STUDY AREA AND SUBDIVISIONS

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Study area and subdivisions

The study area covers the whole of the French Mediterranean coasts (excluding coastal lagoons apart from the Etang de Berre). The Principality of Monaco, as an enclave witin French territory, has been included in our study.
The various results are presented on the basis of two kinds of subdivision:

"Administrative" subdivisions
The subdivisions presented include 4 administrative levels: Country (France and Monaco), Regions (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Corsica and Languedoc-Roussillon), counties (Départements) (9) and municipal and rural districts (Communes) (182).

"Water mass" subdivisions
The European Framework Directive «Water» (Directive 2000/60/EC dof the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for an EC policy for the domain of water) set the objective of achieving a good state of the aquatic environment by the year 2015. For this purpose, the coastal area was subdivided into Â«water masses». Hereafter we refer to them as «ECD Water».