The "ALPE 2" project represents an enlargement in scope and geographical coverage of the ongoing "ALPE 1" project in the STEP Programme. In addition to the remote mountain lakes in the highlands of Norway and Scotland, in the Italian and South Tyrolian parts of the Alps and the French part of the Pyrenees considered in "ALPE 1", the "ALPE 2" project extends the investigations on lake sediments, water chemistry, diatom, invertebrate and fish fauna on lakes in Spitzbergen (Svalbard), the Irish highlands, Austrian Alps, the Czechoslovakian and Polish parts of the High Tatra mountains, the Spanish part of the Pyrenees, the Sierra Nevada in Spain and the Sierra d´Estrela in Portugal. Overall, in 20 remote lakes, situated above the local timberline, seasonal changes in major limnological, chemical and biological parameters will be studied in function of the air pollution deposition and of climatic factors.

The investigations on lakes in the ongoing "ALPE 1" project will be extended towards the determination of zooplankton (inventory and changes), the consideration of organic matter loading, the evolution of decomposition of plant material, trace metals, sulphate reduction capacity, and contamination by persistent organic compounds in selected lakes