The state of the environment

The quality of land, water and air is changed by many different activities, such as transport, industry and construction. In addition, the state of the environment is threatened by various accident situations in industry or chemical transport. Changes in the state of the environment occur slowly and are therefore difficult to detect.

Information about the state of the environment is collected through the monitoring of authorities and industrial facilities. The mandatory monitoring of industrial facilities provides regular information on, for example, auxiliary gas emissions and water and sewer loading.

Air quality in Riihimäki is most affected by car traffic in the agglomeration and highway traffic outside the agglomeration. There is very little industry in Riihimäki that heavily burdens the environment. Of the lakes, especially Lake Paalijärvi and Lake Vähäjärvi, which flows into it, are heavily eutrophic. The intensive economic use of Riihimäki's forests threatens biodiversity.

Environmental status monitoring

According to the Environmental Protection Act, the municipality's task is to regionally take care of the necessary monitoring of the state of the environment required by local conditions. The vitality board is responsible for these tasks in Riihimäki.

Monitoring aims to find out the changes in the state of the environment. The monitoring is characterized by long duration, regular sampling and multiple observations of the environment. Along with research and surveys, monitoring is one way to obtain reliable, up-to-date and usable environmental information.

Efforts have been made to develop monitoring of the state of the environment in the direction of integrated monitoring, i.e. changes in the state of the environment, i.e. biodiversity, air quality, waterways and groundwater quality, and soil quality are monitored in a certain experimental area. In order to monitor the state of the environment, Riihimäki has monitoring programs for air quality, groundwater and surface water, and biodiversity.