Assessment of flood management impacts on bodies of water
This project investigated how to assess the impact of flood risk management on water bodies to meet the standards of the Water Framework Directive.
Documents
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Details
This project aimed to develop a tool to measure whether activities to manage flood risk can affect bodies of water meeting legal quality standards (Good Ecological Status GES or Good Ecological Potential GEP). This would help meet the standards of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The framework requires that all water bodies should aim for at least good ecological status or good ecological potential for artificial water bodies and those that have been heavily modified. The WFD also states that water bodies should not go down in quality.
The project concluded that there’s currently not enough information on the conditions in each water body to develop a score to measure the effects of any changes. In addition, due to a gap in the science in understanding how changes to the physical nature of water bodies affects biology, it’s not possible to define the way in which these relationships will work in the future for all bodies.
Outcome
The framework developed in this project provides a way of deciding:
- how to assess how the water body is currently functioning
- what changes are likely to happen as a result of FCRM activities
- the potential impacts on ecology
The project was started in 2007 and completed in 2008 at a cost of £57,506.