PLC Assessment data 1995-2022

The data set includes the water flow and nutrient inputs (total nitrogen and phosphorous) of monitored river catchments and unmonitored areas as well as the nutrient inputs from point sources (municipal, industrial and aquaculture) that are directly discharging into the sea. The water flow and nutrient input data is available as actual (non-normalized) and flow normalized. The data covers the whole Baltic Sea drainage area and the years 1995-2022. Together the riverine and point source inputs provide the total land-based load of nutrients into the Baltic Sea. The data consists of several excel spreadsheets providing background info and actual load values. The spatial delineation of these catchments can be accessed through the metadata record for PLC Assessment data river catchments (https://metadata.helcom.fi/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/d7b5404a-b3e1-4fe6-be35-a12055736783). The tabular and the spatial data includes the catchments that have a full time series of data for 1995-2022, and the nutrient load of rivers with incomplete time series are added to the adjacent unmonitored areas. The non-normalized data is used in the HELCOM Baltic Sea Environmental Fact Sheet (BSEFS) on Waterborne nitrogen and phosphorus inputs and water flow to the Baltic Sea that is published annually (https://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-trends/environment-fact-sheets/eutrophication/). The normalized data is used for the inputs of nutrients core indicator (https://indicators.helcom.fi/indicator/inputs-of-nutrients/) as well as the NIC assessment (https://helcom.fi/baltic-sea-action-plan/nutrient-reduction-scheme/national-nutrient-input-ceilings/). The assessment data set is based on the reporting by HELCOM Contracting Parties within the Pollution Load Compilation framework (PLC). The assessment dataset is produced by the Baltic Nest Institute (BNI), Stockholm University together with the Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (DCE), Aarhus University from the original reported data. For a more detailed description of the spreadsheets and included data, please scroll down to lineage.