14.6.21
Monitoring Plastics in Rivers and Lakes
Guidelines for Harmonization of Methodologies
Plastic debris is present in all ecosystems. Research, societal awareness and action have long focused on marine plastics. Current knowledge suggests that most marine plastics originate from land-based sources. Monitoring programmes are needed for assessing the state of and trends of plastic contamination in freshwater systems such as rivers and lakes as well as the role of rivers for connecting land-based plastic sources with the marine environment. They are also needed to achieve target 14.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals: “By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.
9.6.2021
Nationale Wasserstrategie
Water management and water protection face various challenges due to climate change, globalization, substance inputs and demographic change. Consistent and strategic action is required in order to ensure sustainable use of our water resources in all relevant sectors of use in the medium and long term, to support the natural water balance and the ecological development of our waterbodies, and to improve the handling of extreme events in urban and rural areas. For this purpose, the BMU presented the draft of the National Water Strategy on June 8th, 2021. The UBA text 86/2021 attached (in German with English summary) compiles the technical and scientific background for selected focal points of the National Water Strategy.
21.1.2021
The European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters (ETC/ICM) has published its Technical Report 3-5/2020:
Spatial Analysis of Marine Protected Area Networks in Europe’s Seas III
The report presents an overview of the spatial distribution of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Europe’s seas established as of 2019 (excluding overseas territories). It represents an updated rerun and advancement of the spatial statistics and of the coherence analysis run by the European Topic Centre on inland, coastal, and marine waters (ETC/ICM) on MPA reported data in 2012 and 2016. As such it provides insight on the observed changes in European MPAs established in the three-year period 2017-2019.
Comparison of ecological status between countries and river basin management plans (RBMP) cycles
This technical report provides an overview of the comparability of ecological status for single biological quality elements (BQEs), for abiotic quality elements (QEs) and for overall ecological status, as well as the consequences for the 3rd RBMP assessment. It highligths the confidence of European assessments of ecological status and trends relies on comparable data between countries and cycles of river basin management plans. The Analysis of data on ecological status for rivers and lakes reported to WISE (Water information system for Europe) shows major comparability issues due to variable use of biological and abiotic quality elements and how they are combined to overall ecological status. The best option to ensure comparability and illustrate progress is to use the status reported for single biological quality elements, while the best option to provide geographical coverage of all water bodies is to use overall ecological status.
Preliminary assessment of river floodplain condition in Europe
This report provides an assessment methodology of floodplain condition in terms of extent, structure and processes at the European scale and give first results,
The European Environment Agency (EEA) has published the EEA Report No 25/2018 titled "Contaminants in Europe's seas - Moving towards a clean, non-toxic marine environment":
The report was developed and written by Jesper H. Andersen, Therese Harvey, Ciarán Murray, Norman Green from NIVA, a partner of the European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters (ETC/ICM), together with Johnny Reker (EEA). This assessment represents a first attempt to map contamination 'problem areas' and 'non-problem areas' at the scale of Europe's seas, while also exploring whether Europe has broken some of the trends for long‑established hazardous substances. The report is based on the long-term work of the ETC/ICM and on information reported by European Union (EU) Member States, as part of reporting under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), as well as on a suite of other sources of information.
