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Data sources:

Data was provided from National Environmental Monitoring Department of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources under the ENI SEIS II East project activities

Note: Distribution of lake/reservoir monitoring sites to phosphate (left) and nitrate (right) concentration classes across Azerbaijan, based on the average of annual mean concentrations for 2016-2017. The number of monitoring sites is given in parenthesis.

The class system is the same as the one used in the EEA indicator WAT 003 - Nutrients in freshwater in Europe. See the indicator specification section there for further information.

Current phosphate and nitrate concentrations were generally low at river sites in Azerbaijan, and way below the national maximum allowable concentrations (1.1 mg P/l and 10 mg NO3-N/l, respectively). In the Gazakh-Ganja and Shivan regions about 40% of the sites had phosphate concentration in the range 0.02-0.05 mg P/l. These sites should receive particular attention in the case of increasing phosphate concentrations. The nitrate concentration was always below 0.2 mg NO3-N/l.

Low nitrate concentrations were found also for lakes and reservoirs, although slightly higher than for rivers. Lake Shabran and Jandar had concentration above 0.8 mg NO3-N/l, and only Jeyranbatan reservoir was below 0.2 mg NO3-N/l. For phosphate the difference was bigger, with 30% of the sites above 0.1 mg P/l. This represents only three sites (Boyukshor, Lake Shabran and Yasamal gol), but for these sites the phosphate level is sufficiently high to cause eutrophication.