Assessment of the ecological status of water bodies

Today, water bodies are subject to a variety of changes and are often characterized by use and regulation. But also material inputs and climatic changes affect the aquatic communities with lasting effects on the ecological quality of the water bodies.

The EU Water Framework Directive provides a regulatory framework for holistic water protection and requires the achievement of good ecological status for all natural surface waters or good ecological potential for heavily modified (HMWB) and artificial water bodies (AWB).

For running waters we offer investigations in accordance with the standard procedures of the EU-WFD for the biological quality elements macrozoobenthos (MZB) as well as macrophytes and phytobenthos (PoD; diatoms). For the assessment of ecological status or ecological potential, the procedures Perlodes (MZB, Germany), I₂M₂ (MZB, Luxembourg), Phylib (PoD; diatoms, Germany), MaBS (macrophytes, Germany) have been used so far.

For natural and artificial lakes (open pit lakes, quarry ponds) we use the quality elements macrozoobenthos (MZB) and phytoplankton (Phyto-See) according to EU-WFD.

In addition to biological monitoring, we also advise on the concrete planning of measures to improve the ecological status of running and standing waters.