The principal objective of this project is to assess the risk of deterioration in Water Framework Directive water bodies to 2027 and to 2050 for England and Wales on behalf of our client, The Environment Agency.
This project utilised existing and readily available datasets to assess the risk of deterioration in all water bodies to 2027 and to 2050 from their current status as reported in the 2009 River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) after all known and planned interventions are taken into account. The focus was on pressures impacting on morphological elements as these are proposed as priority for the Strategic Assessment, based on analysis of the Reasons for Failure Database.
The approach used was to investigate relevant datasets, which were used to predict future changes in pressures affecting (deterioration or improvement of) morphological quality elements and ultimately the impact on overall ecological status /potential. Methods were developed to assess (at a relatively broad-scale) the levels of risk of deterioration from these pressures, using the 2009 RBMP outputs as a benchmark. The results of this work were then summarised through statistical analyses and a brief narrative explaining the results.