Summary
Change in the concentration of nitrate in groundwater
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Documentation
Indicator: Change in the concentration of nitrate in groundwater
Tag: WAT003
Definition: Percentage of change in the concentration of nitrate in groundwater between 2000 and 2021
Unit: % of change in concentration
Spatial coverage: EU (national values are available for 18 Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia)
Time coverage: 2000-2021
Update frequency: Every year
DPSIR: State
Other policies:
Method: 1) Application of automatic quality control procedures to the annual mean concentrations reported either as disaggregated (multiple records per monitoring site per year) or aggregated (one aggregated record per monitoring site per year), resulting in the exclusion of certain data from further analyses; 2) application of a semi-manual procedure focusing on suspicious values having a major impact on the country time series and on the most recently reported data (e.g. outliers, consecutive values deviating strongly from the rest of the time series, whole time series deviating strongly in level compared to other time series for that country, where values for a specific year are consistently far higher or lower than the remaining values for that country), resulting in the removal of such values from the analyses and their checking with the country; 3) aggregation of the remaining values by country and at EU level by averaging across all sites for each year; 4) calculation of the difference in concentration between the year 2000 and the year 2021.
Reference: Nutrients in freshwater in Europe - European Environment Agency, (https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/nutrients-in-freshwater-in-europe ), accessed 14 November 2023
Producer: European Environment Agency
Provider: European Environment Agency
Validated: True
Peer reviewed: False
Documented: True
Open source: False
Accessible: True
Spatial scope (Member States): True
Spatial scope (EU27): True
Spatial scope (global): False
Accuracy uncertainties: Methodology uncertainty: nutrient conditions vary throughout the year depending on, for example, season and flow conditions. Hence, the annual average concentrations should ideally be based on samples collected throughout the year. Using annual averages representing only part of the year introduces some uncertainty, but it also makes it possible to include more sites, which reduces the uncertainty in spatial coverage. Moreover, the majority of the annual averages represent the whole year. Nitrate concentrations in groundwater originate mainly from anthropogenic activities as a result of agricultural land use. Concentrations in water are the effect of a multidimensional and time-related process, which varies from groundwater body to groundwater body and is less quantified. To properly evaluate the nitrate concentration in groundwater and its development, closely-related parameters such as ammonium and dissolved oxygen should be taken into account. Datasets uncertainty: the indicator is meant to give a representative overview of nutrient conditions in European groundwater. This means it should reflect the variability in nutrient conditions over space and time. Countries are asked to provide data on important groundwater bodies according to specified criteria. The datasets for groundwater include almost all countries within the EEA, but the time coverage varies from country to country. It is assumed that the data from each country represents the variability in space in their country. Likewise, it is assumed that the sampling frequency is sufficiently high to reflect variability in time. In practice, the representativeness will vary between countries. Each annual update of the indicator is based on the updated set of monitoring sites. This also means that due to changes in the database, including changes in the quality control procedure that excludes or re-includes individual sites or samples and retroactive reporting of data for the past periods, which may re-introduce lost time series that were not used in the recent indicator assessments, the derived results of the assessment vary in comparison to previous assessments. Waterbase contains a large amount of data collected over many years. Ensuring the quality of the data has always been a high priority. Still, suspicious values or time series are sometimes detected and the automatic qulity control routines exclude some of the data. Through the communication with the reporting countries, the quality of the database can be further improved. Rationale uncertainty: using annual average values provides an overview of general trends and geographical patterns in line with the aim of the indicator. However, the severity of shorter-term, high-nutrient periods are not reflected.
Comments: None
Storage: None
Datasets
Tag: DAT-240-en
Description: Waterbase - Water Quality ICM
Spatial extent: EEA38
Temporal extent: 1900-2022
Date: 07/07/2023
Scale: None
Resolution: None
Format: tabular
Version: 2022
Reference: Waterbase - Water Quality ICM — European Environment Agency, (https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/datahub/datahubitem-view/fbf3717c-cd7b-4785-933a-d0cf510542e1), accessed 13 December 2023.
Findable: True
Accessible: True
Interoperable: True
Reusable: True
Licence of use: EEA standard re-use policy: unless otherwise indicated, re-use of content on the EEA website for commercial or non-commercial purposes is permitted free of charge, provided that the source is acknowledged (https://www.eea.europa.eu/legal/copyright). Copyright holder: European Environment Agency (EEA).
Access data policy: No limitation to public access
Values
Country | Value |
---|---|
Austria | -14.3 |
Belgium | 2.6 |
Bulgaria | 3.3 |
Cyprus | -46.5 |
Czechia | -20.1 |
Germany | -3.3 |
Denmark | -63.4 |
Estonia | 27.2 |
Spain | -24.2 |
Finland | -72.9 |
France | 5.1 |
Ireland | -15.7 |
Italy | -4.6 |
Latvia | 1636.5 |
Malta | 15.4 |
Portugal | -6.0 |
Slovenia | -6.3 |
Slovakia | -7.6 |
Graphs
Values at national scale