According to the requirements of Water Frame Directive of European Union (WFD), one of the most important problem of water management is counteract of contamination on water bodies condition and achievement good conditions all waters by the end of year 2015. Good surface water status means the status achieved by a surface water body when both its ecological and its chemical status are at least good. To determine the ecological status, both the reference conditions for 26 types of rivers and the ecological quality ratio EQR should be made. To correctly determine estimations, data with the smallest human interactions in the ecosystems should be included. It is important to use to determine these reference conditions. The most common source materials are topographic and cadastral maps, which are used in the analysis of changes in the riverbed. However, they include only the horizontal layout of the river. Analyzing changes in the vertical layout is more problematic, because of the difficulty of the availability or lack of data. The aim of this paper is present the needs and also the problems of the use of historical data to determine the reference conditions.

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