How do we assess the impact of lakeshore degradation ?
Which organisms are suited to assess the impact of different stressors on coastal areas across Europe ?
What are the best restoration and management options to mitigate human impact on rivers and their estuaries ?
Such questions frequently arise in the daily business of river basin and water managers throughout Europe. The answers are not trivial and have been subject to the large-scale integrated project WISER.
WISER has addressed these questions. WISER means 'Water bodies in Europe: Integrative Systems to assess ecological status and Recovery'. For three years, 25 European research institutions representing 16 countries have addressed the assessment and management of rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters in Europe.
In particular, WISER has:
- elaborated WFD-compliant assessment systems for lakes, transitional and coastal waters, which supported the European Intercalibration Exercise,
- estimated the sources and levels of uncertainty connected to the assessment methods
- analysed restoration and rehabilitation studies and identified suitable measures to improve surface waters at the large scale and
- highlighted the role of global and climate change in aquatic ecosystem monitoring and management.
WISER has produced a lot of "hands-on" results (e.g a "cook book" for the development of common metrics), which can be used for water body assessement and river basin management.
Browse and download our deliverables and reports, search for assessment methods used in Europe, search for available data in our metadatabase, view the conceptual models, see which papers WISER scientists have published so far or download and use our software tools.
The section key messages summarizes answers, evidences, implications and further information in a step-by-step way for different water categories and biological elements.
Special issue in the journal "Hydrobiologia"
The special issue summarises the results of WISER. This issue includes 31 peer-reviewed papers, addressing the assessment and restoration of lakes, coastal and transitional waters, and rivers in Europe. For lakes and coastal/transitional waters individual papers address new assessment systems using phytoplankton, macrophytes, benthic invertebrates and fish. For all ecosystem types the effects of restoration measures are addressed.