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Thank you very much for the information of the new EIONET «Indicator for groundwater level in Europe».
The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN has also an indicator for groundwater level and spring discharge rates, which is used for national reporting:
https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/en/home/themen/thema-wasser/wasser--daten--indikatoren-und-karten/wasser--indikatoren/indikator-wasser.pt.html/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaW5kaWthdG9yZW4uYWRtaW4uY2gvUHVibG/ljL0FlbURldGFpbD9pbmQ9V1MwNTYmbG5nPWVuJlN1Ymo9Tg%3d%3d.html
The proposed EIONET «Indicator for groundwater level in Europe» (GLT indicator) is different of the Swiss indicator, but use data reported by the FOEN for Switzerland. It is an interesting tool for an overview of the situation of groundwater levels in Europe. The proposed indicator focuses on groundwater level, but does not take into account spring discharge rates. This means, that the indicator concerns only half of Switzerland's groundwater ressources.
Thank you for your comments and sharing information about the indicator applied in Switzerland. Unfortunately, spring data was not available in the WISE-3. In case such additional information becomes available through the WISE database, it would be interesting to take up in an indicator about groundwater quantity trends.
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for the information about the new indicator.
Spain, currently, is working to provide the data used by this indicador for groundwater level trend in Europe. Specifically, piezometric levels of its grounwater bodies during the years of the period 2.000-2.019.
We welcome this great news. We are looking forward to including the groundwater level data from Spain during the on-going data reporting in 2021.
Comment from AT
Please include a separate chapter (in the beginning) with the purpose of the indicator – which question should the indicator answer? It is absolutely unclear, which message should be given by the indicator.
By the way, please be careful when using “poor GW quantitative status” which has a very specific meaning in the WFD and it is not only about decreasing level trends!
Thank you for your comments. The format of the indicator sheet does not allow for a separate chapter on the purpose of the indicator.
However, we have improved the first section of the indicator sheet in order to provide more clarity on this issue: “Groundwater is important for the freshwater supply in Europe. The indicator assesses the annual groundwater level change across Europe for the period 2000-2019 based on WISE SoE data, with the aim of signalling any decline in groundwater resources at an early stage. The indicator was developed with the intention to make best use of the capacity of the available groundwater level dataset. However, the length and representativeness of the underlying data needs to be improved by Eionet member countries to enable more robust assessment of the change in groundwater level in Europe. For 83% of the monitoring stations a significant trend of annual groundwater levels could not been detected, mostly due to the short length of available time series. For the remaining 17% of stations, approximately two-thirds showed a decreasing trend and one-thirds showed an increasing trend (Fig.1).
POLAND
1. Inaccuracies in the description of the methodology - e.g. in the consulted material at the beginning of the methodology it is as follows: „The minimum length of measurement series used for the calculation of the GLT is 5 years within a 10-year time window, based on the recommendation of the WFD CIS document of quantitative status assessment (CIS, 2009). Years are not necessarily consecutive”, and then in part 2.7 Time coverage: „Period of analysis is 2000-2019; length of monitoring data series varies with minimum length of 5 years”. These two sentences do not have the same meaning.
2. Technical comments to the process to be shared also with the other teams in the EEA:
The EEA duplicated the consultation process with the countries by using EIONET and in parallel sending the same request to the same countries via the Commission SCG and WG Groundwater. It is unclear and creates mess. The EEA/EIONET NFPs were clearly requested to provide a consolidated reply and to use the system (much more time-consuming than just sending one e-mail with the response from the country) as “the talkback tool enables us to manage comments in a structured way”. Despite it, in parallel the Commission WG members were directly asked by the EC to send the comments to the EEA and what is more surprising via the e-mail. And despite the fact that the EC WGs are the structures of contacts representing the countries for the EC and not for the EEA (who has the EIONET contacts representing the same countries) which is also confirmed by the fact that the EC and not the EEA distributed the EEA e-mail. If you ask the WG members to send e-mails and directly to you why the NFP was asked to work on a consolidated reply and in the system?
To avoid duplication of processes, mess and misunderstanding we once again ask the EEA to choose one channel/contact to collect consolidated country responses. Please also choose one way/tool – if you use the Talkback it should show all the comments, however if it is not a problem for you to have the e-mail please do not force us to use the Talkback tool.
Thank you for your response. Inaccuracies in the description of the methodology are resolved. The approach concerning the minimum data requirements is as follows: The minimum length of measurement series used for the calculation of the GLT is 5 annual records within a 20-year time window (2000 until 2019). Years are not necessarily consecutive. No gap filling was applied.
As for the process of the EIONET consultation, we have taken note on your right point and we will communicate on the with the Commission.