River Water Quality Monitoring 1990-2018: Suspended Solids

River Water Quality Monitoring 1990 to 2018 - Suspended Solids provides raw, unprocessed data from river monitoring sites in Northern Ireland, including those designated under the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The dataset likely contains measurements for biological, hydromorphological, and physico-chemical parameters, such as suspended solids, temperature, oxygenation, and nutrients. It is the first in a series of water datasets released as open data by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA).

Use Cases

• Assessing long-term trends in suspended solids and other physico-chemical parameters in Northern Irish rivers.
• Calibrating or validating water quality models that require raw monitoring data as input.
• Supporting regulatory reporting on the ecological and chemical status of surface waters for the Water Framework Directive.
• Identifying potential sampling errors or anomalous data points for quality control procedures.

Strengths

• Provides a long-term time series covering nearly three decades, from 1990 to 2018.
• Represents official monitoring data from a government environmental agency (DAERA/NIEA).
• Is part of a planned series of water-related open data releases, indicating institutional commitment.

Limitations

• Metadata is incomplete; row counts, file sizes, and a complete column schema are not provided.
• The data is explicitly described as raw and unprocessed, containing potential errors from typos, sampling, or contamination, and lacks Limits of Detection/Quantitation needed for official status calculations.
• One source lists a last updated date of 2026-04 15, which is a future date and suggests a metadata conflict or error.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Monitoring and sampling at river sites across Northern Ireland.

Time Range

1990 to 2018

Freshness

2026-04-15 14:20:18.768003 (Note: This is a future date, indicating a potential metadata error.)

Geography

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