A biological monitoring programme for the coastal waters of finland according to the EU water framework directive

The implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) establishes new requirements to traditional surface water monitoring. The monitoring programmes of coastal waters have to be reported to the European Commission by the end of 2006. WFD introduces the concept that the state of the coastal waters should be assessed mainly on biological quality elements i.e. phytoplankton, macrozoobenthos and macrophytes. Until now, the monitoring and assessment of the coastal waters in Finland have mainly been based on physico-chemical parameters and less on biological parameters. At the moment, the environmental authorities of the countries in the Baltic Sea Region are engaged in developing biological monitoring programmes, which are integrated to other coastal monitoring programmes. Our aim is to evaluate the present Finnish monitoring programme of coastal waters and improve its applicability in relation to the requirements of the WFD. A set of criteria has been developed to evaluate and supplement the existing monitoring programme with biological elements. This is a first effort to integrate biological monitoring with physico-chemical monitoring for reliable coastal assessments in Finland.