Long term development of Bathing Water Quality at the German Baltic coast: spatial patterns, problems and model simulations.

ABSTRACT

Bathing water quality plays a key role for public health, is highly important for recreational tourism and therefore monitored in the EU-Directive 2006/7/EC. To identify pollution hot spots, sources and impacts of the directive-change in 2006, including a change of indicator organisms, we evaluated monitoring data of the past 15 years, collected own data, determined survival rates of indicator organisms and applied hydrodynamic modelling in a micro-tidal-system. Due to higher survival rates under turbid conditions and restricted water exchange, shallow, eutrophic bays and lagoons are hot spots of microbial pollution. Rain events cause high microbial emission and distribution. Based on different decay rates, the ratio of E. coli to Enterococci can hint towards a pollution source. Including rain predictions, currents and winds, hydrodynamic models can then assess the daily risk of microbial pollution at each bathing site. They are an important tool to modify beach management and event-based monitoring.