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The goal of Activity 1, from the POCTEP-Albufeira Project, is to analyse the methodologies for monitoring and assessing the status or the ecological potential of shared water bodies by the two countries, aiming at identifying discrepancies and eliminating them through the harmonisation of methodologies that assess this status or this ecological potential.
The first phase of this activity lies in analysing and reviewing the typologies assigned by each country to the water bodies of the shared river basins, as well as the national types assigned to the intercalibration common types. This will make it possible to check whether the reference conditions of both countries coincide on each body of water.
Keeping in mind that the procedures used to establish the status of water bodies are regulated by a specific legislation in each country, and that their amendment would therefore be complex or even unfeasible within the framework of this project, the States propose a harmonisation of the procedures used by each one of them.
Even though each country will continue to implement its national protocols for the data collection and the taking of samples, applying its metrics, a working methodology will be developed to allow the intercomparability and exchange of the results obtained, which are necessary to calculate the metrics of the two countries. In this sense, a proposal to harmonise and obtain comparable data that can be exchanged between the two countries is made for each category of body of water and each quality element.
It is also necessary to approve the procedures used to harmonise the established methodologies, so an experimental design focused on this purpose is proposed. This is based on trying to reduce, to the extent possible, the variability of the results due to discrepancies such as the selection of the sampling point within a body of water or the sampling moment. In order to achieve it, a group of representative water bodies have been selected for each category and will be sampled by each team (Portuguese and Spanish), to the extent possible, at the same place and on the same date. In summary, after analysing the discrepancies in the methodologies and protocols implemented by each country, a work programme will evaluate the effectiveness of the proposals for methodological harmonisation and other proposals.
A way to make Europe
Co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
through the Interreg VA Spain-Portugal Programme (POCTEP) 2014-2020
