EU Nitrate Monitoring Records — EEA WISE Nitrates

Keyless. Pay per record. Every European groundwater and surface-water nitrate reading, site by site, year by year.

This actor turns the European Environment Agency (EEA) WISE Nitrates Directive dataset into clean, per-site-year records — the official annual nitrate-concentration monitoring reported by member states. Each run reads the EEA's keyless DiscoData SQL service for the country you choose and delivers one row per monitoring site per year: the site identifier, the water-body category, the reference year, the number of samples, the mean nitrate value, the station type, and the reporting metadata status. Site-year observation grain, structured for engineering use, reusable with acknowledgement of the EEA, with no personal data of any kind.

What this is, in one paragraph

Under the Nitrates Directive, member states monitor nitrate concentrations in groundwater and surface water and report annual figures, which the EEA aggregates and publishes. This actor reads that dataset and flattens each site-year observation into a single analysis-ready record: the monitoring-site identifier, the country, the water-body category (groundwater or surface), the reference year, the number of samples behind the figure, the mean nitrate concentration, the national station code and station type, and the reporting version and status metadata. Values are carried verbatim — the number is exactly as reported. You are billed only for records actually delivered.

Who buys this and for what job

• Environmental-compliance, agri-tech, and water-utility teams tracking nitrate concentrations by site, region, and year.
• ESG and diligence products assessing water-quality pressure across a footprint or region.
• Researchers and NGOs studying nitrate trends and agricultural-runoff pressure across Europe.
• Data engineers who want the WISE Nitrates monitoring series as clean rows without writing SQL against the EEA service or paging a very large table.

EEA licence — reuse with acknowledgement

One licence rider travels on every record. EEA data may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged: "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)." Where third-party content is marked, it keeps its own terms. This rider is carried in this README and on every record. The data is monitoring data as reported by member states — not a drinking-water safety determination.

Site-year grain — no person data

The unit of every record is a monitoring site in a given year. The dataset carries no natural-person fields, and this actor emits none; a person-key guard runs on every record as a pure backstop. The site identifier, water-body category, concentration figure, and metadata are the entire payload.

A required partition — this is a 543,450-row dataset

The full monitoring series runs to over 543,000 site-year rows, so this actor requires a partition: every run must set a 2-letter countryCode. A run with no country is rejected in code before any work begins — the whole table cannot be pulled unbounded. An optional year narrows further, and maxRecords is the hard ceiling.

Sample output

Real rows from a live run of this actor (first 5 rows, selected columns).

One full record from the same run, exactly as delivered:

{
  "record_id": "DE_1/415-1_0:2012",
  "monitoring_site_identifier": "DE_1/415-1_0",
  "country_code": "DE",
  "country_name": "Germany",
  "water_body_category": "GW",
  "reference_year": 2012,
  "number_of_samples": 4,
  "mean_nitrate_value": 33.5999984741211,
  "national_station_code": "1/415-1",
  "station_type": "0",
  "nd_year": "2008",
  "metadata_version_id": null,
  "metadata_begin_lifespan_version": null,
  "metadata_status_code": null,
  "source": "European Environment Agency (EEA) WISE Nitrates",
  "source_url": "https://discodata.eea.europa.eu/",
  "licence": "European Environment Agency (EEA) WISE Nitrates Directive monitoring data. Reuse is permitted, including for commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged: 'Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)'. Third-party content, where marked, keeps its own terms.",
  "attribution": "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA), WISE Nitrates Directive dataset.",
  "disclaimer": "Annual nitrate-concentration monitoring records per site and year, as reported by member states under the Nitrates Directive and published by the EEA. Site-year observation grain — no natural-person data. Concentration values and the reporting metadata status are carried VERBATIM; not a drinking-water safety determination.",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-25T17:21:25Z"
}

Pricing

Event	Free plan	Bronze	Silver	Gold / Platinum / Diamond
nitrate_record	$0.05	$0.045	$0.04	$0.0335

Delivered before charged. Blocked runs and empty results cost nothing.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
countryCode	string	—	Required 2-letter member-state code (e.g. DE, FR, IT).
year	integer	—	Optional reference year to filter (e.g. 2020).
maxRecords	integer	10	Ceiling on records delivered and billed.

Default changed on 30 Sep 2026: if you leave maxRecords out, a run now returns up to 10 records (it was 500). Set maxRecords yourself to get more — the maximum is unchanged.

Output

One JSON object per site-year observation. Real example (values as reported):

{
  "record_id": "DE_1/415-1_0:2012",
  "monitoring_site_identifier": "DE_1/415-1_0",
  "country_code": "DE",
  "country_name": "Germany",
  "water_body_category": "GW",
  "reference_year": 2012,
  "number_of_samples": 4,
  "mean_nitrate_value": 12.5,
  "station_type": "GW",
  "metadata_status_code": "stable",
  "source": "European Environment Agency (EEA) WISE Nitrates",
  "licence": "European Environment Agency (EEA) ... provided the source is acknowledged ...",
  "disclaimer": "Annual nitrate-concentration monitoring records ... carried VERBATIM; not a drinking-water safety determination ...",
  "observed_at": "2026-08-22T00:00:00Z"
}

An unbilled RUN_RECEIPT records the robots check, the country and year, rows seen and delivered, and whether charged equals delivered.

Field reference

Each record is one site-year observation. Identity: record_id (site id + year), monitoring_site_identifier, country_code, and country_name. Context: water_body_category, reference_year, station_type, and national_station_code. Measurement: number_of_samples and mean_nitrate_value. Reporting metadata (verbatim): metadata_version_id, metadata_begin_lifespan_version, and metadata_status_code. Provenance: source, source_url, licence, attribution, disclaimer, and observed_at.

How a run works

A run first re-reads the source host's robots posture from your runtime — the EEA DiscoData host — and stops at the door if that ever changes. It then queries the WISE Nitrates annual-concentration table through the DiscoData SQL service, bounding the query to your countryCode (and optional year), and pages through the results. Each site-year is flattened to one record — carrying the concentration figure and the reporting status verbatim — delivered before it is charged, so a blocked or empty run costs you nothing. The actor stops at your maxRecords ceiling and records charge_equals_delivered in the receipt.

Coverage and scope

The monitoring series holds over 543,000 site-year rows across all reporting countries and years. A partition is required because of that scale: one country's series is a bounded, affordable pull, and a single year isolates one reporting period. Because each record carries the monitoring_site_identifier and reference_year, a site's multi-year nitrate trajectory reconstructs by a simple join.

Working with the series

Each record is one point in a site's time series, and the identifiers make the series trivial to assemble. Because every row carries the monitoring_site_identifier and reference_year, a site's full nitrate history is one filtered pull sorted by year, and the number_of_samples field lets you weight or filter figures by how much monitoring stands behind each annual value. The water_body_category separates groundwater from surface-water sites so the two regimes are never mixed by accident, and the station_type and national_station_code join the EEA identifiers back to national monitoring networks. The reporting metadata — metadata_status_code and the version fields — travels on every record so two pulls taken months apart can be diffed to see which figures were revised between EEA reporting rounds, keeping a downstream nitrate table current without re-ingesting the whole country each time.

Cost guidance

One nitrate_record per delivered observation: cost = rows delivered × your plan's per-record price. Always scope with countryCode and optionally year. 1,000 observations is $50 (Free) / $33.50 (Gold). One country-year is typically a few hundred to a few thousand rows.

Honest limitations

• Monitoring data, not a safety verdict. These are reported nitrate concentrations — not a drinking-water safety determination.
• Partition required. Every run must set a countryCode; the whole table cannot be pulled unbounded.
• As reported. Concentration figures and the reporting status are carried verbatim; this actor reformats, it does not recompute.
• Acknowledge the EEA. The acknowledgement travels on every record.
• No person data of any kind.

Differentiation

It is distinct from the fleet's other EEA water cells: bathing-water carries recreational classifications and waste-water carries plant compliance, while this carries chemical concentration observations at monitoring-site grain. It is the nitrate-pressure series, site by site, year by year.

The NexGen Signal family

Part of the NexGen Signal family of pay-per-record data products:

• EU Waterbody Quality Records — EEA WISE Waterbase
• EU Bathing Water Quality Records — EEA BWD
• EU Wastewater Compliance Records — EEA UWWTD
• EU Industrial Emissions Records — EEA IED Facilities
• Air Quality Monitor Records — US EPA AQS

Source: European Environment Agency (EEA), WISE Nitrates Directive dataset (discodata.eea.europa.eu). EEA data may be reused, including commercially, provided the source is acknowledged: "Source: European Environment Agency (EEA)"; marked third-party content keeps its own terms. Monitoring data, not a drinking-water safety determination; values carried verbatim. Site-year grain; no person data of any kind.