NEMNET
National Environmental Monitoring Network
The National Environmental Monitoring Networks is performed by the RIVM and monitors a broad spectrum of environmental compartments, such as air quality, soil and groundwater quality and noise to guarantee a healthy environment and public health safety. The infrastructure consist of national monitoring network for long term trend analysis of air quality, deposition and water quality and nosise. In addition the monitoring networks have separate research and innovation programs to investigate other new promising methods and techniques
Infrastructure and User Services
Air quality/deposition:
The infrastructure for air quality monitoring consists of various elements: 50 state of the art measurement stations and wells in a grid across the Netherlands. The air quality monitoring network measures a variety of pollutants (e.g., SO2, NOx, O3, PM10, PM2.5, NH3, soot (black carbon), CO, benzene, toluene, UFP). In combination with advanced modelling facilities forecasts are given for air quality concentrations and smog. 5 Conditional Time Averaged Gradient (COTAG) devices in Natura-2000 nature area’s. Platform for high tech development of ‘Next Generation Environmental Monitoring’ systems. A variety of sensor systems. Validation and calibration facilities for gaseous and PM sensor systems. Dissemination channel via websites with visualization platforms and various apps. Moreover effects of manure are monitored, and acidification and ammoniac is measured
Innovation of the air quality and deposition is accommodated in (among others) LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), DOAS (Differential Optical Absorption Spectometry) and SamenMeten (Citizen Science), ICT platform for crowd sourcing of floating sensor information from among others citizen science projects.
Soil Quality / Water Quality :
450 commercial farms (in 2025) on which both water quality and agricultural practice are measured in the Netherlands, The farms are a stratified random sample of Dutch agriculture. 350 monitoring wells in which a broad spectrum of parameters are analyzed on two depths. In 11 natura-2000 nature area’s water the upper groundwater is monitored. Innovation of the measurement method is accommodated in the Water Sensors Innovation Programme (WaterSNIP). Also included in NEMNET is the Noise Monitoring Network of the Netherlands. In this network, noise measurements are performed at 80 locations along motorways and railways.
Examples/description of the type of research
- Long term trend line analysis of groundwater quality, air quality, leaching from farm lands.
- Deposition of ammonia providing a full coverage of several environmental parameters.
- Providing data for model calibration.
- Source apportionment of air quality parameters, especially particulate matter (PM).
- Research on the exposure and health effects of air quality parameters/pollutants.
- International research on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution.
How to access the infrastructure?
The measurement platforms can be used for under supervision of RIVM staff. They can be used for testing and calibration equipment. The Data and other research results are considered ‘open data’ as much as possible and are published in peer-reviewed journals.