Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) 2021 Designations for England

Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) 2021 Designations identifies areas in England at risk from agricultural nitrate pollution, superseding the 2017 designations. The dataset is produced by the Environment Agency for the purposes of the Nitrate Pollution Prevention Regulations 2015. It defines polluted waters as those with nitrate concentrations exceeding 50mg/l or that are eutrophic.

Use Cases

• Mapping areas at risk from agricultural nitrate pollution based on the defined NVZ designations.
• Assessing compliance with the Nitrate Pollution Prevention Regulations 2015 based on the designated zones.
• Analyzing water quality risks using the 50mg/l nitrate concentration threshold mentioned in the description.
• Identifying eutrophic or potentially eutrophic water bodies based on the regulatory criteria.

Strengths

• Dataset supersedes the previous 2017 NVZ designations, indicating an update.
• Derived from multiple authoritative sources including the Environment Agency, British Geological Survey, and UK Water Companies.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Environment Agency

Time Range

Designations for implementation in 2021.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-06 07:16:00.889416; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England