Open environmental data - which sources are worth knowing
Before you start measuring on your own, it is worth knowing what is already publicly available - because much environmental data in Poland can be downloaded for free. It is useful as context for your own measurements, as a reference and often as ready-made material for analysis. Here is an overview of the most important sources.
The most important sources
- IMGW-PIB - meteorological data (temperature, rainfall, wind) and hydrological data (water levels, flows). Details: IMGW-PIB data.
- GIOŚ - the State Environmental Monitoring: air quality (with an API) and water quality. Details: GIOŚ data.
- Wody Polskie - water management: codes and maps of JCWP, river basin management plans, information on permits (see JCWP).
- Geoportal - the national portal of maps and spatial data (hydrography layers, orthophotomaps, boundaries).
- Sanitary-epidemiological stations (sanepid) - data on the quality of bathing waters in season.
- GUS (Statistics Poland) - public statistics (including environmental and water-management data at the national/regional scale).
- European sources - e.g. Copernicus (Earth observation, satellites) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) - data and indicators at the continental scale.
How to use them wisely
- Check the metadata - units, frequency, station location and the method of measurement; without this it is easy to misinterpret.
- Match in time and space - the nearest station and the same time interval are the basis of comparisons.
- Cite the source - in reports and publications.
In practice
The greatest value comes from setting public data against your own measurements - then you can see the causes and relationships. How to do this without the tedious stitching of spreadsheets, we describe in the article How to combine your own measurements with public data; LimnoLog can pull in some of these sources (IMGW, GIOŚ) automatically through connectors.
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