The sustainable use of river basins is one of the top environment priorities in Europe. There are many initiatives aimed at the promotion of the sustainable development of river areas around the Baltic and around Europe as a whole, a process greatly accelerated by the introduction of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), which obliges all EU countries to improve the standards in which they use their water and river resources. This book, prepared in the context of the Interreg IIIB Project Watersketch, is an attempt to promote a dialogue on the topic, linking aspects of sustainable biochemistry and biotechnology with elements of sustainable river management. It will serve the needs of water and river management specialists in two ways: it presents various scientific and technological approaches to river management and illustrates the epistemological breadth of the discipline, and also builds on specialised topical biotechnological and chemistry-related knowledge. The latter is especially useful to geographers and planners alike, who could perhaps adapt some of the techniques and components illustrated in the various chapters of this book to their own work.

The Editors: Professor Walter Leal Filho is country coordinator of the project Watersketch. Bernd Delakowitz is a Professor for Environmental Management and Environmental Law at the Hochschule Zittau/Goerlitz (FH) – University of Applied Sciences. Dieter Greif is a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Hochschule Zittau/Goerlitz (FH) – University of Applied Sciences.