The EU Bathing Waters Directive requires Member States to identify popular bathing places in fresh and coastal waters and monitor them for indicators of microbiological pollution (and other substances) throughout the bathing season which runs from May to September
GIS Map Application
06 Jun 2019
Bathing water monitoring by country. Please note: for the scales 1:5.000.001 and less detailed, data are aggregated by country. In such case, stacked bars show percentage of bathing water quality for coastal and inland waters together. Number of bathing waters within certain category is seen in pop up window which can be turned on with a click on one of the countries. For the scale range 1:5 000.000 to 1:700,001, individual bathing water sites (points) are visible instead of classified stacked charts and are coloured according to the classification of bathing water quality. Symbol size depends on the map scale (in more detailed map scales symbols are bigger). For the scales 1:700,000 and more detailed, symbol of bather in a square appears instead of points. Symbol size depends on the map scale.
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) reference spatial data sets include information about European river basin districts, river basin district sub-units, surface water bodies, groundwater bodies and monitoring sites used in the first and second River Basin Management Plans (RBMP).
The data sets are part of the Water Information System for Europe (WISE), and compile information reported by the EU Member States, Norway and Iceland to the European Commission (EC) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) since 2010.
Indicator Assessment
11 Apr 2019
The trends in chlorophyll concentrations show improvements in the eutrophication status in some of Europe’s seas, due to the successful implementation of nutrient management strategies.
The highest chlorophyll concentrations are generally observed in transitional and coastal waters of the marine (sub)regions, in response to elevated nutrient concentrations in those waters.
Decreasing chlorophyll concentrations were observed in the southwestern Baltic Sea and along the continental coast of the Greater North Sea (including Kattegat), showing the effects of measures to reduce nutrient inputs (OSPAR 2017, HELCOM 2018).
For the other marine (sub)regions, only a few time series were available. In general, those time series did not show significant trends.
Indicator Assessment
09 Apr 2019
Examples of successful implementation of nutrient management strategies can be found in, for example, the Baltic Sea and the North Sea regions, where decreasing trends are observed.
The highest nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations are generally observed in transitional and coastal waters of the marine (sub)regions, which reflects the influence of direct and diffuse inputs of nutrients in the upstream catchments.
In the southwestern Baltic Sea, decreasing nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were observed between 1990 and 2017. These trends illustrate the effects of reductions in nutrient inputs. Phosphorus concentrations in this period increased in other parts of the Baltic Sea, because of phosphorus release from sediment under anoxic conditions (HELCOM 2018).
In the Greater North Sea, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations decreased between 1990 and 2017 at a large number of stations in transitional and coastal waters, with the exception of total phosphorous concentrations in parts of the Kattegat. Again, these trends reflect the effect of reductions in nutrient inputs (OSPAR 2017).
In the Celtic Seas, some offshore stations showed decreasing nutrient concentrations between 1990 and 2017.
In the Black Sea, time series of phosphorus concentrations showed significant decreases in the northwest shelf area, while nitrogen concentrations showed a more variable pattern.
Seasonal water exploitation index plus (WEI+), sub river basin district scale in winter (top left), spring (top right), summer (bottom left) and autumn (bottom right) 2015.
Data Visualization
31 Jan 2019
Data Visualization
06 Dec 2018
GIS Map Application
10 Oct 2018
This interactive map gives a European overview of water stress conditions. The information presented may deviate from that available in the EEA member countries and cooperating countries, particularly for those countries where data availability is insufficient in the WISE SoE – Water quantity database (WISE 3).
Data on hydro-climatic variables was aggregated from a daily to a monthly scale. Water abstraction data was taken from WISE 3 (annual resolution at the national scale), although there are large gaps in the time series. Therefore, intensive gap filling was performed on water abstraction data and proxies were used to disaggregate the data from the national to the sub-basin scale.
Information on water use was mainly modelled on the UWWTP capacities, the E-PRTR database and the Eurostat Population change dataset (online data code [demo_gind]) among others. See the methodology chapter for further explanation of gap filling, and spatial and temporal disaggregation, and the data uncertainties chapter for current data availability.
This interactive map allows users to explore changes over time in water abstraction by source, water use by sector and water stress level at sub-basin or river basin scale. The WEI+ has been estimated as the quarterly average per river basin district, for the years 1990-2015, as defined in the European catchments and rivers network system (ECRINS). The ECRINS delineation of river basin districts differs slightly from that defined by Member States under the Water Framework Directive. The Ecrins delineation is used instead of WFD because it contains geo-spatial information on Europe’s hydrographical systems with full topological information enabling flow estimation between upstream and downstream basins, as well as integration of economic data collected at NUTS or country level.
In addition to using e WISE SoE – Water quantity database, a comprehensive manual data collection was performed by accessing all open sources (Eurostat, OECD, FAO) including national statistical offices of the countries. This was done because of the temporal and spatial gaps in the data on water abstraction. Moreover, a large part of the stream flow data from LISFLOOD has also been substantially updated by the Directorate-General Joint Research Centre. Similarly, a comprehensive update with climatic parameters has been performed by the EEA based on the E-OBS dataset. Therefore, the time series of the WEI+ presented in the current version might be slightly different for some basins compared with the previous version.
The illustration shows the distribution of marine litter reported by the public and where they were found
Bathing water quality in the European Union in the 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 bathing seasons.
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