The Basic Compliance Reporting And Management Unit For The World: Water Quality in Irish River Basin Districts Report, NUI, Ireland

Waterbody

• The basic compliance reporting and management unit for the world into which all rivers, lakes, ground, transitional and coastal waters are divided.
• For water, a catchment is simply defined as an area of land around a river, lake, or other body of water.
• There are 46 catchments and 583 sub-catchments across Ireland
• On catchments. ie on the Maps page

1. Find information about the current status of your local rivers, lakes, and beaches.
2. Information about how these valuable resources are being used and the environmental pressures on them.

• On the Data pages

1. Detailed results of scientific tests, including long-term trends.
2. Dashboards give information about water quality and the pressures on the catchments and sub-catchments.

Water Types – What do we have?

• Lotic – running water – continuous and with a definite direction – rivers, streams, etc
• Lentic – standing water lake, pond, marsh
• The Water Framework Directive aims at protecting and enhancing all waters –rivers, lakes, groundwater, artificially and heavily modified water bodies, transitional waters (estuaries), and coastal waters.
• Some of these are protected areas

1. Designated as requiring special protection under specific Community legislation
2. For the protection of their surface water or groundwater
3. For the conservation of habitats and species directly depending on water.