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Springs are important freshwater habitats that provide refuge for many rare species. In this study, the fauna and abiotic parameters of 20 perennial springs in north-western Switzerland were investigated. Correlation of abiotic and macrozoobenthos data showed that physicochemical parameters had little impact on macrozoobenthic composition, whereas specific substrate parameters strongly influenced the composition of the macrofauna. Surprisingly, nonmetric multidimensional scaling did not reveal a grouping of springs with similar substrate composition or macrozoobenthic assemblages. However, discharge was identified as the factor significantly determining substrate and the composition of macroinvertebrate assemblages. This justifies the hypothesis that, variation in discharge is the disturbance factor governing the macrofaunal composition temporally and spatially within and between patches

The International Water Research Alliance Saxony (IWAS) is addressing the global challenges concerning water quality in the areas of drinking water and sanitation, agricultural irrigation and the quality of surface and ground waters, as well as developing specific ecosystem-relevant services to be implemented on an exemplary basis in selected model regions. Locations (model regions) have been selected in Eastern Europe (R1), Central and Southeast Asia (R2 and R3), the Middle East (R4) and Latin America (R5) that are representative international regions with respect to climate, land use and demographic change (Ibisch et al., Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Department of Aquatic Ecosystem analysis and management, 2013). The causes of water problems and the relevant boundary conditions vary from region to region (Borchardt and Ibisch, Integrated water resources management in a changing world : lessons learnt and innovative perspectives, pp 225, 2013). Mongolia and Vietnam were selected model regions in the first IWAS phase; the research was transferred and continued in one of the cross-cutting projects in IWAS II (Vietnam → capacity development) or in the frame of related project activities in Central Asia (R2 Mongolia, Karthe et al., Environ Earth Sci, doi:10.1007/s12665-014-3789-1, 2014). The IWAS consortium exists on scientific institutions like the Technische Universität Dresden and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Leipzig, as well as partners from industry like the Stadtentwässerung Dresden GmbH (SE-DD), DREBERIS—Dresden consulting for international strategies, and itwh—institute for technical-scientific Hydrology, Hanover. This thematic issue compiles the most important scientific results of the second phase of the IWAS project. The project itself and findings of the first phase were already introduced in a previous special issue by Kalbus et al. (Environ Earth Sci 65:1363–1366, 2012). Main results: The IWAS

For achieving any kind of river basin management, monitoring is a pre-requisite: However, for monitoring to be successful, the broadly applicable legal and policy mechanisms for facilitating data exchange, public participation, implementation and compliance must also be present. Ukraine as a member of several international agreements directly concerning management and protection of freshwater, and other broader environmental agreements indirectly affecting transboundary water management, aims to improve its national water management framework by introducing river basin management. This paper examines current gaps between Ukrainian water legislation on RBM and EU and other relevant international water law. Specifically, the paper shows how far monitoring requirements have been fulfilled and identifies shortcomings. The following deficits in river water quality monitoring exist in Ukraine which are (1) biological data are not sufficiently collected by the authorities and (2) monitoring of hydromorphology is not systematically conducted. Taking into account the current political and economic crisis, the paper proposes a short-term oriented solution which is to entrust the River Basin Administrations with more tasks, because they have experience in monitoring, they are directly linked with the State Agency for Water Management that is in charge of implementing IWRM and they are allowed a basic budget for financing staff. But in the long run strategies are to be developed that secure proper monitoring with effective standards and resources for authorities who take over these tasks.

River basin management (RMB) was introduced to combat high levels of water pollution across Ukraine. The Western Bug River provides an example of how water quality is impacted by industrial and domestic wastewater discharges as well as pollution from agriculture and mining activities.The paper draws from a broader interdisciplinary study which aims to outline the sources of pollution within the upper Western Bug River catchment and identify the driving institutional forces behind this enduring environmental problem. The results of this study show that the administrative and spatial scales concerning river catchment management in the Western Bug River basin are not aligned. Furthermore, the temporal scale is often conflicting with the two above mentioned scales. The current political and financial situation of the State, as well as outdated administrative structures hinders effective water governance and results in low water quality. Despite these findings, there is also some evidence that in the longer term the RBM approach could succeed in the Western Bug River, especially if political and legal reforms are properly implemented and enforced.

Dammed drinking water reservoirs with their catchment areas and the downstream rivers are dynamic systems that change permanently under the influence of many factors. Their multifunctional use for drinking water supply, flood control, energy production, nature conservation and recreation as well as ecological constraints for the rivers downstream requires an integrative management considering and balancing between different requirements. Thus, an optimal reservoir management has to take into account scenarios of external influences and must be based on predictions of prospective raw water qualities. Furthermore, the impacts of short- and long-term changes of the raw water quality on drinking water treatment have to be considered. The problem is very complex and cannot be solved intuitively but requires the application of hydrological, ecological and process models. This approach was followed in the work presented here, as a tool to predict and evaluate the impacts of different reservoir management strategies in an integrative way is currently not available. The developed decision support procedure (DSP) allows for the estimation of the effects of different hydrological and water quantity management scenarios on raw water quality, water processing costs and ecology in the downstream river. Extreme hydrological events or changing boundary conditions (e.g. climate change) are taken into account.

Dammed drinking water reservoirs with their catchment areas and the downstream rivers are dynamic systems that change permanently under the influence of many factors. Their multifunctional use for drinking water supply, flood control, energy production, nature conservation and recreation as well as ecological constraints for the rivers downstream requires an integrative management considering and balancing between different requirements. Thus, an optimal reservoir management has to take into account scenarios of external influences and must be based on predictions of prospective raw water qualities. Furthermore, the impacts of short- and long-term changes of the raw water quality on drinking water treatment have to be considered. The problem is very complex and cannot be solved intuitively but requires the application of hydrological, ecological and process models. This approach was followed in the work presented here, as a tool to predict and evaluate the impacts of different reservoir management strategies in an integrative way is currently not available. The developed decision support procedure (DSP) allows for the estimation of the effects of different hydrological and water quantity management scenarios on raw water quality, water processing costs and ecology in the downstream river. Extreme hydrological events or changing boundary conditions (e.g. climate change) are taken into account.

Recently, the Ukrainian Western Bug water authorities developed a national field survey to assess the quality of river habitats. The Ukrainian government already cooperates with EU member states along transboundary rivers and also orientates itself towards the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). As a future application for EU membership is feasible, the water authorities started to implement WFD criteria into their national survey schemes including the assessment of rivers’ hydromorphology. This article compares two different hydromorphological survey methods to identify similarities and differences of the classification approaches with regard to the conformity of obtained outputs with the WFD demands. The field surveys, the Ukrainian (UA-FS) and the German (LAWA-FS), were applied in parallel on 14 river sections along the Western Bug River and parts of its tributaries. Results show a wide range of conformity, but also several differences between and gaps within all methods. The UA-FS generally lacks the idea of reference condition in rivers’ hydromorphology and the definition of different stream types or near-natural land uses. The UA-FS and the LAWA-FS approaches are similar with respect to their incorporated compartments and most main parameters, but differ in definition and interpretation of specific functional units and single parameters. Greatest similarities down to single parameters exist in aspects of land use, bank vegetation, currents diversity, and within-stream variation of water depths. Differences include the assessment and interpretation of lateral erosion, sinuosity, type and depth of profile, substrate diversity, as well as special structures of bank and riverbed. Overall, the LAWA-FS is more conservative in its rating than the UA-FS. Still, UA-FS can be regarded as an important improvement for a systematic and reliable monitoring of river hydromorphology in the Ukraine that will help to successfully engage with both the integrated water reso

Springs are important freshwater habitats that provide refuge for many rare species. In this study, the fauna and abiotic parameters of 20 perennial springs in north-western Switzerland were investigated. Correlation of abiotic and macrozoobenthos data showed that physicochemical parameters had little impact on macrozoobenthic composition, whereas specific substrate parameters strongly influenced the composition of the macrofauna. Surprisingly, nonmetric multidimensional scaling did not reveal a grouping of springs with similar substrate composition or macrozoobenthic assemblages. However, discharge was identified as the factor significantly determining substrate and the composition of macroinvertebrate assemblages. This justifies the hypothesis that, variation in discharge is the disturbance factor governing the macrofaunal composition temporally and spatially within and between patches