The Attraction of Water
Humankind has a long held fascination and attraction to bodies of water, including lakes, rivers, seas and oceans. There is a primal urge to live near water, perhaps driven by our ancestral need for water to survive. With this in mind we set out to determine which counties in Ireland give us the most opportunity to interact with water using a novel methodology (see below).
County Rankings for Water
County Donegal has the highest percentage of its land mass in contact with the ocean or containing lakes. Not surprisingly, the top four ‘water counties’ (Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Kerry) are found along the deeply indented western coastline with its many islands, peninsulas and bays. County Dublin with a long coastline relative to its area comes in 5th place. The top 11 counties all have substantial coastlines. Longford, in 12th place, is the highest ranked of the inland counties. Laois has the lowest percentage of water.
| Rank | County | % Water Area | Liveability Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donegal | 16.9 | 100 |
| 2 | Mayo | 15.6 | 92 |
| 3 | Galway | 15.5 | 91 |
| 4 | Kerry | 14.3 | 84 |
| 5 | Dublin | 14.0 | 82 |
| 6 | Clare | 13.5 | 79 |
| 7 | Sligo | 11.5 | 68 |
| 8 | Louth | 10.7 | 63 |
| 9 | Cork | 9.6 | 56 |
| 10 | Wexford | 9.5 | 56 |
| 11 | Waterford | 8.4 | 50 |
| 12 | Longford | 7.2 | 42 |
| 13 | Leitrim | 7.1 | 42 |
| 14 | Roscommon | 5.3 | 31 |
14 | Westmeath | 5.3 | 31 |
| 16 | Cavan | 4.7 | 28 |
| 17 | Wicklow | 4.4 | 26 |
| 18 | Limerick | 2.6 | 15 |
| 19 | Tipperary | 2.1 | 12 |
| 20 | Monaghan | 1.8 | 11 |
| 21 | Meath | 1.4 | 8 |
| 22 | Kilkenny | 1.0 | 6 |
| 23 | Kildare | 0.2 | 1 |
| 24 | Carlow | 0.1 | 0 |
24 | Offaly | 0.1 | 0 |
| 26 | Laois | 0.0 | 0 |
Methodology
For our analysis, we used data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Water Framework Directive (WFD). As part of the implementation of the WFD, the EPA produced a map of every significant water body in Ireland. This mapping data is broken up into three primary categories: rivers and lakes, transitional water bodies, and coastal water bodies.
We ignored inland rivers in our analysis as they lack a well defined area in the data. Furthermore, many of the river water bodies with significant area are covered in the transitional water body dataset. We also excluded any lake with an area of less then 0.25 km² as these were deemed to be of little recreational use. The total area of all lakes in each county was calculated in QGIS.
The EPA defines transitional waters as bodies of water near the coast that are partially saline but still strongly influenced by freshwater flow. Coastal water bodies commence at the high water mark or at the boundaries of transitional water bodies and extend 1 nautical mile out to sea. These water bodies were added to the county’s total water area if they were within the county boundaries or lay within 1km of the county’s coastline.
The total water area from lakes, transitional and coastal water bodies were added together for each county and expressed as a percentage of the county’s total area to produce the scores shown above.