WISER Water bodies in Europe: Integrative Systems to assess Ecological status and Recovery
Country: EU Projects
Start Date:   1/2/2009         Duration: 36 months         Project Type: RTD
Contract Number: 226273
Organisation Type:  EC Project
Topics: 
Contaminated land-->Risk assessment-->Receptor: Ecological
Water resources and their management -->Stresses, quality and ecological status
Project objectives: 
WISER will develop tools for integrated status assessment with a focus on lakes, coastal and transitional waters and will evaluate recovery processes for 
rivers, lakes, coastal and transitional waters. WISER aims at developing assessment methods for organism groups (fish, invertebrates and aquatic flora) 
and ecosystem types (lakes, coastal and transitional waters) for which sufficient methods are still lacking.   
  
WISER will further contribute to making existing assessment methods better comparable, i.e. to the intercalibration of assessment methods presently 
carried out by European countries. To support the development of recovery schemes WISER will model the effects of nutrient reduction and hydromorphological 
improvement on the ecological status of freshwater and coastal water ecosystems, taking the simultaneous effect of climate change into account. A special 
focus will be on estimating uncertainty in bioassessment and in modelling ecosystem response to restoration.  
  
WISER will both evaluate existing data and will perform new field exercises. The development and intercalibration of assessment methods will mainly be 
based on existing data, using more than 90 databases which have been built in previous and ongoing projects. A wide variety of statistical and modelling techniques 
will be employed, linking biological data to the degree of degradation as determined by environmental variables.  
  
Individual assessment methods will be developed for   
•phytoplankton  
•macrophytes  
•invertebrates  
•fish
Project Summary: 
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.
Achieved Objectives:
Product Descriptions:
Additional Information:
Project Resources:
Weblink:
http://www.wiser.eu/
Funding Programme(s): 
Link to Organisations:
Submitted by: EUGRIS Team Professor Paul Bardos  Who does what?  16/05/2012 14:42:00