Key Facts

The Puck Bay area, located in northern Poland along the southern Baltic Sea coast, is used mostly for agriculture (51%), with forests covering 28%, permanent meadows and grasslands 12%, and low-density urban areas 9%. A complex groundwater system consists of several aquifer units. Shallow perched aquifers and sand lenses within moraine deposits are used locally by farms and summer houses. There are two deeper Quaternary aquifers with significant spatial extent, formed in glaciofluvial sand and gravel deposits and separated by a moraine till layer. The entire hydrological system is drained by the Baltic Sea (Bay of Puck), directly through submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) or indirectly by streams and rivers. The Quaternary aquifers are the main source of water supply in the region. The groundwater is locally contaminated with nitrogen compounds, phosphates, and potassium as a result of agricultural activity and municipal waste from households and farms, including poor sanitation, animal husbandry, storage and distribution of organic fertilizers.

Agricultural fields & Forest

Nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus)

Soil & water (surface, groundwater, sea)

Process

Transport of nutrients in soil, groundwater, and surface water with marine discharge.

Actions and expected results

• Action: Field measurements (sampling soil and groundwater – nitrogen species and phosphorus, soil hydraulic characteristics).
• Result: Better understanding of nutrient transport dynamics from agricultural fields to the sea

Challenges

• Integration of numerical models describing contaminant transport in soil and groundwater for a complex hydrogeological system
• Obtaining representative parameters for multiple types of soils and land cover to model hydrological processes and contaminant transport.

Partner involved