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. EPNB-23, was organized as a virtual meeting January 28, 2026. Minutes of that meeting are available as a pdf file at the end of this page, including action notes. Please feel free to contact EPNB co-chairs, markus.geupel(at)uba.de or wilfried.winiwarter(at)iiasa.ac.at in case of any questions, also regarding possibilities to contribute.
EPNB prepared the “Guidance Document on National Nitrogen Budgets”. The document was presented and approved at the 31st session of the Executive Body of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution in 2013. An update has been approved at the 45th session of the EB in December 2025 (official meeting document ECE/EB.AIR/WG.5/2025/3, to be replaced here by the official version in three UNECE languages as soon as this is available). Based on extensive user feedback from previous versions, also the Annexes to the Guidance Document have been revised so that the Guidance Document and its Annexes (the complete user guidance) are now fully consistent.
The Annexes, produced under contract for the German Environment Agency, are now available as a report. The complete and detailed guidance, available at the same web site, also contains a template for reporting NNBs (Excel template including some simple vizualization tools - please note the update to Version 1.1 during summer 2026) 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; software is available for free provided by TU Vienna). These instructions are supported by a Summary for Policy Makers (available at the bottom of this page).
With the approach also scientifically backed-up (the methodology and the implementaton for Austria as well as for Sweden have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters), the EPNB chairs have introduced recent progress made to the National Delegates to the LRTAP Convention at a meeting in Helsingor, Denmark, Oct 20-23, 2025, requesting a voluntary Call-for-data to be issued in order to extend experience and database of national nitrogen budgets. The EB at its meeting in December 2025 also endorsed this Call-for-data and included it to the work plan for 2026/27.
At the recent EPNB-23, the documents for the call-for-data were agreed upon and officially distributed on March 3, 2026, by the UNECE secretariat. These documents (Call for data, Technical Note) can be downloaded from below. Implementation of the call-for-data will be a topic of the upcoming TFRN-21 in Leiden (NL). Due to time constraints in Leiden, an associated EPNB meeting (EPNB-24) will be held a week later, October 15, as an online meeting. Participation requires registration, please contct EPNB co-chairs (see e-mail addresses above) if you are interested to join.
EPNB-24 tentatve agenda (October 15, 2 – 4 pm CEST (Berlin/Vienna/Brussels))
- Report from TFRN-21 (Leiden) and implications for EPNB
- Status of Call-for-Data
- Experience of peer-2-peer group
- Tour-de-Table and national feedback
- Need for a training session
- Next meeting (in person): tentatively scheduled for last week of February, 2027, in Zielona Góra, Poland