The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires that all aquatic ecosystems in their member states should reach ‘good’ ecological quality by 2015. To assess ecological quality, the WFD requires the definition of reference conditions using biological, physical and chemical indicators and the assignment of each water body to one of five quality classes using these indicators. Elaborate asse...

High phosphorus concentrations causing eutrophication will prevent many lakes in England and Wales from reaching good ecological status by 2015 according to the EC Water Framework Directive (WFD). The aim of this study was to estimate the percentage of lakes in England and Wales that are likely to fail recently agreed WFD phosphorus standards. As measured lake phosphorus concentrations are only...

Environmental risk assessment is typically uncertain due to different perceptions of the risk problem and limited knowledge about the physical, chemical, and biological processes underlying the risk. The present paper provides a systematic overview of the implications of different types of uncertainty for risk management, with a focus on risk-based management of river basins. Three different ty...

Increasing the proportion of renewable capacity in the national energy mix may give rise to a range of economic costs. This paper considers the nature of water use in hydroelectric generation in Scotland. Hydroelectric generation is currently the highest volumetric use of water in Scotland. After calculating this volume, the paper considers the nature of some of the non-priced costs associated ...

A major component of river restoration is the recreation of instream physical habitat heterogeneity and re-establishment of the linkage between the in-channel and adjacent floodplain environment. Re-engineering channels to reinstate a more natural form and the restoration of water and sediment transfer can bring multiple benefits particularly if undertaken as part of an environmental strategy f...

BACKGROUND Windowed Fourier decompositions (WFD) are widely used in measuring stationary and non-stationary spectral phenomena and in describing pairwise relationships among multiple signals. Although a variety of WFDs see frequent application in electrophysiological research, including the short-time Fourier transform, continuous wavelets, bandpass filtering and multitaper-based approaches, ea...

Recently the European Union has approved the EU Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD). This directive claims that by the end of 2015 a “good status of surface water“ and a “good status of groundwater” should be achieved (EU, 2000). To that end, the EU-WFD provides several guidelines for monitoring the water bodies, leaving the practical implementation to the local governments. Each region has to d...

In the last decades, climate change and human pressures have increasingly dramatically impacted ocean worldwide, calling for urgent actions to safeguard coastal marine ecosystems. The European Commission, in particular, has set ambitious targets member states with two major directives, Water Framework Directive (WFD) Marine Strategy (MSFD), both designed protect environment EU waters. Diverse b...

Abstract Diclofenac is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory human and veterinary medicine widely detected in European surface waters, especially downstream from Wastewater Treatment Plants. With some notable exceptions, uses of diclofenac Europe are greatly restricted, so wastewater the key Europe-wide exposure route for wildlife that may be exposed via aquatic environment. Proposed Environmental Q...

Abstract The 2000 European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) states that “Member States shall ensure the necessary protection for bodies of water identified with aim avoiding deterioration in their quality order to reduce level purification treatment required production drinking water.” However, it does not specify how evaluate or quantify this treatment. We propose a novel index (WQI) prep...