Desk Studies are the first stage in Project Action C1: Catchment Walkover Investigations. They are the initial investigations of the catchments based on a range of available data sources.
These include OSi mapping and orthophotography, EPA status, risk assessment and pressure datasets, CORINE land cover mapping, Forest Service and Coillte data on forest activities and Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) data on Soils and geology. These data are collated into one report detailing the current conditions within the catchments, and listing any potential pressures and threats to water quality within them.
This is the first Desk Study published by the project.
Research is needed to design and implement a suitable monitoring programme that has the capacity to assess the status of high-status objective river water bodies, the environmental stressors that are preventing high status from being achieved, and the effectiveness of measures put in place to protect and maintain the status of these waters.
Innovative research proposals are therefore invited to:
• Undertake a detailed literature review of the most appropriate quality elements, metrics, methods and frequencies to be included in a monitoring programme of high-status objective river water bodies.
• Design a suitable multi-year monitoring programme that is sufficiently representative of the different types and magnitude of environmental stressors, pressures and water body types in each demonstration catchment.
• Implement the monitoring programme in the six demonstration catchments during the lifetime of the project.
• Establish a baseline and a suitable number of control sites against which improvements in environmental conditions can be assessed and quantified in each of the demonstration catchments during the lifetime of the monitoring programme.
• Develop a set of Key Performance Indicators based on the information collected by the programme to be used to track the effectiveness of measures in protecting or improving the condition of high-status objective water bodies during the lifetime of the project.
