Last updated
March 26, 2014
Terms of use
Open use

Description

Within the National Surface Water Quality Monitoring Programme (NAWA), water quality is recorded jointly by the federal and cantonal authorities at around 100 monitoring stations. The chemical water status is assessed on the basis of the phosphate concentration by the “Physicochemical Water Quality, Nutrients” method in the Modular Stepwise Procedure (www.modul-stufen-konzept.ch). Orthophosphate (PO43-) represents the direct physiologically effective phosphorus component for plants and is an indicator of anthropogenic nutrient loading in surface waters. In contrast to lakes, phosphorus in rivers and streams is not normally limiting for algae and plant growth. Thus a higher phosphate concentration in a river does not represent a eutrophication risk for the watercourse, but does indicate a concentration which is incompatible with the natural state as a result of anthropogenic inputs.

This dataset can be visualized on visualize.admin.ch.

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Additional information

Identifier
4c2c25da-35fe-40a8-97be-feb29051a170@bundesamt-fur-umwelt-bafu
Issued date
March 26, 2014
Modified date
-
Conforms to
-
Publisher
Federal Office for the Environment / Hydrology Division
Contact points
hydrologie@bafu.admin.ch
Languages
  • English
  • German
  • French
  • Italian
Further information
geocat.ch Permalink
Landing page
http://www.bafu.admin.ch/wasser/13462/14737/15108/index.html?lang=de
Documentation
-
Temporal coverage
-
Spatial coverage
Schweiz
Update interval
Annual
Metadata Access
API (JSON) Download XML