Inventories of point and diffuse sources and estimated nutrient loads — a comparison for different river basins in central europe

A comparison of the estimated emissions (input) with the measured loads at monitoring stations (output) is presented for the large Rivers Rhine, Elbe and its main tributaries and for the River Warnow, a smaller river in the north-east part of Germany. The comparison shows that the discrepancies between the estimated emissions and the measured load is small for the Rhine and its main tributaries, Mosel, Neckar and Main. Large discrepancies were found for the Elbe and its main tributaries. For all investigated river systems a strong relationship exists between the quotient of measured nutrient load versus the estimated sum of point and diffuse emissions of nutrients and the areal specific runoff. A function is derived for the dependency of the sum of retention and/or losses in a river system on the specific runoff and the nutrient concentration in the river. The high accuracy of the estimated retention and/or losses within the different river basins offer the possibility to use these equations for a prediction of the emitted nutrients from measured nutrient load in similar rivers.