“Lithuanian Geological Survey (LGS) and Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre (LEGMC) institutional cooperation on cross-border groundwater management” project is an action to improve institutional cooperation and develop common groundwater management strategies to tackle groundwater management issues. Water is not limited to national borders, and therefore, in accordance with EU Water framework directive 2000/60/EC groundwater quality and quantity should be preserved across the border.  This could be done by developing transnational guidance to overcome any hindrances - inherited approaches, differences in terms, methodologies and etc. The project aims to encourage cooperation in field of cross-border groundwater management and to provide steps to achieve unified groundwater management strategy.

In the case of Latvia and Lithuania cross-border territory common groundwater management is of high importance due to widespread active karst process affected areas, groundwater as agent for karst process development, high geohazardous risk and increase in groundwater vulnerability. The importance of already existing collaboration agreement and groundwater monitoring data exchange should be emphasized.

For project implementation data has been processed and exchanged to create unified knowledge base for strategy development. Exchanged data, preliminary results and data gaps has been discussed with project partners in meeting 21st of November in Biržai, Lithuania.

Results obtained in pilot project will be implemented in next period 2022-2027 River Basin Management Plans Groundwater section. Accumulated information will serve as a base for further institutional cooperation between LGS and LEGMC. The experience gained in solving groundwater issues in the cross-border area will provide methodological guidelines for other countries to address cross-border groundwater management issues.

The project “Lithuanian Geological Survey and Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre institutional cooperation on cross-border groundwater management” is financed by the European Union.