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Firstly, European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) countries are subject to diffuse pollution management and reviews under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD – OJEU, 2000), associated daughter directives and national legislations. We limit our study to agricultural catchments in Western Europe for two reasons. Such complexity ordinarily prevents the decoupling of agricultural effects from climate effects 14. We acknowledge that hydrometeorological processes drive P and N diffuse pollution and are linked to mobilisation processes which, at the landscape scale, are related to land use and soil nutrient management and status 16. We specifically investigate the interactions between the local catchment scale and larger, oceanic scale climate and weather patterns. Here, as part of this challenge, we examine the possible links between inter-annual weather cycles and water quality 2 considering phosphorus (P) as dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) or total reactive phosphorus (TRP) and nitrogen (N) as nitrate in runoff from agricultural land, with regard to their importance for drinking water quality and risk of eutrophication 15. Despite being driven by climatic factors, these last two factors are often not explicitly taken into account when analysing changes and effects on water quality. The four parameters are clearly linked 2 and have consequences within review frameworks. increased livestock density) 8, 9, and effective levels of actions implemented, ii) temporal chemical patterns (concentration and its variability) in stream water, in relation to monitoring periods and catchment response times 10, iii) knowledge of catchment-related processes driving water quality 11 and associated hydrological time lags (months to years) and biogeochemical (years to decades) time lags 12, degradation and recovery, including human activities 13, and iv) changes in weather 14.
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The expectation on improving water quality at larger scales may, however, be hindered by the i) changes in agricultural practices and intensity ( e.g. the farm), which may ultimately constrain agricultural production nationally and internationally 7. The issue widens to actor-stakeholder expectations of investment in mitigation actions at the most local source scale ( viz.
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This is due in part to the complex rainfall-runoff pathways between soil surface sources in the agricultural landscape and receiving water bodies 5, 6. Agricultural diffuse pollution of water resources caused by losses of agro-chemicals and manure (including nutrients and pesticides) from land to water, is a particularly challenging and on-going issue. While climate is studied at global and regional scales, water quality is more often studied locally.īoth urban and rural pressures on water quality are subject to the most rigorous analysis based on monitoring and policy review regimes with cost-benefits scrutinized over defined time-scales 3, 4. However, research that links water quality with climate is yet scarce due to their inherent complexity and the fact that both are often studied at different scales 2. The integration of systems science is recognized as a global challenge for sustainability 1. Developing integrated climate-chemical indicators into catchment monitoring indicators will provide a new and important contribution to water quality management objectives. Upward trends in these decadal oscillations may override positive benefits of local management in some years or indicate greater benefits in other years. These influences were catchment-specific showing positive, negative or no correlation according to a typology. On an annual scale, we found correlations between local catchment-scale nutrient concentrations in rivers and the influence of larger, oceanic-scale climate patterns defined by the intensity of the North Atlantic Oscillation. Specifically, we investigated the influences and relationships between weather processes amplified by the North Atlantic Oscillation during a sharp upward trend (2010–2016) and the patterns of diffuse nitrate and phosphorus pollution in rivers. Here, we present the development of climate-chemical indicators of diffuse pollution in highly monitored catchments in Western Europe. Amplified cycles of weather can also influence nutrient loss to water although they are less considered in policy reviews. Management of agricultural diffuse pollution to water remains a challenge and is influenced by the complex interactions of rainfall-runoff pathways, soil and nutrient management, agricultural landscape heterogeneity and biogeochemical cycling in receiving water bodies.