Monitoring and managing sediment quality and impact assessment in Spain in the past 10 years

Members of the INTERSED network initiated several efforts to coordinate management activities, information, priorities and approaches in research and technological development (RTD) with respect to sediments at a national level in Spain. The present work summarizes the results of a database search (1995–2005) carried out within the INTERSED framework; we found 250 international and national publications of Spanish groups related to the study of sediments located in the Spanish coast and river basins using different approaches. The results show the statistics of RTD groups involved, the main objectives of the publications, the types of sediment and their location, and the analytical method and parameters. We describe the state of the art on the field of research in sediments at the national level in Spain over a period of 10 years.