Gridded actual groundwater, surface water and tidal water abstraction, discharge and Hands-off Flow datasets for England (1999 to 2014)

This dataset contains recorded or ‘actual’ abstraction and discharge data for sites across England that have been transformed into 1 km × 1 km resolution gridded data along with surface water Hands-off Flow (HoF) conditions, and are available in CSV and/or NetCDF formats. It includes:

(i) Monthly abstractions (m3 month-1) from 1999 to 2014 for each source (Groundwater, Surface Water or Tidal Water)
(ii) Mean monthly abstractions (m3 month-1) over the period 2010 to 2014 for each source (Groundwater, Surface Water or Tidal Water)
(iii) Daily rate of Consented Dry Weather flow (CDWF)and Recent Actual (RACT) discharges (m3 day-1) based on information from a 6-year period ending in 2017
(iv) Hands-off Flow (HoF) conditions (m3 day-1) for 2022

Further details, including caveats about usage, are provided in the linked Data Document.

These data were sourced from the Environment Agency (EA) monthly groundwater, surface water and tidal water abstraction data from 1999 to 2014, and annual discharges and surface water Hands-off Flow (HoF) conditions were obtained from the EA’s Water Resources Geographic Information System (WRGIS 2017 and 2022 versions respectively).

This data publication is supported by the Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/X019063/1 as part of the Hydro-JULES programme delivering National Capability. The dataset is also linked with the Climate Services for a Net Zero Resilient World (CS-N0W) project.