The sinking water table of the Homokhátság

Shallow groundwater depth at three monitoring wells on the Danube–Tisza sand ridge — Hungary’s slowly drying interior. Yearly mean depth to groundwater has grown by roughly 2.5–4 metres since the mid-20th century, and all three wells are near their deepest readings on record. Public OVF well data retrieved by an AI agent through ovf-data-mcp. Operational data — preliminary, unchecked.

Yearly mean depth to groundwater (cm below well datum)

One panel per well · deeper is lower · y-scales aligned per panel · hover or focus + arrow keys for values

Data table — yearly mean depth, all three wells

How this page was made

This page needed a tool extension: the shallow-groundwater well network (2,004 stations) wasn’t exposed by the CLI, so the agent added a --network wells option, then queried three long-record wells the same way as any river gauge:

vizugy stations search "" --network wells --municipality Orgovány
vizugy observations coverage well:1414        # available from 1934-01-02
vizugy observations aggregate well:1414 --start 1934-01-01T00:00:00Z \
    --end 1960-01-01T00:00:00Z --interval yearly --operation avg   # × 4 windows × 3 wells

These commands are the only data source. The agent then merged the JSON responses and wrote this page’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript itself — no chart libraries, no build step.

Source: Országos Vízügyi Főigazgatóság (OVF) via the public VRAQuery API · metric “Talajvízállás” (shallow groundwater level, cm), data type “operatív összefésült” · retrieved 2026-07-18 11:29 (UTC). Values are read relative to each well’s own datum and are interpreted here as depth (a growing value = a sinking water table), consistent with the documented multi-decade groundwater decline of the ridge; absolute depths below terrain may differ per well — confirm datum details with OVF before quantitative reuse. Wells are not comparable to each other in absolute terms. 2026 is partial and omitted. Operational values may be preliminary; for checked data follow OVF’s formal data-request process.