The Global Lakes Explorer: A basin-to-global scale data visualisation application for the assessment of nutrient emissions to lakes

Phosphorus and nitrogen are critical plant nutrients, essential for fertiliser production and global food security. However, poor management across the anthropogenic nutrient cycles leads to losses associated with pollution of water bodies, driving eutrophication, biodiversity loss, and methane emissions. Addressing these interconnected challenges requires a sustainable, integral, and where possible, circular approach across the entire phosphorus cycle. However, data on phosphorus and nitrogen emissions and impacts are fragmented across sectors and lack standardisation. Here, we introduce a new open-access web-based application: the ‘Global Lakes Explorer’, which harmonises phosphorus and nitrogen emissions data alongside socio-economic and biodiversity risk factors spanning over 50 variables from multiple open data sources, covering more than 40,000 lake catchments worldwide. It enables users to visualise and download information on nutrient emissions across sectors, including agriculture, aquaculture, and wastewater, alongside socio-economic and environmental indicators. The app supports integrated governance on sustainable nutrient management in lake catchments by providing hindcasted emission data (1970-2015) in addition to future scenarios relating to shared socio-economic pathways (2015–2070) under various development projections. In this paper, we present several potential use cases for the app, including scenarios in which stakeholders can visualise and download forecasted nutrient emissions for their lake catchment of choice. This open access tool is intended to help identify potential nutrient pollution risk areas, support national governments in targeting efforts where they can have the greatest impact, and provide a foundation for more informed, collaborative, and context-specific nutrient management strategies.