During the last five years Harmoni-CA has been working among other things to promote the use of modelling tools in Integrated River Basin Management, especially in the implementation process of the Water Framework Directive. Within Harmoni-CA WP4 has worked to promote the interaction of monitoring and modelling activities. This has been done through a series of workshops where water managers, consultants, policy makers etc. have been brought together with researchers to elaborate state of the art on monitoring programmes; on present practice in use of models and to be presented for the possibilities, potentials and benefits of joining modelling and monitoring. Finally, at the two last workshops, the participants were asked to elaborate real-life case studies from different river basins around Europe, considering how to implement the Water Framework Directive in these areas considering where monitoring and modelling should be carried out and where these 2 disciplines should join forces.
At the last workshop in Budapest, three case studies were presented and elaborated:
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Lithuania: Nevesis River Basin: Surface water quality problems; high nutrient loads from agricultural diffuse sources especially resulting in nitrate problems; besides several small villages without WWTP resulting in outlet of phosphorous
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Estonia: Pärnu River Basin: Potential threats towards wetland and the groundwater quality in terms of agriculture resulting in both diffuse and point sources - the latter due to improper handling and storage of manure: Besides there is some peat mining in the area resulting in local acidification of surface waters
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Romania: To high level of nutrient, especially nitrate, in both surface and groundwater from a range of different sources: Aerial deposition from neighbouring areas with agricultural activities; diffuse pollution from the local agriculture although the present pressure is low. Finally there is a special problem in terms of groundwater storage due to very high nitrate use in the past
Constraints and bottlenecks in joint use of monitoring and modelling have been discussed and input and output from the workshops has been used to produce a guideline in best practice in joint use of monitoring and modelling as well as a synthesis report on data availability and accessibility. These two products can be found at www.harmoni-ca.info/products
As an additional output a common flowchart has been developed. This should be applicable in most areas around Europe facing different challenges in WFD implementation. The flow chart was presented at the Final Harmoni-CA Conference in Brussels 25-27 September 2007 "European Research Input to River Basin Management" and was well received. The flowchart is described in the workshop report that can be found below.
The workshop report and the presentations from the workshop can be found below:
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