Earth System Science Data (Oct 2024)

Gridded dataset of nitrogen and phosphorus point sources from wastewater in Germany (1950–2019)

  • F. J. Sarrazin,
  • F. J. Sarrazin,
  • S. Attinger,
  • S. Attinger,
  • R. Kumar

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4673-2024
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16
pp. 4673 – 4708

Abstract

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Knowledge about the long history of the anthropogenic inputs of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) is crucial to capture long-term N and P processes (legacies) and to investigate water quality and ecosystem health. These inputs include N and P point sources, which mainly originate from wastewater and which are directly discharged into surface waters, thus having an immediate impact on ecosystem functioning. However, N and P point sources are challenging to estimate, due to the scarcity of and uncertainty in observational data. Here, we contribute towards improved characterisation of N and P point sources from wastewater by providing a long-term (1950–2019), high-resolution (0.015625° ≈1.4 km on average) dataset for Germany. The dataset includes both domestic and industrial emissions treated in wastewater treatment plants and untreated domestic emissions that are collected in the sewer system. We adopt a modelling approach that relies on a large range of data collected from different sources. Importantly, we account for the uncertainties arising from different modelling choices (i.e. coefficients and downscaling approach). We provide 200 gridded N and P point source realisations, which are constrained and evaluated using available (recent) observations of wastewater treatment plants' outgoing loads. We discuss the uncertainties in our reconstructed dataset over a large sample of river basins in Germany and provide guidance for future uses. Overall, by capturing the long-term spatial and temporal variations in N and P point sources and accounting for uncertainties, our dataset can facilitate long-term and large-scale robust water quality studies. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10500535 (Sarrazin et al., 2024).