Water bodies

Water bodies are essential elements of Finland’s rural areas. They offer us nutrition and energy and serve as transport routes. Waters are also valuable for recreation, landscapes and biodiversity. 

The ecological status of most of Finland’s surface waters is good. For the most part, the state of the groundwater areas is also good. The main problem in marine areas is eutrophication, and the majority of small water bodies such as brooks and springs have lost some of their special characteristics or been destroyed due to land use. The state of the open sea areas is influenced by loading from the whole Baltic Sea catchment area, but emissions to the inland and coastal waters are primarily of Finnish origin. The main factor affecting the status of waters is eutrophication caused by nutrient loading.

Human activities have major impacts on the state of waters

Some of the nutrient emissions are of natural origin, i.e. natural leaching, but most of the loading is caused by human activities such as industry, settlements, agriculture and forestry. In Finland more than half of the nutrient loading caused by human activities that ends up in surface waters comes from agriculture. Agriculture is a significant source of emissions especially in catchment areas where arable farming is the dominant type of land use. Nutrients and soil materials leach to waters especially in snow melt and rain waters during the spring and autumn. In southern Finland the loading can be quite severe in mild winters as well.

Nutrient loading can be prevented in many ways

Various kinds of measures are taken to reduce nutrient loading from agriculture. However, it takes some time before the impacts of these measures can be seen, and climate change makes the situation even more challenging. Calculations show a slight decrease in phosphorus emissions from agriculture. This is mainly due to the water protection measures that have been taken over the years. Instead, there has been no significant decrease in nitrogen loading. The most likely cause for this is the way climate change influences the leaching of nutrients.

EU funding for agriculture and rural areas is the key instrument of water protection in agriculture. Measures to improve the state of the environment are included in Finland’s CAP Strategic Plan and water protection has been taken into account in the requirements for agriculture and the basic conditions of the support payments. Among the basic conditions are plant cover on arable lands in winter and buffer strips along watercourses. When the land is covered with plants over the winter, their roots prevent the leaching of soil material and nutrients to waters. Arable lands that are in a good condition offer favourable habitats to soil organisms and retain nutrients more effectively to be used by the plants. Plant cover in winter may also contribute to carbon sequestration. Various kinds of fertilisation practices can also be used to mitigate nutrient loading.

The measures to reduce the movement of nutrients that have already leached into waters include the construction of wetlands and other structures that retain water and maintenance of a good soil structure and appropriate drainage to take care of the water balance of arable lands. Funding for rural areas can be used to support controlled subsurface drainage on cropland to regulate the groundwater level, where necessary. This contributes to preventing nutrient runoff and protecting waters against loading from acid sulphate soils as well.

Nutrient balances tell about the risk of loading

Nutrient balances can be used to monitor the nutrient loading risk of arable lands. Nutrient balances show the difference between the amount of nutrients applied and that removed in the harvested crop. The smaller the numerical value, the less nutrients that are susceptible to leaching are left in arable soils. The amount of excess nutrients tells about the risk of nutrient loading, and the realisation of this risk depends e.g. on the prevailing weather conditions and the soil structure. As such, nutrient balances do not show the amount of loading entering the waters but they can be used to assess the risk of such loading.

One of the water protection targets of Finland’s CAP Strategic Plan is to reduce the nutrient balances of agriculture to 46 kg/hectare for nitrogen and less than 5 kg/hectare for phosphorus by 2027. Over the past three decades the nutrient balances have decreased in the whole country. The main reason for this is more accurate use of artificial fertilisers. During the five-year period 2018–2022 the average nitrogen balance in the whole country was 48 kg/hectare and the phosphorus balance was 4.5 kg/hectare. 

Related topics

CAP Strategic Plan (in Finnish)
Water

Related links

Nutrient balance of agricultural lands on the website of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (in Finnish)
Information on the state of the Finnish environment on the website of Finland’s environmental administration