The Expert Panel on Nitrogen Budgets (EPNB) provides expert guidance to the Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen in providing mass-consistent information of the fate of nitrogen in the environment. It was initiated at the first meeting of the Task Force in Wageningen, Netherlands, in June 2008 as an ad-hoc expert panel. Between 2008 and 2024, 22 meetings of the EPNB have been organized, many of which coincided with regular task force meetings. The most recent EPNB meeting was organized November 5-6, 2024, in Dessau, Germany. Minutes of that meeting are available as a pdf file at the end of this page, including action notes. Presentations and further material are hosted by Umweltbundesamt, Germany, at this external web site.
EPNB prepared the “Guidance Document on National Nitrogen Budgets”. The document was presented and approved at the 31st meeting of the Executive Body of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, versions in French and Russian are available and can be found in the attachments at the bottom of this page. These documents are supported by detailed provisions of creating N budgets. Based on extensive user feedback from previous versions, a revision and completion of the guidance document has been commissioned. A final draft, subject to copy-editing, of the Annexes to the GD is now available (bottom of this page). Slight logical discrepancies that currently may appear between the Annexes and the Guidance Document will be taken care of by consistency improvements by way of a revision of the Guidance Document itself – a draft update of which has been submitted as an official document to the WGSR session in May 2025 (https://unece.org/environment/documents/2025/03/working-documents/draft-revised-guidance-document-national-nitrogen).
The complete and detailed guidance also contains a template for reporting NNBs (Excel template including some simple vizualization tools) and a template to export data to display Nr flows using the STAN software (as a zip-file, for details please consult the Annexes to the GD). Both documents are available for download at the bottom of this page. With ample background material available, EPNB will strive for a Call-for-data to be issued to country delegates via the WGSR.
Anyone interested to establish national nitrogen budgets is recommended to consult the material presented on this page, as well as looking into the material provided in the external web site linked to above. Please feel free to contact the EPNB co-chairs (Wilfried Winiwarter, winiwarter(at)iiasa.ac.at, and Markus Geupel, markus.geupel(at)uba.de) to get involved in the further activities of the Expert Panel.