River Water Quality Monitoring 1990 to 2018: Soluble Phosphorus

Northern Ireland's raw water quality data from river monitoring sites, collected under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) from 1990 to 2018. The dataset includes measurements for soluble phosphorus and other physico-chemical, biological, and hydromorphological parameters. It is the first in a series of open water data sets released by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA).

Use Cases

• Calculating Water Framework Directive status for rivers and lakes based on biological quality, hydromorphology, and physico-chemical properties.
• Analyzing long-term trends in soluble phosphorus and other nutrient conditions from 1990 to 2018.
• Identifying potential data errors or contamination events flagged as orders of magnitude above expected values.
• Correlating water quality parameters with site-specific factors like altitude and alkalinity for status calculations.

Strengths

• Provides a 28-year time series from 1990 to 2018 for longitudinal analysis.
• Contains raw, unprocessed measurement data suitable for custom analysis and validation.
• Covers multiple water body types: rivers, lakes, transitional waters, and coastal waters across Northern Ireland.
• Released under the permissive Open Government Licence (OGL-UK-3.0).

Limitations

• Metadata is incomplete: row counts, column names, and specific file sizes are not provided across any source.
• Data is raw and contains acknowledged errors from typos, sampling error, or contamination, requiring significant preprocessing for status calculations.
• Lacks Limits of Detection and Limit of Quantitation values, which are necessary for formal WFD assessments.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Monitoring at river and Water Framework Directive sites.

Time Range

1990 to 2018

Freshness

2026-04-15 14:20:36.807681

Geography

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