River Water Quality Monitoring 1990-2018: Dissolved Oxygen

1990 to 2018 raw data from river and lake monitoring sites in Northern Ireland, collected for Water Framework Directive (WFD) compliance. The dataset includes physico-chemical parameters like dissolved oxygen, temperature, and nutrients, but requires processing for status assessment due to missing detection limits and potential errors. It is the first in a series of water quality datasets released as open data by the Northern Ireland government.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in dissolved oxygen and other physico-chemical parameters for specific monitoring sites.
• Calibrating or validating water quality models that require raw, unprocessed measurement data.
• Assessing baseline conditions for biological quality elements (fish, invertebrates, flora) as part of WFD status calculations.
• Researching the impact of altitude and alkalinity on parameter-specific status assessments.

Strengths

• Provides a long temporal series, covering 1990 to 2018.
• Released under the permissive OGL-UK-3.0 license, facilitating reuse.
• Cross-platform presence (eu_open_data, uk_data) indicates established importance and accessibility.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: row counts, column names, and specific authors are unknown.
• Data is explicitly described as raw and unprocessed, containing potential errors from typos, sampling, or contamination.
• Critical metadata for WFD calculations (Limits of Detection, Limits of Quantitation) are absent.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) / Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), Northern Ireland.

Collection Method

Monitoring from river and lake sites, including those designated for Water Framework Directive compliance.

Time Range

1990 to 2018

Freshness

2026-04-15 14:22:10.812275

Geography

Northern Ireland (rivers, lakes, transitional waters, and coastal waters)