Managing aquatic ecosystems and water resources under multiple stress — An introduction to the MARS project

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.06.106Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We describe the aims and approaches of the EU-funded project MARS and its conceptual framework.

  • MARS is operating at the water body, the catchment, and the European scales.

  • It includes experiments, catchment modelling and large-scale data analysis.

  • It addresses the link between multiple stressors, ecological responses and functions.

  • The project will support the implementation of European water policies.

Abstract

Water resources globally are affected by a complex mixture of stressors resulting from a range of drivers, including urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change. Understanding how stressors interfere and impact upon ecological status and ecosystem services is essential for developing effective River Basin Management Plans and shaping future environmental policy. This paper details the nature of these problems for Europe's water resources and the need to find solutions at a range of spatial scales. In terms of the latter, we describe the aims and approaches of the EU-funded project MARS (Managing Aquatic ecosystems and water Resources under multiple Stress) and the conceptual and analytical framework that it is adopting to provide this knowledge, understanding and tools needed to address multiple stressors. MARS is operating at three scales: At the water body scale, the mechanistic understanding of stressor interactions and their impact upon water resources, ecological status and ecosystem services will be examined through multi-factorial experiments and the analysis of long time-series. At the river basin scale, modelling and empirical approaches will be adopted to characterise relationships between multiple stressors and ecological responses, functions, services and water resources. The effects of future land use and mitigation scenarios in 16 European river basins will be assessed. At the European scale, large-scale spatial analysis will be carried out to identify the relationships amongst stress intensity, ecological status and service provision, with a special focus on large transboundary rivers, lakes and fish. The project will support managers and policy makers in the practical implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), of related legislation and of the Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources by advising the 3rd River Basin Management Planning cycle, the revision of the WFD and by developing new tools for diagnosing and predicting multiple stressors.

Introduction

Europe's water resources and aquatic ecosystems are impacted by multiple stressors, which affect ecological and chemical status, water quantity and ecosystem functions and services. The relevance of multiple stressors differs regionally (EEA, 2012a): in Alpine and upland northern regions hydropower plants have fundamentally changed river and lake hydrology, morphology, sediment transport and connectivity, in lowland areas of Northern and Central Europe intensive agriculture and flood protection are important drivers of degradation, whilst Mediterranean catchments are impaired by riparian degradation and water scarcity and transitional and coastal waters are affected by eutrophication, pollution, morphological changes and different resource exploitation. In addition, climate change increases the risk of floods, erosion and pollution in wet regions and of droughts in water scarce regions (EEA, 2012b).

According to Europe's first River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs), 56% of European rivers, 44% of lakes, 25% of groundwater bodies and 70% of transitional waters failed to achieve the good status targets of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EEA, 2012a, ETC-ICM, 2012a). There are, however, strong regional differences: in Northern Europe and in some Eastern European and Mediterranean countries more than 40% of river water bodies are in high or good status, whilst in Central European countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, more than 80% failed to achieve the WFD quality targets. The reasons are manifold. Recent reports (EEA, 2012a, ETC-ICM, 2012a) list the most important pressures impacting individual water categories: only 19% of water bodies was not significantly impacted, whilst two pressures prevail: diffuse pollution (rivers: 45%, lakes: > 30%) and hydromorphological degradation (rivers: > 40%, lakes: > 30%). Viewed in more detail, both diffuse pollution and hydromorphological degradation are composed of several individual components with complex interactions. Diffuse pollution mainly refers to increased nutrient loads and associated eutrophication effects, often in conjunction with fine sediment, pesticides and other toxic substances. Hydromorphological degradation is an even more vague term, including hydrological stress from low flows and water abstraction, flash floods, and morphological stress from barriers, straightening, bank fixation, removal of riparian vegetation and subsequent increase of water temperatures (ETC-ICM, 2012b).

From this evidence, it is apparent that the causes of degradation of Europe's waters are manifold and complex. Whilst single stressors such as strong organic pollution and acidification of freshwaters are declining and nowadays affecting just 14% and 10% of river water bodies, respectively (EEA, 2012a), Europe's water bodies and water resources are now affected by a complex mixture of stressors resulting from urban and agricultural land use, hydropower generation and climate change (e.g. Stelzenmüller et al., 2010, Schinegger et al., 2012).

Although the Programmes of Measures included in the RBMPs should reduce stressors and improve water body status, their potential to address increasingly complex, multiple stress situations is limited by current knowledge. A recent inventory of RBMPs for Germany revealed a strong focus on measures targeting single pressures such as point-source pollution and river continuity (Kail and Wolter, 2011). Under conditions of multiple stress, however, restoration actions may also initiate complex cause-effect chains of recovery, which are poorly understood (Feld et al., 2011).

Overall, the first RBMPs have several problems:

  • Programmes of Measures are often decoupled from ecological assessment.

  • Although the majority of European water bodies are affected by more than one stressor, little is known about their combined effects.

  • For multiple-stress situations, simple dose–response relationships between stress intensity and biological effects based on empirical data are not sufficient for developing appropriate management measures. There is a need for improved process understanding of how multiple stressors affect degradation and restoration.

  • Besides the existing tools to assess water body status, tools are needed to prioritise measures and to predict ecological status following restoration.

  • The implementation of measures requires convincing arguments beyond the concept of ecological status, whose value is difficult for the public and policy makers to understand. Supplementary indicators targeting ecosystem functions, ecosystem services and human benefits are required.

These are obstacles for the successful implementation of the WFD within the following set timeline: production of a 2nd version of the RBMPs in 2015, a 3rd version in 2021, and achievement of the overall WFD targets by 2027. A new stressor, climate change, is to be taken into account in the 2nd version. The planned revision of the WFD in 2019 offers an opportunity to advance its conceptual basis which is now almost 20 years old, and to consider the recent knowledge in addressing the WFD requirements (Hering et al., 2010). Major challenges for water resource management have emerged since the ratification of the WFD in 2000: New stressor combinations, including not least climate change, new pollutants, emerging pathogens and exploitation of the sub-surface for alternative forms of energy; more intense land use due to increased food prices and demand for biofuel; and increasingly diverging targets for food production, energy generation, water resource protection and biodiversity protection.

The WFD is the core of Europe's water policy, but there are several other relevant directives with manifold (and sometimes contrasting) approaches and targets. These include the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (91/271/EEC), the Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC), the Bathing Water Directive (2006/7/EC), the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC), the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), the Flood Risk Management Directive (2007/60/EC), the Strategy on Water Scarcity and Drought and the White Paper on Adaptation to Climate Change. The implementation of these policies to protect Europe's water resources strongly interacts with other policy domains, such as the Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC) and in particular with the Common Agricultural Policy. The Fitness Check of EU Freshwater Policy (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/blueprint/fitness_en.htm) outlines the strength of the current legislative framework, and also exposes conflicts with other EU policies and the weaknesses in its implementation. Problems identified include the incorporation of water quantity issues into RBMPs, including the definition of ecological flows (cf. environmental flows, Postel and Richter, 2003, Poff et al., 2010), land use impacts in particular from agriculture, climate change impacts, translation of the ecosystem services concept into practice, and insufficient dissemination and sharing of data. Implicit in all these issues is the need to address multiple stressors. The ecosystem services approach offers a powerful option to harness the efforts of all relevant partners (Ormerod, 2014).

The Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/blueprint/index_en.htm) describes 39 actions to strengthen the implementation of Europe's water policies. Key amongst them are land use and ecological status, chemical status and pollution of EU waters, water efficiency, vulnerability of EU waters, and the need for cross-cutting problem solving and global aspects. Overall, the Blueprint provides a realistic assessment of achievements and problems of European water management, and embeds Europe's water policy into a wider political context. As with the Fitness Check, it identifies complex stressors resulting from intense land-use and over-abstraction as key problems, and outlines solutions possible through other policy fields such as the Common Agricultural Policy. According to the Blueprint, the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) of the WFD ensures its prominent role for European water policies.

The EU-funded project MARS (Managing Aquatic ecosystems and water Resources under multiple Stress, www.mars-project.eu) addresses these challenges and is closely linked to the policy framework outlined above. This paper describes context, approaches and objectives of MARS and aims in particular to outline the conceptual model on which MARS is based and to describe the project's approaches acting at three different scales.

Section snippets

Current state-of-the-art

Water resources management in Europe is based on four distinct activities: (1) River Basin Management Planning is the over-arching framework of the WFD, which is informed by (2) assessment schemes for indicating status, (3) risk assessment for characterising pressures and stressors, and (4) economic analysis for evaluating the costs and benefits of management actions. The latter relates to an Ecosystem Services Approach and may be considered under the Ecosystem Service Cascade Framework (

Objectives and architecture of the MARS project

MARS (2014–2018), supported by the 7th Framework Programme of the EU, has 24 partners, five of which are application institutes such as water boards and environment agencies. MARS will support water managers and policy makers at the water body, river basin and European scales in the implementation of the WFD. Our specific objectives at the three different scales are:

  • At the water body scale, to enhance the mechanistic understanding of how stressors interact and impact upon water resources,

The MARS model

MARS will be based on a framework that explicitly links the assessment of risk, status and ecosystem services within the framework of RBMPs (Fig. 1).

  • Risk assessment combines the magnitude of a stressor (or a combination of stressors) with the consequences of exposure to it. The consequences are based on the sensitivity of the targeted indicators, e.g. species, habitats and ecosystem processes and services.

  • WFD status assessment fits centrally within the DPSIR-framework: Drivers (D, e.g. intense

Approaches and work programme of MARS

MARS will be organised at three different scales to meet the demands of specific user groups (Fig. 3).

At the water body scale, the users targeted are water managers responsible for the assessment, restoration and management of individual water bodies, e.g. for the implementation of measures defined in RBMPs. MARS will develop new indicators, and compile existing indicators, to more fully represent the demands of the DPSIR scheme, of risk assessment and of the Ecosystem Service Cascade

Conclusions

With the adoption of the first RBMPs, the almost completed intercalibration exercise and the publication of the Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources, water management in Europe are now entering a new phase. Whilst a first assessment of Europe's water bodies using intercalibrated methods has been performed and Programs of Measures have been derived, the emerging challenges include implementing the measures, regarding multiple pressures in River Basin Management, taking account of

Acknowledgements

This work is part of the MARS project (Managing Aquatic ecosystems and water Resources under multiple Stress) funded under the 7th EU Framework Programme, Theme 6 (Environment including Climate Change), Contract No.: 603378 (http://www.mars-project.eu).

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