Common Package of TMAP Parameters adopted at the Stade Conference

Status of the Implementation of the Trilateral Monitoring and Assessment Program, TMAP

SUMMARY

The implementation of the TMAP made considerable progress during 1997. At the 8th Trilateral Governmental Conference in Stade, Germany, 22 October 1997, the Ministers adopted a common package of monitoring parameters and decided to establish the necessary financial and organizational preconditions for its implementation, including the associated data management. A TMAP Manual, entailing guidelines of selected parameter groups and a functioning prototype of a data exchange system, were developed and also presented at the Stade Conference.

COMMON PACKAGE OF MONITORING PARAMETERS

The TMAP parameters were deduced from defined monitoring objectives (TMAP Issues of Concern, Ecological Targets). During trilateral expert workshops in 1995 and 1996, proposals were made on monitoring methods for all parameter groups (Marencic et al. 1996). Because of technical and financial restrictions, only selected parts of the parameter groups will be applied.

The selection of parameters for this "common package" was made on the basis of defined criteria which cover the technical effort for the implementation, the relative importance for the respective TMAP Issues of Concern and the Ecological Targets.  

The "common package", together with the TMAP guidelines, were endorsed by the 8th Trilateral Governmental Wadden Sea Conference in Stade, Germany, October 1997, as part of the Ministerial Declaration (see Tab. 1).

The 'common package' will guarantee that an appropriate base of information concerning the most important questions of the TMAP will readily be available for the assessment. The contents of the "common package" will be regularly evaluated. Having the appropriate conditions in place, further parameter groups may gradually be added, thus increasing the information quality of the monitoring program. This procedure secures that the TMAP will continuously be adapted to the needs of the trilateral policies.

TMAP MANUAL

The TMAP Manual entails information about the TMAP (objectives, structure, assessment), the TMAP Guidelines and the TMAP Data Management. A first draft version of the Manual was presented at the Stade Conference and was modified according to the decisions taken at the Conference. It will be distributed to all monitoring institutions at the beginning of 1998.

The TMAP guidelines referred, as much as possible, to the JAMP guidelines in order to enhance the mutual benefit and avoid redundancies. Assessment tools used in the JAMP like ecotoxicological assessment criteria, background/reference concentrations and the "Common procedure for the identification of the eutrophication status" will also be applied in the TMAP assessment.

DATA MANAGEMENT

A prototype of a TMAP data management system was developed and installed in each country. The work was carried out in the "DEMOWAD" project, which runs from 1 April 1995 to 31 March 1998 and is co financed by the European Commission under the LIFE program. The TMAP data handling is decentrally organized and consists of identically structured DEMOWAD Units. Each unit entails the same TMAP database with the specific regional or national TMAP data, a convenient Internet access and sophisticated data retrieval possibilities.

The parameters "breeding bird counts" and "contaminants in blue mussels" have been successfully implemented and tested since summer 1997 (see also http://www.de/cwss/demowad/). The prototype has already proved the functionality of the trilateral data exchange system. In future, the system will allow the public to get an overview and description of all derived TMAP data of the 'common package'. The downloading of data itself is restricted to expert groups which are responsible for assessing and publishing said data.