FreshWater Watch archive
The VattenFokus Blitz: citizen water testing in Sörmland, Sweden, 2017 and 2018
This address: freshwaterwatch.thewaterhub.org once held the VattenFokus Blitz results map from FreshWater Watch, Earthwatch's citizen science programme. The project's own website is no longer online; this page is The Water Hub's own summary of what its researchers and Earthwatch published.
VattenFokus was a Swedish citizen science project that used Earthwatch's FreshWater Watch kits to have volunteers test the lakes, rivers and streams of the Sörmland region, around Flen municipality and Lake Dunkern, in short campaigns called water blitzes; its 25 to 26 May 2018 blitz is the one this address mapped, and the waters sampled were generally in good ecological status.
Who ran it
VattenFokus was part of Ground Truth 2.0, an EU research project on citizen observatories coordinated by IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, with Stockholm University and Gavagai AB as its Swedish participants (CORDIS); Earthwatch describes it as a Swedish citizen science project using FreshWater Watch (Earthwatch). Researchers at Stockholm University led its design team (Cerratto Pargman and others, 2019).
How the blitzes worked
The project engaged the public twice a year in water blitzes, campaigns of 48 to 72 hours in which volunteers sampled as many water bodies as they could. Over the project, about 100 volunteers gathered 245 water samples from 60 water bodies in Sörmland (Cerratto Pargman and others, 2019), and Earthwatch's 2018 review gives the same scale: more than 100 volunteers testing over 60 water bodies (Earthwatch annual review 2018). The first, in Flen on 30 September and 1 October 2017, took 51 samples from 39 participants (FreshWater Watch, 2017, archived).
What the blitzes found
After the 2017 blitz the project reported that most lakes, rivers and ponds in Flen municipality had good ecological status. Earthwatch's summary of the 2018 blitzes found the same across Sörmland, with one caveat: in some areas used mainly for farming there was an imbalance between nitrates and phosphates (Earthwatch, 2018). Sörmland's was one of three blitzes in Europe that year, with the Thames and Ravenna, which together drew more than 750 people and more than 400 water samples. We found no published sample count for the May 2018 event alone.
Testing your own water
The nutrients a blitz measures are the ones that decide whether a well is safe: the US limit for nitrate in public drinking water is 10 mg/L as nitrogen (EPA). Our answer on home water test kits covers what a household can test itself.
Next: water testing services compared on The Water Hub.
Questions
What was VattenFokus?
A Swedish citizen science project in Sörmland, part of the EU's Ground Truth 2.0, that used FreshWater Watch kits for volunteer water testing in 2017 and 2018.
When was the VattenFokus Blitz?
The blitz this address mapped ran on 25 and 26 May 2018; an earlier one in Flen ran on 30 September and 1 October 2017.
What did VattenFokus find?
The lakes, rivers and streams sampled were generally in good ecological status, with a nitrate and phosphate imbalance in some farming areas.
Sources
- CORDIS: Ground Truth 2.0 (project 689744), read 2026-10-21
- Earthwatch: Ground Truth 2.0 week, read 2026-10-21
- Cerratto Pargman and others, LIMITS 2019, read 2026-10-21
- Earthwatch: Water Blitz results, 2018, read 2026-10-21
- Earthwatch annual review 2018, read 2026-10-21
- FreshWater Watch: the Flen Vatten Blitz, 2017 (archived), read 2026-10-21
- The VattenFokus Blitz page, 2018 (archived), read 2026-10-21