New information collected for a better assessment of marine pollution

The new questionnaire was prepared by OGS and revised by the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA, Italy), which created the previous version in 2014.

The revision was urgently needed to make progress towards a coherent and harmonised assessment of chemical pollution in European seas. Despite progress in legislation, the implementation of the requirements of the current directives and protocols are still relatively low. Under the European Union's Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), as well as the protocols of the Regional Sea Conventions, strategic action plans and monitoring/assessment programmes are required to protect the seas from chemical pollution. In addition, the adoption of the FAIR principles to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable has been of great benefit, leading to significant improvements in marine data management. Nevertheless, due to limited information on sampling methods, analytical techniques and QA/QC procedures, marine pollutant data are often not comparable and not suitable for regional/sub-regional assessments. Inadequate QA/QC can also affect data quality.

The metadata fields of the questionnaire and their priorities were identified by comparing the metadata required in the data collection templates created by

1. The EU Commission's Directorate-General for Environment for the Water Framework Directive and the European Environment Agency for reporting on the State of the Environment;
2. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea in relation to the OSPAR/Helsinki Conventions;
3. The United Nations Environment Programme - Mediterranean Action Plan in relation to the Barcelona Convention; and
4. The NORMAN Network for emerging contaminants.

These templates ask for sample-specific metadata (e.g. time and place of sampling) as well as accurate and comprehensive information on the sampling/analytical methods and QA/QC procedures carried out by the member countries. This information is necessary to compare data from different institutes and to perform secondary QC checks.

The analysis led to the selection of 64 metadata fields (38 from the above templates and 26 based on experience gained since EMODnet Chemistry) relating to non-sample-specific information, such as the field sampling method, analytical method, limit of detection, and units of measurement for each substance in a given matrix. The metadata fields required by three or four organisations were set as mandatory in the worksheets.

To support in-house data quality checks and uniform the quality and reliability of chemical data, we hope to obtain comprehensive up to date information on sampling/analytical methods and QA/QC procedures relating to the wide range of contaminant data submitted to EMODnet Chemistry.

Complete and accurate information on methodological protocols, from in situ sampling to the evaluation of contaminant concentration, is a priority to enable a harmonised assessment of marine pollution in the European Seas and beyond.