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please provide general comments on section 2.2 here
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The objectives on protection and conservation of freshwater-dependent ecosystems can only be reached when discharges and water levels can vary over weeks, months and years including flood events. This is because these ecosystems usually need varied intra- and inter-annual flows to remain functionally intact. Consequently it is possible that flow requirements for certain species or habitats following from the Birds and Habitats directives (BHDs) go beyond the ones needed to reach the good ecological status (GES) as defined by the WFD and should therefore be considered in the implementation of the WFD (EC 2015c). In this context it is useful to consider the fact that in many cases these ecosystems do not need high flows in every year. For example, floodplain forests only require occasional flood events for their continued regeneration and this gives considerable flexibility to long-term water quantity management for these forested ecosystems where environmental flows are used as a water-quantity management approach (Hughes et al, 2008).
Hughes, F.M.R., Moss, T. and Richards, K.S. (2008) Uncertainty in riparian and floodplain restoration projects. In Darby, S and D. Sears (eds.) Uncertainty in River Restoration. Wiley, p.79-104.