The Water Framework Directive requires the development and implementation of river basin management plans for improving the ecological status of freshwater bodies throughout Europe. The scientific community supports this process by developing decision-support tools for identifying the principal...

This report illustrates a system of indicators (called JRC Water Pressure Indicators) providing a consistent picture of human pressures on water bodies at European scale, to be compared with pressure and status information reported by Member States under the Water Framework Directive 60/2000/EC....

Estimation of domestic and industrial emissions to the European fresh and marine waters is needed for assessing current ecological status of water bodies and providing inputs to conceptual models of pollutant transport and fate. Regulatory efforts of the European Commission, particularly Urban...

This report is a supplement to the EU Ecosystem Assessment (Maes et al., 2020). The assessment is carried out by Joint Research Centre, European Environment Agency, DG Environment, and the European Topic Centres on Biological Diversity and on Urban, Land and Soil Systems. This supplement...

Europe's ecosystems, on which we depend for food, timber, clean air, clean water, climate regulation and recreation, suffer from unrelenting pressures caused by intensive land or sea use, climate change, pollution, overexploitation and invasive alien species. Ensuring that ecosystems achieve or...

An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plant, animal and microorganism communities and their non-living environment, interacting as a functional unit. The EU ecosystem assessment analysed the following ecosystems: urban ecosystems, agroecosystems (cropland and grassland), forests, wetlands,...

During the 2001/2002 Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) a series of guidance documents (GDs) concerning all major aspects of its implementation were developed by working groups including representatives of Member States, accession countries, national...

Sustainability science explores the interactions between human activities on the Earth's life support systems. Unless we understand these interactions, we will not be able to design a path towards sustainable development. In this report we focus our attention on water as key resource for human...

There is a need to prove the relevance of ecosystem services in economic terms in order to make a comprehensive and compelling case for conservation of biodiversity. Many different approaches and frameworks used so far have proven that there is no economic or monetary estimate of ecosystems or...

A modelling environment has been developed to assess optimum combinations of water retention measures, water savings measures, and nutrient reduction measures for continental Europe. This modelling environment consists of linking the agricultural CAPRI model, the LUMP land use model, the...