Formerly, rivers and lakes were impacted by strong, single stressors, e.g. by organic pollution or acidification. They were replaced by a complex mix of stressors resulting from urban and agricultural land use, water power generation and climate change. MARS investigate how multiple stressors affect rivers, lakes and estuaries.

MARS is a research project and supports European policies, such as the Water Framework Directive,and the Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Water Resources. It has two target groups: "water managers" assessing and restoring rivers and lakes; and policy makers drafting and implementing policies related to water.

The main objectives are:

• To understand the effects of multiple stressors on surface waters and groundwaters, their biota, and the services they provide to humans
• To understand how ecological status and ecosystem services are related – if at all
• To advise river basin management how to restore multiply stressed rivers and lakes
• To advise the revision of the Water Framework Directive on new indicators for ecological status and ecosystem services
• To develop methods and software for the Programmes of Measures

read more on the MARS website

Within the EU funded project BioFresh, a blog was started with a wide range of topics all around water, freshwater and aquatic life. 2011 it was listed by Nature as one of the 'recommended conservation blogs'.
With start of the MARS project in February 2014 the blog is now continued by the project.

Have a look on the Freshwater blog