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WISER: WISER - Water bodies in Europe: Integrative Systems to assess Ecological status and Recovery

Type of Entry: Project
Website: www.wiser.eu
Duration: 03/2009 - 02/2012
Description:

Funding Programme: FP7 (EU 7th Framework Programme)

WISER will support the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) by developing tools for the integrated assessment of the ecological status of European surface waters (with a focus on lakes and coastal/transitional waters), and by evaluating recovery processes in rivers, lakes and coastal/transitional waters under global change constraints.
The project will (1) analyse existing data from more than 90 databases compiled in previous and ongoing projects, covering all water categories, Biological Quality Elements (BQEs) and stressor types and (2) perform targeted field-sampling exercises including all relevant BQEs in lakes and in coastal/transitional waters. New assessment systems will be developed and existing systems will be evaluated for lakes and coastal/transitional waters, with special focus on how uncertainty affects classification strength, to complete a set of assessment methodologies for these water categories. Biological recovery processes, in all water categories and in different climatic conditions, will be analysed, with focus on mitigation of hydromorphological and eutrophication pressures.
Large-scale data will be used to identify linkages between pressure variables and BQE responses. Specific case studies, using a variety of modelling techniques, will address selected pressure-response relationships and the efficacy of mitigation measures. The responses of different BQEs and different water categories to human-induced degradation and mitigation will be compared, with special focus on response signatures of BQEs within and among water categories. Guidance for the next steps of the intercalibration exercise will be given by comparing different intercalibration approaches. Stakeholders will be included from the outset, by building small teams of stakeholders and project partners responsible for a group of deliverables, to ensure the applicability and swift implementation of results.

Keywords: Coastal water
Partner: Finnish Environment Institute - SYKE (www.environment.fi/syke)
University of Duisburg-Essen (www.uni-due.de/hydrobiology )
Norwegian Institute for Water Research (www.niva.no)
Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (www.nerc.ac.uk)
AZTI-Tecnalia Foundation (www.azti.es)
University of Hull, Institute of Estuarine & Coastal Studies (www.hull.ac.uk)
Aarhus University - National Environmental Research Institute (www.dmu.dk)
French Research Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Engineering (www.cemagref.fr)
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (www.slu.se)
European Commission Joint Research Centre (www.jrc.ec.europa.eu)
Institute of Environmental Protection (www.ios.edu.pl)
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Forschungsverbund Berlin (www.igb-berlin.de)
Finnish Environment Institute (www.environment.fi/syke)
Spanish National Research Council (www.csic.es)
ALTERRA Green World Research (www.alterra.nl)
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna (www.boku.ac.at)
Estonian University of Life Sciences (www.emu.ee)
University College London (www.ucl.ac.uk)
Institute for Ecosystem Studies (www.cnr.it)
Deltares (www.deltares.nl)
University of Coimbra, Institute of Marine Research (www.imar.pt)
Institute of Oceanology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (www.io-bas.bg)
Trinity College Dublin (www.tcd.ie)
University of Salento (www.unile.it)
University of Bournemouth (www.bournemouth.ac.uk)
La Sapienza University of Rome (www.uniroma1.it/)