Monitoring and assessment in France

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Monitoring and assessment in France René
LalementWIS-France Taskforce
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• Monitoring in France
• water quantity since 1870s ?
• water quality since 1971
• fish since 1993
• Multiple extensive networks

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Surface water quality
Surface water quantity
Groundwater quality
Groundwater quantity
Pluviometry
Scale 1 500 000
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• Current river quality network
• 1700 sites
• each year
• basic chemicals 6 to 12 times a year in water
• heavy metals pesticides once a year in
  sediments on a selection of sites.
• invertebrates once a year,
• diatoms on half of the sites
• fish populations on another network of 800
  sites.

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Monitoring sites in the Loire river basinfor
river quality
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Current shortcomings Monitoring sites are
located more often on large or medium rivers than
on small rivers, with an overall goal for the
assessment of measures taken to reduce point
source pollution in urban or industrial areas.
There is presently no national network for
lakes.
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• The Water Framework Directivemonitoring
  programme
• an opportunity
• to rebuild in a consistent way all monitoring
  activities
• to include new needs (monitoring of lakes,
  better coverage of all rivers, priority
  substances, more biology)
• to merge with other requirements (EIONet, OSPAR,
  MedPol, OECD/Eurostat, ...)
• This presentation will focus on surface
  freshwater.

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• Design of the WFD network for surveillance
  monitoring 
• Use of research results from CEMAGREF and CSP
• Several steps
• Step 1 set a total of 1500 sites for France (not
  including overseas districts)
• Step 2 use a key based on river basin area and
  river lengths to compute the number per district

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Step 3 within a hydrographic district, use a
river size stratification (XS to XL) Rule
compute the minimum number of sites in each
stratum to guarantee that the uncertainty on the
ammonium parameter (identified to have the
greatest variability) be less than 10.
This had to be tuned in some districts when
upper size strata do not occur.
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Step 4 consider the water body type in every
district and in every size stratum, the number of
monitoring sites has been distributed among the
ecological types, according to the total river
length in each type, leading for instance to 2
sites in small rivers of armorican type (in
Britanny). Step 5 use the local knowledge of
the conditions to locate the sites, to ensure
the best representativeness. Once defined, this
monitoring network will be immutable.
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Tuning monitoring parameters and frequencies 1
(or less) / management plan (every 6 yrs, once)
hydromorphological elements 2 / management plan
(every 3 yrs, once a year) other pollutants and
pesticides, in sediment 2 / management plan
(every 3 yrs, 4 times a year) other pollutants
and pesticides, in water 2 / management plan
(every 3 yrs, monthly) priority substances 6 /
management plan (every year, once) biological
quality elements 6 / management plan (every
year, 6 times a year) basic chemicals (O2,
nutrients, TOC, ...).
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• Costs
• The estimated cost of the surveillance monitoring
  programme is
• 77 M for rivers and
• 8M for lakes
• for a management plan, or
• 50 k for rivers
• 40 k for lakes
• per site for a management plan, or
• 150 /km2 (rivers and lakes), or
• 150 /km (rivers).

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• Design of operational monitoring
• Operational monitoring is intended for water
  bodies which may fail to meet their environmental
  objectives in 2015, in order to evaluate the
  effectiveness of policies.
• It will apply to water bodies to which the river
  basin management plan does not assign a good
  status objective in 2015, but
• an extended deadline (2015, 2021),
• or a less stringent objective
• The full design of the monitoring network,
  including operational monitoring, will be
  completed along with the first management plan,
  in 2008-2009.

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• Water quality assessment in France
• 1971 Water Quality Grid
• 1999 Water Quality Evaluation System (SEQ-eau)
• 2007 Water Status Evaluation System
• needed for
• Knowledge
• Water management
• Policy assessment
• Accountability

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• 1971 Water Quality Grid
• based on 13 physico-chemical determinants
• 3 thresholds for every determinant
• leads to 4 classes high, good, poor, bad
• the worst determinant wins
• still has a regulatory scope (for setting
  objectives in the current river basin management
  plans)
• ... but too  multipurpose , no ecology

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• SEQ-eau
• an assessment framework,
• with several instances
• rivers, lakes, coastal waters, groundwaters, ...
• use-oriented
• uses drinking water, leisure, irrigation,
  livestock watering, aquaculture aquatic
  life
• based on 15 suitability indicators
• Indicators computed from 135 determinants
• matrices
• determinants X indicators (computed from)
• uses X indicators (significant for)
• determinants X classes (threshold values)

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• Results in
• a class of suitability for each use
• an index (and class) for overall quality
• For each indicator, the worst determinant wins
• For each use, the worst indicator wins
• For each determinant, apply the percentile 90
• rule to multiple samples (not the average)
• ... an in depth assessment for uses,
• but little ecology independant of  ecotype  !

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• Water body status evaluation system
• required by the Water Framework Directive
• chemical status
• based on environmental quality standards
• ecological status
• based on
• type-specific reference conditions
• indicators for relevant quality elements
• ecological quality ratios (observation/reference)
  
• division of the scale into 5 classes
• intercalibration of high/good and
  good/moderate boundaries

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• Biological quality elements
• biological indicators should be made
  WFD-compatible by introducing the water body
  type in their definition
• IBGN (Standard global biological index) for
  benthic invertebrates,
• IBD (Diatom biological index)
• IPR (River fish index) defined to be
  type-dependant

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On the Web Portal for public information on
water http//www.eaufrance.fr Water information
framework http//www.sandre.eaufrance.fr
French water policy http//www.ecologie.gouv.fr