GWDTE: Groundwater-Dependent Terrestrial Ecosystems

Groundwater Dependent Terrestrial Ecosystems (GWDTE) data supports the EU Water Framework Directive's goal of achieving good ecological status. This dataset likely contains spatial and attribute information identifying terrestrial ecosystems reliant on groundwater, such as wetlands and fens. Its cross-platform presence on UK and EU open data portals signals its regulatory importance for environmental assessment and water resource management.

Use Cases

• Assessing the ecological status of water bodies under the Water Framework Directive based on GWDTE condition.
• Mapping groundwater-dependent habitats for conservation planning and impact assessment.
• Modeling hydrological connectivity between aquifers and surface ecosystems using geospatial features.

Strengths

• Available under the permissive Open Government Licence (OGL-UK-3.0).
• Cross-platform availability indicates established use and official relevance.
• Offers multiple geospatial file formats (e.g., ESRI SHAPE, GEOJSON, KML) for interoperability.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• Documentation is sparse, with only a link to an external PDF for further information.
• Conflicting freshness: one source lists an update date of 2026-04-15 (future date), while others list 'None', casting doubt on maintenance.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service (UK)

Collection Method

null

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-04-15 14:20:50.053560

Geography

Likely Northern Ireland, UK, given the reference to the DAERA-NI.gov.uk publication.