Lakes of Northern Ireland: 2013 Inventory Map

Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) compiled a map of all lakes in Northern Ireland for which data was available in 2013. This geospatial dataset supports Water Framework Directive (WFD) monitoring and science related to surface waters. It is published under the UK Open Government Licence and is hosted on multiple government data platforms.

Use Cases

• Baseline environmental assessment based on lake inventory geography
• Water Framework Directive (WFD) compliance and reporting based on surface water features
• Hydrological modeling based on geospatial lake locations
• Habitat and biodiversity studies based on the distribution of inland water bodies

Strengths

• Cross-platform presence on UK and EU open data portals indicates official status and reliability
• Explicitly tied to the Water Framework Directive (WFD), a major regulatory framework
• Published under the permissive UK Open Government Licence (OGL-UK-3.0)

Limitations

• Data is from a single snapshot year (2013) and may not reflect current conditions
• Metadata is sparse; specific column names, row counts, and spatial accuracy are not provided
• One source lists a 'last updated' date of 2026-04-15, which is a future date and suggests a metadata error

Provenance

Source

Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), part of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA)

Collection Method

Compilation of available data for mapping purposes, likely from surveys and existing records

Time Range

2013

Freshness

2026-04 15 14:21:14.408153 (Note: This is a future date and likely a metadata error; the underlying data is from 2013.)

Geography

Northern Ireland