What is intercalibration?

The European Intercalibration Exercise aims to ensure that the boundaries for Good Status given by each country’s biological methods are consistent with the Directive’s descriptions of Good Status.

Intercalibration has informed the development of biological methods across surface water categories. Many of our national methods and datasets are being intercalibrated and tested in different European geographic regions.

Due to constraints on data, the first European Intercalibration exercise will consider only a limited number of the groups of plants and animals included in the Directive’s descriptions of Good Status. It will also consider the effects of only a limited range of environmental conditions.

For example, Intercalibration is not expected to produce harmonised class boundaries by 2007 for methods of biological assessment and classification that are sensitive to the impact of man-made alterations to water flows, water levels or morphology. Consequently, the exercise will not inform the development of the UK proposals for hydromorphology.

The UK work on standards for nutrients and dissolved oxygen has also benefited, and will continue to benefit, from the information gathered through Intercalibration. The level of knowledge will improve over future river basin planning cycles.

Further information on Intercalibration:

http://forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/jrc/jrc_eewai/library