Inspiring aquatic monitoring: innovative methods and approaches

This review hopes to inspire aquatic monitoring by highlighting successful innovative methods and approaches. Monitoring professionals from across the globe generously shared expertise with us. Innovation was found on all levels and in all areas of aquatic monitoring, resulting in a diverse array of featured monitoring solutions, both for national strategies and specific or local problems. In particular investigative monitoring appears to be a fertile ground for innovation and ‘thinking out of the box’; because of the somewhat ad-hoc nature of investigations in this field, innovations can be applied relatively easily without the need for large scale changes in methods. It is also in this area that the need for innovation appears greatest, as traditional monitoring methods cannot always reveal why water bodies fail to reach quality standards. New methods are also used for screening, where some issues associated with accuracy, sensitivity or difficulty in comparing with the standard can be overcome by follow-up methods.