Aspects of Biological routine monitoring in a large laboratory: designing the monitoring

network, fixing the number of sampling sites, staff needed, time and cost effort

Dr Mario Sommerhäuser – Emschergenossenschaft

Northrine Westphalia is one of the largest Federal States in Germany:

NRW: 34,000 km² - 17 Mio. inhabitants

Minas Gerais: 587,000 km² - 20 Mio. inhabitants

Time schedule for biological monitoring acc. to Water Framework Directive

Number of monitoring sites in routine monitoring in the Federal State of Northrine-Westphalia

Those sites are investigated by ca, 8 laboratories in the state in a period of 3 years.

Monitoring program in 2010 (WFD)

All monitoring results are stored in a database which can be looked at by the public (except data of industrial waste water etc.)

• Laboratory of Emschergenossenschaft, Lippeverband und Ruhrverband is part of the routine monitoring of the Federal State of Northrhine-Westphalia, together with the Environmental Agency of the state

• In the team „Surface water quality“ of my lab are 25 persons, 14 biologists, 11 chemists

• in each group there are 2-3 persons with University degress, the others

are technical staff (technical assistenca, laborants etc.)

• sampling and determination is mostly done by technical staff, assessment, reporting and consultancy is done by biologists/chemists with University degree or engineers

• beside biological and chemical monitoring we have to conduct biotesting (daphnia-test, luminescent bacteria-test, fish egg-test), and control of wastewater treatment plant effects in the river

The department of surface water quality also has to maintain17 online measuring stations along rivers Emscher, Lippe and Ruhr

Routine work for the biological monitoring

Each year

- about 200 sites acc. to the AQEM / PERLODES method- about 120 macrophyte samples- diatom samples- zooplankton and phytoplankton samples in 10 reservoirs in the Ruhr basin and in the river Ruhr itself (every 14 days) (NOT for WFD monitoring)

Monitoring of restored rivers

Monitoring of wastewater treatment plants using Saprobic Index (52 sites)

Aspects of Quality assurance and Quality control

Each year

- every technician has to participate in ≈ 2 trainings in the determination of macroinvertebrates and macrophytes (outside the lab)

- we have to maintain a complete set of all species in our rivers for comparison

- from each sample (site) one of the determined taxa must be kept (preserved) for spontaneous quality control

- Interlaboratory comparisons for determination quality (organized by a third person/laboratory)

- every analytical method is described in detail in “Standard working procedures” which are subject to control by the Quality Manager

- internal audits of the different methods (biotests, Saprobic Index…) by the Quality Managers of the lab

Safety at work is also an important topic

e. g.,

Samples are usually taken by 2 persons

In a river a lifevest and ropes are prescribed

Personal safety clothing is prescribed

Each year the whole laboratory staff is trained two times in Safety at Work

Time effort and costs (roughly estimated)

1 AQEM / PERLODES site = 900 € (15 hours)

1 macrophyte site = 400 € (6 hours)

1 diatom / phytobenthos sample = 30 € (1/2 hour)

Thank you for your attention!