Together with the year 2024, we are also bringing to a close the successful project StraMoS.
In this study, funded by Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Regionen und Wasserwirtschaft, we investigated whether different monitoring approaches lead to significantly different estimates of mean and maximum concentrations of trace contaminants in rivers (to assess compliance with environmental quality standards), as well as of annual riverine loads.

•  We compared the results obtained at two rivers via monitoring based on grab samples, integrated time and volume composite samples
•  The scope included four groups of contaminants representative for different source and emission pathways and for different environmental fate and transport patterns: pharmaceuticals, pfas, pesticides, metals

The outcomes provide an important basis to discuss the future of water quality monitoring strategies and raise new open questions due to unexpected and at present inexplicable findings for some substances. The full report (in German) can be freely downloaded: https://dafne.at/projekte/stramos, öffnet eine externe URL in einem neuen Fenster
For our non-German speaking network: stay tuned for an international paper with the main results!