1. Status of the Nutrient Best Practice Guide
Wouter van de Bund
DG JRC unit D2
SCG meeting May 2017

2. ECOSTAT activities on nutrient boundaries
Aim: Improve consistency and comparability of nutrient boundaries across Europe
Draft Best Practice Guide: guidelines for setting, checking and adjusting nutrient boundaries;
Tool-kit for setting ecologically relevant nutrient boundaries
These documents are available on CIRCABC (under WG ECOSTAT/ Nutrients)
Explain that previous work has shown considerable differences in nutrient boundaries between Member States that can not be explained by typological differences
GM status boundaries are harmonised in the intercalibration exercise; nutrient boundaries need to be in line with biological boundaries to be useful as targets for river basin management
ECOSTAT WG has set up a task group to address this issue, has worked in the previouls years and is now close to produce their final outcomes: best practice guide and toolkit

3. Illustration how biological elements are linked with nutrients.
Intercalibration exercise has brought together a lot of data showing pressure-impact relationship for different water categories and types
Important issue to take into account is uncertainty – ranges rather than single target values

4. Next steps
Draft best practice guide set to ECOSTAT for comments (deadline end May 2017)
Guidance and toolkit to be tested and examples to be added
ECOSTAT nutrient workshop September in Berlin
Finalisation of both documents by the end of 2017

5. Best practice guide – CIS guidance?
SCG is invited to consider to adopt the Best Practice guide on nutrient boundaries as a CIS guidance document in 2018

6. Thank you for your attention