Do Water Management and Climate-Adapted Management of Wetlands Interfere in Practice? Lessons from the Biebrza Valley, Poland - Wetlands and Water Framework Directive: Protection, Management and Climate Change - page 50

Chapter 4
Do Water Management
and Climate-Adapted Management
of Wetlands Interfere in Practice? Lessons
from the Biebrza Valley, Poland

Mateusz Grygoruk and Tomasz Okruszko

Abstract In this chapter the authors deal with the implementation of Water
Framework Directive in the catchment of the Biebrza River (north-east Poland) that
covers 7,120 km 2 . Special attention was paid to the context of conservation of
riverine and wetland ecosystems facing pressures driven by the climatic change.
Measures foreseen by the National Water-Environment Programme for the catch-
ment of Biebrza are analysed in order to reveal whether the actions planned,
expressing the implementation of Water Framework Directive, anticipate potential
pressures originating from the observed and de ned, climate-related pressures such

as increasing frequency of summer flooding, ongoing decrease in summer sums of

precipitation and increasing frequencies of extremely high summer rainfalls. The
DPSIR feedback loops presenting selected relations between the climate-related
pressures and potential negative responses of geoecosystems of the Biebrza
catchment are described in order to verify whether the measures implemented
aimed at conservation and improvement of the state of water bodies and water-
dependent ecosystems are capable for assuring their good status. Basing upon the
observations and facts analysed, the authors derive lessons learnt from the process
of Water Framework Directive implementation, showing that the improvement of
allocation of funds to the water management actions is needed in order to assure
good ecological status of aquatic and wetland ecosystems, concerning qualitative
and quantitative elements of the water-related environments, facing direct and
indirect climate-related pressures.

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Keywords Biebrza Wetlands Water framework directive Climate change

DPSIR