Surface water: Continental water, except groundwater; transition water and coastal water, and, referring to chemical status, also territorial water.

Groundwater: All water resources located under soil surface in the saturation zone and in direct contact with soil or subsoil.

Continental water: All still or current surface water and all groundwater located towards land from the base line used to measure territorial water width.

Transition water: Masses of surface water close to partially saline river mouths due to their proximity to coastal water, but that receive a remarkable influence from fresh water flows.

Aquifer: One o more underground layers made of stone or other geological stratum with enough porosity and permeability to allow a significant flux of groundwater or the extraction of significant quantities of groundwater.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA): Compilation of potential environmental impacts of a product alongside its life cycle, understood as a series of consecutive and interlinked stages from raw materials acquisition or natural resources consumption to final use.

Material Flux Analysis (MFA): Systematic reconstruction of the way in which a chemical element, a compound or a material takes part in a natural or economic cycle. Material flux analysis is usually based on the principle of physical balance.

Environmental Risk Analysis: Set of techniques used to identify and assess dangers that could cause environmental damages and that are associated to certain facilities.

Climatic Change: Change in climate, direct or indirectly attributed to human activity that affects world atmosphere composition and is added to climate natural variability recorded during comparable periods of time.

Ecological Flow: Flow that contributes to reach good state or good ecologic potential in rivers and transition waters and that maintains, at least, fish life and brook vegetation.

Water Cycle: Successive stages covered by water from atmosphere to land and back: water evaporation from land, sea and continental waters; condensation of water in clouds, rainfall, accumulation in soil or in masses of water and re-evaporation.

Contamination: Direct or indirect introduction of substances or heat in atmosphere, water or soil as result of human activity that could be harmful to human health or to quality of aquatic or terrestrial ecosystems and that could cause damages to material goods or could deteriorate or make difficult enjoyment and other legitimate uses of environment.

Balanced Scoreboard (BSC): Management tool developed by Kaplan y Norton that makes possible to monitor organization strategy fulfilment using an optimized set of indicators. Its final objective is to facilitate organization mission accomplishment by adopting proper decisions in an agile way.

Hydrographic Basin: Area which surface runoff flows totally through a set of currents, rivers and, eventually, lakes towards sea by a sole mouth, estuary or delta.

Sustainable development: Development model that answers present necessities without threatening future generation’s capacity to satisfy their own necessities. Close concepts used generally are sustainable rural development and urban sustainability.

Eco-design: Product design focused in reducing environmental effects alongside all product life cycle.

Eco-efficiency: Concept referred to research of technical solutions focused in minimizing natural resources consumption in productive systems.

Eco-innovation: Any type of innovation pursuing a remarkable improvement in environment protection. Eco-innovation includes new production processes, new products or services or new management and business methods that can avoid or notably reduce environmental risks and other negative effects due to resource use, alongside of life cycle of activities.

Ecological status: Expression of the quality of the structure and operation of aquatic ecosystems associated to surface water.

Strategic Environmental Assessment of plans and programs (SEA): Process included in Spanish law that allows integration of environmental issues in plans and programs by elaborating sustainability reports, opening a consultation process, evaluating sustainability reports and consultation outcomes and providing information about their approval.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): Body of studies and technical analysis used to estimate the effects a certain project could cause on environment.

Integrated Water Management (IWM): Systematic process that allows sustainable development and allocation and control of water resources referred to a frame defined by social, economic and environmental objectives.

Hydrology: Science in charge of the study of surface and groundwater; their emergence, circulation and temporal and spatial distribution; their biological, chemical and physical properties and their interactions with environment, included relation with living beings.

Hydrogeology (or groundwater geology): Geology branch in charge of groundwater, taking into account geological conditions.

Carbon footprint: Indicator that measures CO2 emissions linked to goods production alongside all its life cycle.

Ecologic footprint: It’s a one index Sustainability indicator developed by Rees and Wackernagel that measures impacts produced by human settlements, expressed in hectares of ecosystems or “nature”. Used traditionally for regions and countries, it can also be applied to enterprises or any other type of organizations.

Water footprint: Indicator that measures all the water used to produce goods and services consumed by an individual, a group of people, an economic activity, a product, a region or a country. Usually, it is expressed in annual volume of water used.

Protection Perimeter: Protection Perimeter.

Water planning: Its general objectives are: good condition and adequate protection of water resources belonging to public property, satisfaction of water demands, balanced and harmonic regional and sector development, protection of water quality, sustainable water use, measures for long term water resources protection, and alleviation of negative effects of floods and droughts.

Clean Production: Production process design focused on minimizing pollutant emissions.

Available groundwater resources: Year medium value of total groundwater recharges tax deducted year medium flux required to reach ecological quality objectives of associated surface water. The aim is to avoid any significant diminution on the ecologic state of these water masses and any relevant damage on associated terrestrial ecosystems.

Natural regimen: Hydrologic regimen in a river branch without significant human intervention on its basin.

Environmental liability: Concept developed in Spanish law referred to responsibility of agents to prevent, avoid and repair environmental damages, according to article 45 of Spanish Constitution and to prevention principle “Who pollutes, should pay”.

Business Social Responsibility (BSR): Voluntary integration of social and environmental dimensions in business activities and relations with stakeholders.

Drought: Non predictable natural phenomenon caused mainly by rainfalls shortage.

Teledetection: Technique of earth surface data collection using sensors installed in aerospace platforms. Electronic interaction between land and sensor generates data later processed to obtain interpretable information about Earth.

Water uses: Different kinds of use of this resource as well as any other activity producing significant effects on water state.

Hyporheic zone: Transition zones between surface and Groundwater that host an ecotone with its own surface fauna (estigofauna) and a bacteria and protozoon activity that accelerates organic material degradation. Physical and chemical interactions produced in this zone influence nutrients balance and pollutants transport.