Environmental Impact Assessment

GEASE

The Environmental Impact Assessment Group develops its research in the Research Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). The Group’s extensive and experienced team, as well as its multidisciplinary nature, allows open lines of work in fields that are very different from the environment, but converge under common aspects: environmental impacts and aquatic systems.

Among the Group’s objectives are to train researchers through the development of PhD and postgraduate studies, as well as to contribute knowledge and technology to society through participation in research, development and innovation projects. Therefore, it is a fundamental objective of the work team to advise and technologically support companies and public administrations in matters related to the investigations that are carried out.

The services provided range from the analysis of water and sediment samples, to the elaboration of companies optimization and environmental management plans. Some of the main fields of work which are detailed below:

- Environmental impact studies. Establishment, analysis and optimisation of sampling and environmental monitoring networks.
- Characterisation of discharges, studies of diffusion of contaminants and possibilities of minimisation.
  Analysis of continental, coastal/marine and transitional waters (physical-chemical parameters, heavy metals, chlorophyll, phytoplankton). Environmental diagnosis of inland water ecosystems (physical-chemical parameters, heavy metals, chlorophyll, phytoplankton).
- Implementation of the European Water Framework Directive in coastal and transitional waters. Determination of the “good ecological potential” for heavily modified and artificial water bodies.
- Behaviour of nutrients and other contaminants in estuarine systems, inland plumes, coastal ecosystems, salt lakes and inland waters.

One of the most important activity fields of the research team evolves around the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive in coastal and transitional areas. In the framework of the work conducted, the environmental diagnosis of inland water ecosystems (coastal and transitional, natural and heavily modified) is carried out, establishing the reference conditions for the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive and the ecological status or potential for the bodies of water are determined. In the same way, the Group’s staff works in the establishment, analysis and optimisation of sampling networks, as well as in environmental monitoring.

Research lines of GEASE