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Decision Support for the Selection of Measures according to the Requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive

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Abstract

One major scientific challenge posed by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) is the design of a decision support process that meets the Directive’s requirement to achieve “good status” for all water bodies using a cost-effective combination of measures. This paper presents BASINFORM, a new decision methodology for selecting cost-effective management measures, developed in close co-operation with the water authorities and tested in the 5,154 km² mesoscale river Weisse Elster in central Germany. BASINFORM comprises (i) a procedure for framing the specific problems in the water bodies, including quantification of the need for action, (ii) modelling tools for quantifying the impacts of management measures, and (iii) a method for selecting cost-effective combinations of measures. One innovative feature of BASINFORM is that it structures the complex decision problems appropriately for practical use and provides an easy-to-use framework for integrating scientific and practical knowledge. A trial run applying BASINFORM to the Weisse Elster catchment revealed that good surface water status with respect to nutrient levels cannot be achieved if only the “standard” actions of current water management are taken to reduce point sources (sewage treatment) and diffuse agricultural sources. It also became clear that the nutrient-reduction measures available will generate considerable costs. The application of BASINFORM in this case study demonstrated its practical applicability in the WFD implementation process. Beyond the case study described here BASINFORM is currently being used for practical implementation of the WFD in the German Federal State of Thuringia.

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Notes

  1. BASINFORM was also applied to the Emsbach water body (320 km2, German federal state of Hessen, Richter et al. 2009a, b) and used for practical implementation of the WFD in Thuringia (Section 5).

  2. In fact, BASINFORM is currently (2010) being applied by the German federal state of Thuringia. The state of Brandenburg is currently considering BASINFORM for improving the hydro-morphology of river water bodies (Klauer and Bathe 2010).

  3. In Germany, it is the “German Working Group on Water Issues of the Federal States and the Federal Government” (Bund/Länder-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Wasser, LAWA) that establishes the thresholds for good water status. The relevant LAWA (2004) water quality classes (WQC) are discussed in Section 3.2.

  4. Information about degrees of uncertainty may in fact be very important for deciding about management options. Such information may stem from different sources: in the approach to impact analysis introduced in Section 3, quantitative information about modelling uncertainty is obtained. In more practical approaches quantitative information may not be available—in these cases uncertainties may be estimated by the experts involved.

  5. LAWA stands for “German Working Group on Water Issues of the Federal States and the Federal Government”.

  6. The NRUs were aggregated from hydrological response units (HRUs, Flügel 1995), because not all HRU attributes (such as elevation, slope, exposition, geology) proved to be important for nitrogen leaching calculations with the meta model.

  7. An uncertainty analysis based on the Monte Carlo approach (Reichert and Vanrolleghem 2001) was carried out for the calibrated model (using PEST, Doherty 2002). A detailed sensitivity analysis can be found in Wagenschein (2006). During the calibration process, PEST can be used to quantify the 95% confidence interval.

  8. Maximum possible load reductions in this sense are given in Table 3 (Section 3.2) for all the water bodies in the Weisse Elster river.

  9. In this case measures 1b and 2a together lead to an overfulfillment of the quality target. One option might then be to introduce integrated farming only on a percentage of cropland. Whether this is possible depends on the chosen instrument for implementation, i.e. whether technical farming standards are modified or promotional programmes are introduced. This option was not investigated in the project. In a real decision context this would be a starting point for designing a specifically adapted measure.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the research programme “River Basin Management” (Grant 0330228). The authors wish to thank the following people for extensive discussions of the concepts introduced in this paper: Frauke Bathe, Ingo Bräuer, Holger Dining, Dagmar Haase, Fred Hesser, Sven Kralisch, Thomas Lagemann, Stefan Liersch, Silvia Morgenstern, Kristin Neubert, Daniel Petry, Matthias Rosenberg, Gerd Schmidt, Herwig Unnerstall, Martin Volk, Dierk Wagenschein, Gerald Wenk, and two anonymous referees.

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  1. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ, Permoserstr. 15, 04318, Leipzig, Germany

    Bernd Klauer, Michael Rode, Johannes Schiller, Uwe Franko & Melanie Mewes

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  1. Bernd Klauer
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Correspondence to Johannes Schiller.

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Klauer, B., Rode, M., Schiller, J. et al. Decision Support for the Selection of Measures according to the Requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive. Water Resour Manage 26, 775–798 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-011-9944-5

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