Wouter van de Bund

Wouter van de Bund
European Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)

PhD

About

100
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
January 2001 - present
European Commission
October 1995 - December 1997
Stockholm University
October 1988 - October 1994
University of Amsterdam

Publications

Publications (100)
Article
Full-text available
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) sets the fundamental structure for assessing the status of water bodies in the European Union. Its implementation is currently entering its fourth six-year cycle assisted by a total of 38 guidance documents. The principal objective is to ensure good status for surface and ground waters. The functioning of the WFD...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Uno degli obiettivi chiave della EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 è il raggiungimento di almeno 25.000 km di fiumi in condizioni free-flowing entro il 2030. Il gruppo di lavoro ECOSTAT FFR Core Group ha realizzato una procedura semplice e scientificamente basata utilizzabile dagli Stati Membri per individuare un tratto fluviale in condizioni free-flow...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The EU Biodiversity Strategy includes the target that at least 25000 km of rivers should be restored into free-flowing rivers by 2030 through the removal of primarily obsolete barriers and the restoration of floodplains and wetlands. This document proposes criteria for identifying free-flowing rivers, taking into account longitudinal, lateral, and...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The European Union has set ambitious objectives for restoring and protecting free-flowing rivers, addressing both longitudinal and lateral connectivity through removing barriers. European rivers are highly fragmented by on average ca. 2 longitudinal barriers each river km, while data on lateral fragmentation are still to a large extent unavailable....
Technical Report
Full-text available
In this study, for the first time, the criteria used to assess eutrophication under the Water Framework Directive and the Nitrate Directive (ND) are compared and analysed. Furthermore, two case studies are used in order to evaluate the differences. The results show that eutrophication criteria used under different legislations are often incompatibl...
Technical Report
Full-text available
WKSMEEL is part of the roadmap defined by the WKFEA (Workshop on the future of eel advice). Experts from Japan, USA, Canada and Europe met to discuss modelling methods and the data necessary to support the development of a spatial assessment of the stock of European eel (Anguilla anguilla). Modelling of the European eel stock is envisioned as a two...
Article
Full-text available
The Balkan region has some of the best conserved rivers in Europe, but is also the location of ~3000 planned hydropower dams that are expected to help decarbonise energy production. A conflict between policies that promote renewable hydropower and those that prioritise river conservation has ensued, which can only be resolved with the help of relia...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The document provides guidance on how both sediment quantity and quality should be managed to support the achievement of the WFD objective. The document contains four chapters. These chapters and the lead authors/editors of each chapter are: 1. Sediment dynamics from the headwaters to the sea (Martina Bussettini & Wouter Van De Bund & Francesco Co...
Book
Full-text available
This document aims to establish a common understanding on the role of sediment in achieving the objectives of the Water Framework Directive, and to provide guidance on how to address pressures on sediment quantity and sediment contamination, in the context of the River Basin Management Plans, and also other policies’ planning instruments. It covers...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The assessment of lake status in Europe has evolved during the last few decades from physico-chemical focused assessment to a more comprehensive ecological approach. The EC Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires the assessment of hydromorphological and physico-chemical conditions of lakes considered as supporting elements of the biological commun...
Book
Full-text available
EUR 31029 EN This publication is a Technical report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither the European...
Preprint
Restoring river connectivity is a global conservation priority but quantifying river fragmentation has proved difficult due to the paucity of good barrier records, duplicate entries, and other sources of biases. Here we present some tools to help overcome some of these challenges and illustrate their application with case studies drawn across diffe...
Article
Full-text available
Rivers support some of Earth’s richest biodiversity1 and provide essential ecosystem services to society2, but they are often fragmented by barriers to free flow3. In Europe, attempts to quantify river connectivity have been hampered by the absence of a harmonized barrier database. Here we show that there are at least 1.2 million instream barriers...
Article
Full-text available
The European Union has embarked on a policy which aims to achieve good ecological status in all surface waters (i.e. rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal waters). In theory, ecological status assessment methods should address the effects of all relevant human pressures. In this study, we analyze the degree to which methods European countries use...
Article
Full-text available
Recent developments in the fields of geographical object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) and ensemble learning (EL) have led the way to the development of automated processing frameworks suitable to tackle large-scale problems. Mapping riverscape units has been recognized in fluvial remote sensing as an important concern for understanding the macrody...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The interdependencies between water and energy are well known and they have become a topic of increasing attention for the scientific and policy communities. Water is used throughout the energy industry, and the water system needs energy for collecting, pumping, treating and desalinising water. Increasing water and energy needs, or changes in water...
Article
Full-text available
European countries have defined >1000 national river types and >400 national lake types to implement the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). In addition, common river and lake types have been defined within regions of Europe for intercalibrating the national classification systems for ecological status of water bodies. However, only a low proportio...
Preprint
Artificial barriers are one of the main threats to river ecosystems, resulting in habitat fragmentation and loss of connectivity. Yet, the abundance and distribution of most artificial barriers, excluding high-head dams, is poorly documented. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the distribution and typology of artificial barriers in Great Brit...
Article
Artificial barriers are one of the main threats to river ecosystems, resulting in habitat fragmentation and loss of connectivity. Yet, the abundance and distribution of most artificial barriers, excluding high-head dams, is poorly documented. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the distribution and typology of artificial barriers in Great Brit...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a pioneering piece of legislation that aims to protect and enhance aquatic ecosystems and promote sustainable water use across Europe. There is growing concern that the objective of good status, or higher, in all EU waters by 2027 is a long way from being achieved in many countries. Through questionn...
Article
Remote Sensing (RS) technology has recently offered new and promising opportunities to analyze river systems. In this paper, we present a calibration of characteristic Hydraulic Scaling Law (HSL) using a regional database of river geomorphic features. We consistently linked discharge with channel geometry features for estimated Bankfull Channel Dep...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We derive characteristic Hydraulic Scaling Law (HSL) using a regional database of river geomorphic features. We investigate how Bankfull Channel Depth (eBCD), Active Channel Width (ACW), and Low Flow water Channel Width (LFCW) scale with flow discharge. The latter is here approximated with basin area through a regression based on available gauging...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Hydromorphological alterations for drainage are widespread pressures on water bodies in Europe. Because of the importance of the water uses relying on drainage schemes, such as agriculture and urban areas, not all necessary restoration measures can be taken without significant adverse effect on the water use. Therefore many of the affected water bo...
Article
Full-text available
Target 6.4 of the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deals with the reduction of water scarcity. To monitor progress towards this target, two indicators are used: Indicator 6.4.1 measuring water use efficiency and 6.4.2 measuring the level of water stress (WS). This paper aims to identify whether the currently proposed indicator...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Hydromorphological alterations due to floods are among the most widespread pressures on water bodies in Europe. Along with storms, floods are the most relevant natural disaster in Europe, in terms of economic costs due to direct damage to infrastructure, property and agricultural land, and indirect losses. As such, flood protection structures and a...
Data
This technical annex accompanies the main report of the Working Group ECOSTAT on “common understanding of using mitigation measures for reaching Good Ecological Potential for heavily modified water bodies – Part 1: Impacted by water storage”. This annex provides the detailed analysis of the Mitigation Measures Templates for heavily modified water b...
Article
Full-text available
Humans have increased the discharge of pollution, altered water flow regime and modified the morphology of rivers. All these actions have resulted in multiple pressures on freshwater ecosystems, undermining their biodiversity and ecological functioning. The European Union has adopted an ambitious water policy to reduce pressures and achieve a good...
Article
Full-text available
A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML version of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.
Technical Report
Full-text available
Hydromorphological alterations for water storage are among the most widespread pressures on water bodies in Europe. Because of the importance of the water uses relying on water storage, such as hydroelectricity generation and public water supply, many of the affected water bodies have been designated as heavily modified. However, in a substantial n...
Article
Full-text available
This paper introduces this special issue of Aquatic Sciences. It outlines a multi-scale, hierarchical framework for developing process-based understanding of catchment to reach hydromorphology that can aid design and delivery of sustainable river management solutions. The framework was developed within the REFORM (REstoring rivers FOR effective cat...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This part provides a series of applications of some of the methods reported in the Part 1. The document is organised in three chapters. In Chapter 1, the Morphological Quality Index (MQI) and the Morphological Quality Index for monitoring (MQIm) have been applied to eight case studies. Chapter 2 presents the application of semi-automated procedures...
Article
Full-text available
Remote sensing (RS) technology offers unparalleled opportunities to explore river systems using RADAR, multispectral, hyper spectral, and LiDAR data. The accuracy reached by these technologies recently has started to satisfy the spatial and spectral resolutions required to properly analyse the hydromorphological character of river systems at multip...
Article
Full-text available
The Water Framework Directive is the first international legislation to require European countries to establish comparable ecological assessment schemes for their freshwaters. A key element in harmonising quality classification within and between Europe's river basins is an " Intercalibration " exercise, stipulated by the WFD, to ensure that the go...
Article
Full-text available
1. Introduction Aquatic biological standards, established in law, can be an effective mechanism to promote restoration and ensure the ecological sustainability of aquatic resources (Adler, 2003; Hering et al., 2010). Several countries around the world have established legislation or policies to promote the restoration and maintenance of aquatic eco...
Book
Full-text available
The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires the national classifications of good ecological status to be harmonised through an intercalibration exercise. Most of the Geographical Intercalibration groups have finalized Intercalibration results but many Member States have not joined the group or have not intercalibrated the methods due to s...
Article
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires EU Member States to classify the ecological status of surface waters by using multiple biological quality elements (BQEs). According to the WFD Classification Guidance, a ‘one-out-all-out’ (OOAO) rule should be applied when integrating multiple BQEs into an overall biological status of a waterbody, i.e....
Technical Report
Full-text available
Several ecological and hydromorphological assessment methods have been developed in different countries during the last years, with notable differences in terms of aims, scales, and approaches. In many cases, strengths and limitations of the different types of methods are not yet sufficiently known, although they are widely used in some European co...
Article
One objective of the European Union (EU)'s Water Framework Directive (WFD: Directive 2000/60/EC) is for all European surface waters to achieve ‘good status’ by 2015. In support of this objective, the EU has facilitated an intercalibration exercise to ensure harmonized definitions of the status of water bodies, reflecting the deviation of their prop...
Article
Full-text available
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) has been published in 2000 and the process of its implementation has created a new paradigm in the understanding of ecological status of water bodies in Europe. The Directive explicitly requires that ecological status is assessed through the analysis of various characteristics of aquatic flora and fauna. An Inter...
Article
Full-text available
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires intercalibration to be performed to ensure that ecological status, as defined by the boundary values of national biological assessment systems, is consistent with the definitions outlined in the WFD and comparable between Member States (MS). This article describes an intercalibration of 17 national river...
Article
Through implementing environmental Directives, Europe has moved towards coordinated and integrated catchment-to-coast management, following the most novel legislation on ecosystem-based approaches worldwide. The novel joint synthesis of this direction reviewed here allows us to regard the Water Framework Directive (WFD) as a 'deconstructing structu...
Article
The European Water Framework Directive (WFD), which was adopted in 2000, changed water management in all member states of the European Union fundamentally, putting aquatic ecology at the base of management decisions. Here we review the successes and problems encountered with implementation of the WFD over the past 10 years and provide recommendatio...
Article
Full-text available
The ‘normative definitions’ of ecological water quality classes given by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) are narrative descriptions of the conditions present in water bodies of different qualities relative to reference conditions found in unimpacted sites. In order to fill these descriptions with a more solid content, the definitions have been...
Article
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires that all the water bodies in Europe be protected and enhanced to achieve Good Ecological Status by 2015. The intercalibration of the biological monitoring results of Member States has to be carried out in relation to classification tasks to guarantee a common understanding of ‘Good Ecological Status’ at...
Article
Full-text available
Export Date: 16 July 2012, Source: Scopus
Article
Full-text available
Replicated, factorial mesocosm experiments were conducted across Europe to study the effects of nutrient enrichment and fish density on macrophytes and on periphyton chlorophyll a (chl-a) with regard to latitude. Periphyton chl-a densities and plant decline were significantly related to nutrient loading in all countries. Fish effects were significa...
Article
Full-text available
To test whether aquatic invertebrates are able to adjust their diel migratory cycle to different day length and presence of predators, we performed standardized enclosure experiments in shallow lakes at four different latitudes from southern Spain, with strong night–day cycles, to Finland where daylight is almost continuous during summer. We show h...
Article
Full-text available
In most cases the negative impacts of climate change to aquatic ecosystems cannot be mitigated by measures in the river basin management. Ignoring climate change by the Water Framework Directive may have strong implications for the typology and quality assessment systems used for water bodies. As a result of climate change, water bodies, especially...
Article
The potential importance of interactions between macro‐ and meiobenthos in the littoral zone of takes was studied in a series of laboratory experiments with a chironomid and a chydorid. In a situation of intraspecific density dependence, Chydorus piger Sars inhibited the growth of Chironomus riparius Meigen, while both second‐ and fourth‐instar C,...