UNEP GEMS Water Global Freshwater Quality Archive

Large-sample datasets are essential in hydrological science to support modelling studies and global assessments. The present dataset compiles all freshwater quality data that is available under open data policy (CC BY 4.0 or equivalent) at the GEMStat database for global water quality (www.gemstat.org). It includes over 20,000,000 measurements on 608 water quality parameters, covering 13,660 stations in 37 countries over the time period from 1906 to 2023.

GEMStat is operated by the GEMS/Water programme of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and hosted at the International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change (ICWRGC) and the German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG). The data in GEMStat is provided by National Hydrological Services of UN member states.

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Cite this as

Saile, Philipp (2024). UNEP GEMS Water Global Freshwater Quality Archive [Data set].
Private DOI This DOI is not yet resolvable.
It is available for use in manuscripts, and will be published when the Dataset is made public or updated.

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Basic information
Resource type Spatial data set
Date of creation 2025-01-20
Date of last revision 2025-01-20
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Metadata identifier UNEP-GEMS-Water-Global-Freshwater-Quality-Archive
Metadata language English
Themes (DCAT-AP)
High-value dataset category Earth observation and environment
ISO 19115 topic category inlandWaters
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Spatial information
INSPIRE identifier
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Bounding Box
"{\"type\": \"Polygon\", \"coordinates\": [[[-61.774513, 17.13942], [-61.891476, 17.026743], [-61.677376, 17.041925], [-61.774513, 17.13942]]]}"
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Responsible Party
Name of the dataset creator Saile, Philipp
Name of the dataset maintainer Lisniak, Dmytro
Identifier of the dataset creator
Email of the dataset creator saile@bafg.de
Identifier of the dataset maintainer
Email of the dataset maintainer lisniak@bafg.de
Website of the dataset maintainer https://waterandchange.org/dmytro-lisniak/