. This guidance is not therefore a substitute for the application of ecological knowledge and understanding at a local level. Furthermore, responses to nutrients may be confounded by the impact of other pressures acting on a water body, and our understanding of how to account for multiple stressors is still developing. The guidance does not specifically address how the nutrient boundaries are used to derive an overall classification, or to drive action to control nutrients, both of which may be relevant to the level at which the boundaries are set.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Making waves. Bridging theory and practice towards multiple stressor management in freshwater ecosystems

Embargo until February 26, 2023Despite advances in conceptual understanding, single-stressor abatement approaches remain common in the management of fresh waters, even though they can produce unexpected ecological responses when multiple stressors interact. Here we identify limitations restricting the development of multiple-stressor management strategies and address these, bridging theory and practice, within a novel empirical framework. Those critical limitations include that (i) monitoring schemes fall short of accounting for theory on relationships between multiple-stressor interactions and ecological responses, (ii) current empirical modelling approaches neglect the prevalence and intensity of multiple-stressor interactions, and (iii) mechanisms of stressor interactions are often poorly understood. We offer practical recommendations for the use of empirical models and experiments to predict the effects of freshwater degradation in response to changes in multiple stressors, demonstrating this approach in a case study. Drawing on our framework, we offer practical recommendations to support the development of effective management strategies in three general multiple-stressor scenarios.acceptedVersio

Strength and uncertainty of phytoplankton metrics for assessing eutrophication impacts in lakes

Phytoplankton constitutes a diverse array of short-lived organisms which derive their nutrients from the water column of lakes. These features make this community the most direct and earliest indicator of the impacts of changing nutrient conditions on lake ecosystems. It also makes them particularly suitable for measuring the success of restoration measures following reductions in nutrient loads. This paper integrates a large volume of work on a number of measures, or metrics, developed for using phytoplankton to assess the ecological status of European lakes, as required for the Water Framework Directive. It assesses the indicator strength of these metrics, specifically in relation to representing the impacts of eutrophication. It also examines how these measures vary naturally at different locations within a lake, as well as between lakes, and how much variability is associated with different replicate samples, different months within a year and between years. On the basis of this analysis, three of the strongest metrics (chlorophyll-a, phytoplankton trophic index (PTI), and cyanobacterial biovolume) are recommended for use as robust measures for assessing the ecological quality of lakes in relation to nutrient-enrichment pressures and a minimum recommended sampling frequency is provided for these three metrics

Europa Biodiversity Observation Network: User and Policy Needs Assessment

In this report, we present the analysis of the different available biodiversity data streams at the EU and national level, both baseline biodiversity data and monitoring data. We assess how these biodiversity data inform and trigger policy action and identify the related challenges the different European countries and relevant EU agencies face and the solutions to overcome them. To do this, we consulted with more than 350 expert stakeholders from policy, research and practice. The assessment identified a fragmented biodiversity data landscape that cannot currently easily answer all relevant policy questions. Quantity and quality of biodiversity baseline datasets differ for the different countries, ranging from non-existent biodiversity monitoring due to capacity issues, to regular monitoring of ecosystem processes and state. By engaging stakeholders and experts in both member states and non-member states and from several EU bodies, we identified key challenges and ways to address these with targeted solutions towards building a joint European Biodiversity Monitoring Network. Solutions include focussing on cooperation and coordination, enhanced data standardisation and sharing, as well as the use of models and new technologies. These solutions can however only be realised with dedicated funding and capacity building, in coordination with all stakeholders in partnership

D2.3 EuropaBON Proposal for an EU Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC)

Observations are key to understanding the state of nature, the drivers of biodiversity loss and the impacts on ecosystem services and ultimately on people. Many EU policies and initiatives call for unbiased, integrated and regularly updated data on biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, biodiversity monitoring efforts are spatially and temporally fragmented, taxonomically biased and not integrated across Europe. EuropaBON has addressed this gap by developing an EU-wide framework for biodiversity monitoring. With this deliverable, EuropaBON proposes the terms of reference for an EU Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC), a permanent infrastructure that could coordinate and foster the generation and use of high quality data to underpin the biodiversity knowledge-base used across EU policies, providing guidance and trainings when necessary. Such a centre represents one of the key solutions to overcome the critical challenges of biodiversity monitoring in Europe. Having this integrated and continuous monitoring capacity would allow more timely and efficient interventions that would optimise our capacity to revert biodiversity loss and prevent environmental degradation. It would also increase the value-added to the data flows, reaching high-value outputs with some existing low-value inputs. This deliverable offers a critical analysis of the existing monitoring landscape in Europe, extracting key messages about the main challenges, lessons learned and possible solutions. Based on a comprehensive analysis of needs and, most importantly, on an inclusive consultation process, the deliverable designs an EBOCC that tackles the key biodiversity monitoring challenges. The proposal specifies the mission, the tasks, the most urgent topics, the main policies and the key stakeholders that the EBOCC should serve and focus on during the first stage of its implementation. It also includes detailed analyses about governance models and potential costs. With this proposal, EuropaBON fosters the setting up and testing an operational EBOCC that could address the urgent need for coordination, integration, harmonisation and strengthening of biodiversity data collection and analysis, in order to inform policy-making at local, national, European and international level

Defining Chlorophyll-a Reference Conditions in European Lakes

The concept of “reference conditions” describes the benchmark against which current conditions are compared when assessing the status of water bodies. In this paper we focus on the establishment of reference conditions for European lakes according to a phytoplankton biomass indicator—the concentration of chlorophyll-a. A mostly spatial approach (selection of existing lakes with no or minor human impact) was used to set the reference conditions for chlorophyll-a values, supplemented by historical data, paleolimnological investigations and modelling. The work resulted in definition of reference conditions and the boundary between “high” and “good” status for 15 main lake types and five ecoregions of Europe: Alpine, Atlantic, Central/Baltic, Mediterranean, and Northern. Additionally, empirical models were developed for estimating site-specific reference chlorophyll-a concentrations from a set of potential predictor variables. The results were recently formulated into the EU legislation, marking the first attempt in international water policy to move from chemical quality standards to ecological quality targets