Background
Society aims for a pollutant-free environment, reflected in initiatives under the European Green Deal, which seek to reduce hazardous substances and promote safe, sustainable chemical use. Comprehensive exposure data are needed to identify sources, understand mixtures and eliminate sources of chemical pollution. High-resolution mass spectrometry non-target screening (HRMS NTS) is increasingly used in environmental regulatory context to chemically characterise the environment as completely as possible and retrospectively screen for known and emerging substances.
Results
This study provides use cases for monitoring and chemicals management with data from the German NTSPortal, a database and visualisation tool for HRMS NTS data from surface water and suspended particulate matter of major German rivers. Its internal spectral library enables substance identification comparable to standardised target analysis, supporting regulatory acceptance of HRMS NTS data for prioritisation and mixture assessment. To demonstrate its potential to research and regulation, we characterised the spatial and temporal distribution of riverine chemical mixtures and present selected use cases relevant to EU environmental, emission, and chemical legislation. Despite pronounced spatial variability, mixture composition based on presence–absence data remained stable over time, with 855 of 1721 substances detected at least once and 247 occurring ubiquitously. Declining trends for regulated substances such as carbendazim and climbazole illustrate the effectiveness of regulatory measures. Overall, the results showed that NTS data repositories can help overcome fragmented exposure information and enable more consistent use of monitoring data across policy areas, including evaluation of the revised Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and One Health concepts.
Conclusions
Data from the German NTSPortal enabled a multi-matrix and temporal characterisation of riverine chemical mixtures, revealing both stable mixture compositions over time and persistent, catchment-specific substances. These data facilitated high-resolution mixture assessments across space and time, alongside trend analyses that meet regulatory needs in environmental monitoring and chemical risk assessment. Further temporal, spatial, chemical and matrix-spanning expansion of HRMS NTS repositories will enhance their value for environmental monitoring programmes. Strengthening interoperability, implementing FAIR data principles, and developing advanced tools for prioritisation, quantification and toxicity prediction, including AI-based approaches, will be crucial to fully realise the regulatory potential of NTS portals in the future. © The Author(s) 2026.
The HYPERMAQ dataset contributes to a better description of marine optics in optically complex water bodies by providing optical and biogeochemical parameters for 180 sampling stations with turbidity and chlorophyll-a concentration ranging between 1 to 700 FNU and between 0.9 to 180 mg m-3 respectively. The HYPERMAQ dataset is composed of biogeochemical parameters (i.e. turbidity, suspended particulate matter, chlorophyll-a and other phytoplankton pigments concentrations), apparent optical properties (i.e. water reflectance from above water measurements) and inherent optical properties (i.e. absorption and attenuation coefficients) from six different study areas. These study areas include large estuaries (i.e. the Rio de la Plata in Argentina, the Yangtze Estuary in China and the Gironde Estuary in France), inland waters (i.e. the Spuikom in Belgium and Chascomus Lake in Argentina) and coastal waters (Belgium). All data were collected between April and September 2018.
This publication provides a database on metal contamination of sediments collected along seven rivers draining Western Europe (French Rhône, Garonne-Lot, Loire, Meuse, Rhine, Scheldt and Seine Rivers). This dataset is based on both long-term monitoring and scientific research (see column sources). It presents major (Al, Fe) and trace metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Zn) coming from various solid matrices, such as suspended particulate matter (SPM), dated sediment cores (DSC), and bed and flood deposits (BFD). It also provides information about the extraction procedure, grain-size (expressed as a percentage of the fine particle [silts and clays < 63 µm] proportion in the samples) and total organic carbon (TOC) contents when available. It could be use to assess the level of metal contamination along the river since 1945 and to decipher the key factors influencing metal concentrations in river sediments over space and time.
Gegenwärtig existiert keine allgemeingültige analytische Theorie der Resuspension kohäsiver Sedimente, so dass deren Wirkungen aus in situoder Rinnenexperimenten abgeleitet werden müssen. Die vorliegende Studie zielt auf die Bewertung der Resuspension von Sediment und Phosphor (P) sowie die Bestimmung der Erosionsgrenzwerte und Austragsraten. Bei Kossenblatt, das einen langsam fließenden (0,1-0,3 m s-1) Abschnitt des Flachlandflusses Spree repräsentiert, wurden Experimente in situ (INS) und mit Oberflächensediment (0-3 cm) im Labor (LAB) mit Hilfe einer Erosionskammer (Mikrokosmos) durchgeführt. Zur Quantifizierung der Resuspension und des P Austrags wurde die Schergeschwindigkeit (u x) stufenweise von 0,57 auf 1,67 cm s-1 erhöht. Bei größerer Sedimentheterogenität, machte INS die Anwesenheit einer sog. 'fluff' (flockenartigen) Grenzschicht deutlich, die leicht bei der geringsten u x erodiert wurde und von einem ähnlich hohen P-Austrag wie bei doppelt so hoher u x begleitet war. Bei geringerer Sedimentheterogenität, im LAB fehlte diese 'fluff' Schicht, die offensichtlich dem Anteil an Partikeln entspricht, der bereits während der Beprobung erodiert wurde. Unsere Experimente belegen, dass es schwierig ist, die natürlichen unfühlbaren Bedingungen der 'fluff' Schicht im Laborexperiment nachzustellen, wodurch der Austrag von Partikeln und P mit Neigung zur Resuspension bei geringer u x unterschätzt wird.