Article 9 Monitoring
United Kingdom
The competent authorities shall ensure that maps are drawn up showing the following:
the percentage of the grassland farms in each municipality which are covered by authorisations;
the percentage of the livestock in each municipality which is covered by authorisations;
the percentage of the agricultural land in each municipality which is covered by authorisations.
Those maps shall be updated every year.
The competent authorities shall establish and maintain a monitoring network for sampling of soil water, streams, shallow groundwater and drainage water at monitoring sites in grassland farms covered by an authorisation. That monitoring network shall provide data on nitrate and phosphorus concentration in water leaving the root zone and entering the groundwater and surface water system.
The monitoring network shall comprise at least 300 farms covered by authorisations and shall be representative of each soil type (clay, peat, sandy, and sandy loessial soils), the fertilisation practices and the crop rotation. The composition of the monitoring network shall not be modified during the period of applicability of this Decision.
The competent authorities shall carry out a survey and a continuous nutrient analysis that provide data on local land use, crop rotations and agricultural practices on grassland farms covered by authorisations. Those data may be used for model-based calculations of the magnitude of nitrate leaching and phosphorus losses from fields where up to 230 kg or up to 250 kg nitrogen per hectare per year of manure from grazing livestock is applied.
The competent authorities shall conduct reinforced water monitoring in agricultural catchments in sandy soils.