Since the adoption of the European Water Framework Directive in 2000 - which sets the objectives for achieving good water status - and its transposition into French law in 2004, a number of monitoring networks have been set up across the country to meet regulatory requirements in terms of knowledge and assessment of the ecological quality of lake environments. These networks include :

• Surveillance Monitoring Networks (SMN): permanent networks designed to assess the general state of aquatic environments and monitor its evolution on the scale of large river basins in relation to changes of natural or anthropogenic origin; ;
• Operational Monitoring Networks (OMN): temporary networks designed to monitor bodies of water identified as being at risk of not achieving good status and to assess the effectiveness of the actions implemented as part of the measurement programmes to remedy this risk of not achieving good status;
• the National Thermal Network (RNT) for water bodies: a network designed for continuous, high-frequency, vertical monitoring of water temperature in water bodies.

To find out more : 

• https://hydrobio-dce.inrae.fr/plans-deau/
• https://professionnels.ofb.fr/fr/node/1073