Integrated Indicators for Nutrient Pressure and Water Management

Diffuse agricultural pollution is a persistent pressure on surface water and groundwater, particularly through nitrate and phosphate inputs from agricultural land. Although monitoring data are available, they are often dispersed across institutions and sectors and are not sufficiently linked with information on soil, agricultural production and hydrological conditions. As a result, their use in planning, reporting and decision-making remains limited.

INTEGRI-WATER replicates and adapts the Path4Med solution category on integrated indicators for water management and water quality and quantity monitoring. Existing water, soil, land-use, agricultural-pressure and seasonal hydrological datasets will be screened, assessed, integrated and interpreted through a common indicator framework. The project will not develop new equipment or establish a new monitoring system; instead, it will increase the value of existing data through systematic integration.

Implementation is organised in three interconnected phases: Feasibility, Replicability and Scalability. The first phase will assess data availability, quality and compatibility, together with the technical, organisational and regulatory conditions for applying the indicators. In the second phase, the indicators will be adapted and tested in Banja Luka and the Vrbas River Basin, while the third phase will define pathways for institutional uptake, wider application and replication in other territories.

A key element of the project is the active involvement of public authorities, water managers, agricultural-sector representatives, advisors, experts and research organisations. A demonstration event involving at least 30 participants will present the indicator results, examine their clarity and practical usefulness, and collect recommendations for further improvement of the approach.

The project is expected to enable more accurate identification of areas subject to significant nutrient pressure and periods of increased vulnerability to pollution, while improving understanding of the relationships between agricultural activities, soil conditions, hydrology and water quality. The results will support more coherent water-soil-agriculture management and strengthen the analytical basis for public-authority decision-making.

The main outputs will be a Feasibility Study, a Demonstration Report and a Scale-up Plan. The methodology, assumptions and interpretation logic will be documented so that they can be reused in routine analytical and reporting practices, applied to additional datasets and replicated in other agro-hydro systems in the Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond.