1. Seppo Rekolainen Finnish Environment Institute - SYKE
REBECCA Relationship between ecological and chemical status of surface waters
Seppo Rekolainen
Finnish Environment Institute - SYKE
Title page. Please add the name and the institute of the person who will make my presentation. Once again: many thanks to him/her, I will pay a few beers in the first possible occasion.
By clicking the mouse you will get the suggestion for REBECCA logo.

2. What is REBECCA ? or Who was Rebecca?
Wife of Isaac; mother of Esau and Jacob
Research project within
Very fun, heh-heh. If you don’t like to refer to the Bible, delete the line, you may wish to add one bullet point:
Policy-oriented research
which one of the priorities within the 6th Framework Programme.
By clicking the button in the lower right corner with you mouse you get a picture of a statue showing Rebecca at the well, where she used to go every morning. One morning she met the servants of Isaac who were sent fot searching wife for Isaac. Again, if you don’t like to play with the biblical issues, either delete the button, or simply do not toiuch to it.
Note, that if you want to go for this picture, you need to have the other Power-point file (rebecca_statue.ppt) loaded in the same directory is this ppt-file.

3. What’s the problem?
we know that something is wrong with the biota in our freshwaters...
biotic indicators show that their values is far from reference conditions...
but...
we do not necessarily know why
The idea of this slide is to show that while the WFD requires water bodies to be classified by biological indicators. Surely we often hit the problem that biological indicators show certain degree of deterioration, but we do not necessarily know what is the reason.

4. How come we do not know?
Research on dose-response has been going on for decades
Yes, some cases are clear – put more P to a lake, and you get higher biomass
Let’s take another example:
Based on the previous slide, someone may ask, what the science has been doing several decades. At least the scientists have been asking all the time more and more money to study the dose-response relationships.
The answer is yes: we know much about certain relationships, such like P and chlorophyll in freshwater lakes. But we have a lot of cases… go the next slide.

5. Here we have a problem
species composition in our river is badly distorted
high waste water loading causes occasional oxygen deficits
toxic compounds may cause problem in reproduction
erosion may cause siltation
dams and dikes have altered the physical structure
The question: what should we do to get good conditions back
This is a typical example of a situation where we have many pressures effecting simultaneously. And we don’t know whats the contribution of each of them to low EQR’s that we monitor. But we need to understand these relationships in order to design a proper programme of measures.

6. Objective of REBECCA
To assess and develop assesment tools to find out relationships between:
different pressures and chemical status
chemical (physico-chemical quality elements) status and ecological status
The main objectives. The next slide shows some more detailed objectives.

7. More specific aims to identify knowledge gaps on these relationships
to develop new relationships based on the analysis of existing data sets at European scale
to present a consistent and integrated scientific understanding of these relationships
to develop and validate tools that Member States can use:
in the process of classification
in the design of their monitoring programs
in the design of measures in accordance with the requirements of the WFD.
If you like you could mention that the Tools that we will test in case studies will be included in the Toolbox, where the potential end-users can easily look at ther properties and appropriateness for different cases.

8. REBECCA structure REBECCA WP1: Coordination and Management
WP7 Dissemination
WP3: Lakes
WP4: Rivers
WP5: Coastal waters
WP2: Present knowledge and practices
WP6: Validation of techniques, practical implications
Common Implementation Strategy: ECOSTAT
Competent Authorities and users in member states
Project Advisory Group
Stakeholders and NGOs
The Work Package structure. Issues worth of mentioning:
the three main WPs for different surface water categories
validation in case study sites in different countries
dissemination is very important, not only the WP7 but all connection to boxes on the right side – see next slide

9. Dissemination End-user workshop: late 2004
Larger Symposium/Conference: late 2006
internet-based network
national activities
regular reporting to CIS Working Groups
Advisory Board
-Workshops are clear
-Internet-based network is a list of addresses to whom regular mails will be send about the progress of the project and other relevant issues
national activities: all partners are responsible to organise dissemination to end-users in their own countries.
Rebecca progress will be regularly reported at ECOSTAT meetings, probably also in the WG 2B
Advisory Board – see next slide

10. Advisory Board for REBECCA
Tasks:
to monitor the progress of the project, and
give advice to the project about problems, open issues and information gaps arising from the CIS process
Members
Nominations by DG RES, DG ENV, WG2A
Invited: a few experts in the field of water protection
DG RES and DG ENV will nominate their representatives. It would be great if this meeting of ECOSTAT could nominate 1-2 representatives to the Rebecca Advisory Board

11. When do we start?
A 3-year project, start date in Dec or Jan. 2004
Kick-off meeting in January 2004
1st Advisory Board meeting in connection with Kick-off meeting Ok

12. Who are we? 19 research institutes and universities
SYKE, Finland
JRC, CEC
NIVA, Norway
NERI, Denmark
DHI, Denmark
WL|Delft, The Netherlands
CEH, UK
IVL, Sweden
Cemagref, France
IRSA, Italia
TCD, Ireland
IPIMAR, Portugal
SHMI, Slovakia
UA, Belgium
DDNI, Romania
TTU, Estonia
SLU, Sweden
NINA, Norway
RIZA, The Netherlands
The last slide. I guess you don’t have to read them, just leave this slide on the screen and finish the presentation.
Thankyou.