Abstract

According to the Water Frameword Directive the classification of water bodies environmental quality and the achievement of

“good status” by 2015 are requested for all the European aquatic environment, including transitional waters such as coastal

lagoons. Although progresses have been done and many results have been achieved, several aspects of the WFD implementation

can be further improved and current limitations are more evident for some categories of water bodies such as coastal lagoons.

Accordingly, the E-QUALITY tool was developed with the main aim of enabling the environmental quality assessment of

transitional waters, with a particular focus on lagoons, and supporting public authorities responsible for the implementation of the

WFD with the development of management scenarios useful for the definition of new policies on water quality. The tool

integrates a geodatabase and GIS functionalities and is accessible through user friendly interfaces. It implements a methodology

based on a Weight of Evidence approach which integrates data from five Lines of Evidence (LOE), i.e. Biology, Chemistry,

Physico-chemistry, Ecotoxicology, and Hydromorphology.

The paper describes the main characteristics of the E-QUALITY tool and the result of the application to the whole Lagoon of

Venice based on the use of data collected by several monitoring campaigns from the late 80’s. The final output showed that the

water bodies located in the northern part of the lagoon and in the part closest to the sea exhibit a dominance of High/Good quality

classes, while the water bodies close to the industrial area and the historical city are more frequently characterized by Poor/Bad

quality classes. Accordingly, industrial, agricultural as well as urban discharges of chemicals were identified as the main drivers

of low quality.