Background One central aim of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is to achieve good environmental status for surface water bodies by 2015. The WFD requires a River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) to be drawn up for each river basin district, which must be reviewed every six years. An RBMP sets out environmental objectives for all water bodies in the district and presents a summary of the measures that are being used to achieve these objectives. Habitat conditions and local hydromorphology in rivers and lakes have a significant impact on the functioning of aquatic ecosystems and, therefore, will affect any methods applied for monitoring and classification, unless their influence on biota and processes is explicitly addressed and quantified by the RBMPs. Objectives The project aims to integrate information on local hydromorphological features into practical measures to improve the reliability of implementation of RBMPs in southern Europe. The focus is on rivers and lakes in two areas in Italy, covering a wide range of environmental features and water body types. The outcome of the project will serve as a basis for the implementation of RBMPs over larger areas in Italy and, possibly, the whole of Europe. More specifically, the project has the following objectives: To improve RBMPs covering a number of water body types, which are representative of Italian water courses and lakes, through the introduction of innovative measures that account for hydromorphological and habitat information; To quantify the natural variability in undisturbed conditions of selected hydromorphological, habitat and physico-chemical features, which are known to have a significant effect on biological communities i.e. BQEs. Biological attributes for selected BQEs will be assessed accordingly; To quantify factors that affect ecological status classification; To put into practice the latest approaches and methods for the collection of WFD-compliant data, classification of ecological status and technical implementation of management plans in the study catchments; and To update existing management plans to include measures related to hydro-morphological and habitat condition.