The critical loads in the EU-DB are derived from consistent European datasets, using uniform criteria over the whole of Europe. However, as mentioned in the Introduction, they are only used for countries that have not submitted national data. Since a country can choose the type of ecosystem(s) it wants to protect (e.g. lakes) as well as the critical limits pertaining to a particular element of that ecosystem (e.g. fish), these national critical loads can differ substantially from those derived for the EU-DB (which are not used then).
The European background database for CLs (EU-DB) has been developed over the last two decades, with many of the data (bases) derived many years ago (this does not hold for the biodiversity CLs). Thus, it might be a worthwhile re-visiting the databases used and assumptions made and update where appropriate. The successor of the Coordination Centre for Effects (CCE), located at RIVM (the Netherlands) until the end of 2017, is encouraged to tackle that task.
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