ENVIRONMENTAL DATA IN BULGARIA - PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Research projects dealing with transition in the former centrally plan ned economies of Eastern and Central Europe face great difficulties of data availability. Much data are not available and much of what are a vailable are poorly documented or unreliable. This paper describes som e of the problems of data availability in the context of environmental research in Bulgaria. It describes current efforts to upgrade nationa l level environmental monitoring capabilities, and argues for the need for the development of locally sensitive systems of data collection a nd analysis.