Publication
Title
Key findings and recommendations for reaching the EU Water Framework Directives quality objectives
Author
Abstract
The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires the achievement of good ecological and chemical status in European river basins. However, evidence is increasing that a majority of European water bodies will not achieve this goal. Nutrient emissions and related eutrophication together with hydromorphological alterations have been suggested as the major driving forces of this insufficient ecological status. MODELKEY (511237 GOCE, FP6) provides strong evidence that toxic chemicals also affect the ecological status of European rivers. This was demonstrated in the case study rivers Elbe, Scheldt and Llobregat on different scales. This paper summarises key findings of MODELKEY including recommendations for WFD implementation. We provide evidence of toxic stress in aquatic ecosystems, provide evidence that impairment of ecological status results from impact of multiple stressors, suggest a tiered approach to assess impact of chemicals on ecological status, suggest a new approach for deriving candidate compounds for monitoring and prioritisation, call for consideration of bioavailability and bioaccumulation in chemical status assessments, suggest improvements for WFD water quality monitoring programmes, provide new integrated tools for basin-scale risk assessment and decision making, developed a Decision Support System to support river basin management. These key results will be presented in a series of ten integrated sections; for the scientific details please refer to publications listed on the MODELKEY website (http://www.modelkey.org/). This article also looks beyond MODELKEY and proposes a combination of MODELKEY diagnostic tools with recent ecological methods to further improve effectiveness of river basin management.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Umweltwissenschaften und Schadstoff-Forschung / Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Umweltchemie und Okotoxikologie. - Landsberg
Publication
Landsberg : 2010
ISSN
0934-3504
DOI
10.1007/S12302-010-0137-2
Volume/pages
22 :3 (2010) , p. 217-228
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Record
Identifier
Creation 27.05.2010
Last edited 07.10.2022
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