water Article Integrating In Situ and Ocean Color Data to Evaluate Ecological Quality under the Water Framework Directive Ana C. Brito 1,2,* , Paloma Garrido-Amador 3 , Carla Gameiro 4 , Marta Nogueira 4 , Maria Teresa Moita 5 and Maria Teresa Cabrita 6 1 Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal 2 MARE-Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal 3 Max Plank Institute for Marine Microbiology, Celsiusstrasse 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany;
[email protected] 4 IPMA-Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, 1495-006 Lisboa, Portugal;
[email protected] (C.G.);
[email protected] (M.N.) 5 CCMAR-Centre of Marine Sciences, Universidade do Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal;
[email protected] 6 CEG/IGOT-Ulisboa-Centro de Estudos Geográficos/Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território, Universidade de Lisboa, 1600-276 Lisboa, Portugal;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 8 October 2020; Accepted: 27 November 2020; Published: 8 December 2020 Abstract: The Water Framework Directive (WFD) aims at evaluating the ecological status of European coastal water bodies (CWBs). This is a rather complex task and first requires the use of long-term databases to assess the effect of anthropogenic pressure on biological communities. An in situ dataset was assembled using concomitant biological, i.e., chlorophyll a (Chl a) and environmental data, covering the years from 1995 to 2014, to enable a comprehensive assessment of eutrophication in the Western Iberia Coast (WIC). Given the temporal gaps in the dataset, especially in terms of Chl a, satellite observations were used to complement it.