Monitoring will be required to classify water bodies, improve risk assessments and programmes of measures.
The monitoring programme will cover all surface waters, groundwaters, groundwater dependant wetlands and protected areas.
For each water body we will monitor a range of parameters including:
- biology (phytoplankton, diatoms, macrophytes, invertebrates and fish)
- hydromorphology
- physico-chemical (including pollutants)
- priority and priority-hazardous substances.
Data from the monitoring programme will be used in all stages of the river basin planning cycle to:
- classify all waterbodies according to their ecological and chemical status
- refine the risk assessments to improve our understanding of possible threats to the environment
- drive programmes of measures to identify why a waterbody is failing its objective and determine what action is needed.
Our WFD monitoring programme was reported to the European Commission through the Water Information System for Europe (WISE) website in March 2007.
The results from the monitoring programme will be used to classify the status of waterbodies. The status will be reported in draft river basin plans, due to be published in December 2008. The final River Basin Plans will be published in 2009.
If you would like to see the results of our Water Framework Directive monitoring programme, please contact us.
