The SIMONA project Lead Partner (GEO-ZS) has participated in two international conferences related to river sediments: European River Symposium and ContaSed - 2nd International Conference on Contaminated Sediments. Both of the conferences were held online due to Covid. EU River Symposium was organised by European Centre for River Restoration on 26th and 27th May. The main focus was the status, restoration and management of European rivers and waters with 4 key topics: Integrating policies, EU Water Framework Directive, EU Biodiversity Strategy and EU Green Deal. According to the EEA report: European waters: Assessment of status and pressures 2018, only around 40 % of surface waters (rivers, lakes and transitional and coastal waters) are in good ecological status or potential, and only 38 % are in good chemical status. A link to the report and the full details can be found here: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/state-of-water.

ContaSed 2021 - 2nd International Conference on Contaminated Sediments was organised on 9 - 11 June 2021, online. Sediment contamination was considering the organic and inorganic contaminant classes, including microplastics, emerging contaminants, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants. There were 5 key topics on sediment contamination concerning the 1) contaminants transport and deposition, 2) risk assessment: methodologies and ecotoxicological case studies, 3) analytical tools and methods for assessing sediment contamination, 4) fate of contaminants in depositional settings, and 5) sediments as archives of historical pollution. We presented our SIMONA project during the short poster session on Friday, 11th​ June under the scope of Topic 3: Analytical tools and methods for assessing sediment contamination.