Conclusions to special issue: Water quality and biology of United Kingdom rivers entering the North Sea: The Land Ocean Interaction Study (LOIS) and associated work

This volume deals with the extensive information collected as part of one of the most ambitious environmental research programmes ever undertaken in the United Kingdom: the Land Ocean Interaction Study (LOIS). It concerns the water quality and biology of major British rivers draining into the North Sea and presents the newer findings in the context of an earlier special volume which dealt with the first 2 years of LOIS riverine research. The findings of the recently completed field programme at the core of the research is enhanced by specialist contributions on the key processes determining water quality and biological functioning within the LOIS rivers. The combination of an effective large-scale approach with standardised but comprehensive and high quality monitoring, highly structured databases and a full commitment to integrated research at all scales and across all the relevant disciplines, has led to new insights into how the riverine environment functions as an open system linked to atmospheric and marine processes and fluxes. The LOIS provides a valuable template for future national and international approaches to pollutant impacts on river systems, the shelf edge and the open ocean as well as a way forward for integrated environmental research approach in the United Kingdom and other developed as well as developing countries.