As the host of the workshop, Dr. Dong Zheren, Standing Vice Chair of GWP China and Mr. Zheng Rugang, Coordinator of GWP China, invited experts and counterparts from Department of Water Resources of the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR), YRCC, Yangtze River Conservancy Commission, IWHR(Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research) and EU-China River Basin Management Programme to exchange views on monitoring and assessment method for river and lake health in China and provide recommendations.
Dr. Dong chaired the workshop and concluded with the following points:
1) Set up the legal status, institutional mechanism of river and lake health assessment.
2) Draw from the European and Japanese experiences, carry out the biological background investigation in the scales of catchments and rivers to collect the basic scientific data and set up ecological database.
3) Give high attention on investigation of historical status to define the undisturbed natural conditions as reference conditions.
4) Establish the pressure-influence model, identify the key pressure factors.
5) Conduct the biological investigation and formulate the monitoring standards to ensure the correctness of the data, since the biological monitoring is quite complicated and related to the biology and statistics.
6) Apart from the river continuity, should add the multi assessment on river and lake connectivity, wandering and habitat diversity
7) MWR should organize the cross-disciplinary scientists to develop biological monitoring standards such as the case that Netherlands organized a 40 interdisciplinary experts and spent three years developing technical standards for biological monitoring.
8) Suggest that MWR launches several special programs to support the river and lake health assessment as soon as possible.