Towards a typology for the Baltic Sea

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) establishes a comprehensive framework for European Community actions in the field of water and introduces new principles of modern water manage-ment based on long-term protection of water resources. It requires from all EU Member States to protect and enhance the status of water quality of all types of waters, including coastal zone of the sea. For the purpose of the WFD implementation all water bodies must be classified into types of similar characteristics based on the physical factors. This classification scheme is called typology and forms a universal basis for all other activities within the WFD implementation such as: man-agement or monitoring. The implementation of the WFD as well as the development of a national typology are a responsibility of national authorities and are due to be operational in a few years time. As a result, every country develops or has already developed an independent typology. The WFD defines the Baltic Sea as one Ecoregion. The coastal waters have an international character but national typologies will cause interceptions at country borders and different national typolo-gies will complicate large scale comparisons across the Baltic Sea. Further, the definition of coastal waters (1 nm off the baseline) is artificial. The division between coastal waters and ope