2014 is the final year of research in this DEFRA /EU funded project which started in 2009. It has taken four river catchments; the rivers Tamar, Hampshire Avon, Wensum, and Eden in Cumbria. The lead research organisation being Lancaster University. There are other stakeholders involved, including academic including Cumbria University, King’s College London, and Durham University, University of East Anglia the Environment Agency, Natural England, ADAS, Freshwater Biological Association and West Country Rivers Trust: who are demonstrating their work on the River Tamar. Other organisations are involved with the individual river catchments. Industry partners include the water companies and soft and hardware development and manufacturing companies with regard to monitoring and logging equipment.
The purpose of the research is to address the issues around farming practices, diffuse pollution sources and nutrient leaching from soils, specifically nitrates and phosphorus. The research has used data that is available on these well monitored waterways, they are and have for many years been unusually carefully monitored river systems.
One of the persistent sources of pollution to inland waters; both lakes and rivers is a consistent presence of artificial nutrients. The agricultural community are a major source for their presence in rivers due not just to current practice but more the historic usage over the last 100 years. Much of this information is well-known, but this project has tried to reverse the involvement of those involved; the landowners and managers of the countryside, farmers and environmental organisations demonstrating to government their ability to function together whilst delivering effective land management measures that are demonstrable and measurable using cutting edge technologies.
For the project three or four sub catchments have been identified in each of the four river systems to focus the demonstrations of ways of achieving and monitoring the real time past and present effects of land management. These sub zones are sites that have been subject to previous work so that a pedigree of knowledge is already available so creating some forms of base line characterisation.
The four areas of research across England are strikingly different in their manner both in techniques and reporting underscoring the diversity of the rivers and the localities in which they are located. Unusually for projects of this nature the reporting is much to do with results and findings rather than the methodologies.
The River Eden in Cumbria.
The River Eden sub catchments are illustrated above and form a portion of this important game fishery that has seen declines over recent years in salmon returning to its headwaters to spawn. The knowledge has developed over recent years that agriculture and semi urbanisation and other development have had a likely adverse influence on the current state of affairs.
The research is carried out in real-time with automatic sampling and analysis; alongside working with farmers along the sub catchments to lesson run off and heighten awareness of best practise.
The River Wensum in Norfolk.
As with the River Eden in Cumbria the sampling and analysis is in real-time. The catchment research is using sub-catchments above Norwich were the watercourses are primarily draining agricultural landscapes. The major form of farming is arable, though some stock are still kept on certain farms
The River Tamar on the Borders between Cornwall and Devon.
The Tamar is a river that has benefited for around 15 years of the research and actions carried forward by the West Country Rivers Trust and the monitoring and analysis carried out should give an indication of the benefits of improving agricultural practices.
The River Avon in Hampshire.
The Hampshire Avon is an important river both in farming terms as well as a fishery of note. It is an important ‘leisure’ resource followed by walkers, birdwatchers and idlers.
The project brings together a good cross-section of the issues being tackled at the other three sets of research and have taken much of modern technology to explain and develop scenarios of practice and weather fluctuations. BGS have used the river to demonstrate their modelling tools and have begun to put forward theoretical prognoses as to timescales of actions on the land surfaces and their appearances in groundwater.
The Issues.
The farming issues of the project are predominantly not rocket science; the basics of good housekeeping are being pushed into the spotlight. Clean yards with the water harvesting/separation of clean from dirty. Clamping of silage so that liquors did not escape to the outside environment, the same with muck.
Farm roads; those well-known muddy tracts of carriageway are to be resurfaced or at least graded not to act as transport routes for sediment or slurry to enter streams. Streams that for millennia have been watering places for cattle and sheep and also the repository of their excrement, alongside the broken-down banks and stirred up streambed sediments are now worth fencing off so that this damage cannot take place.
The Purpose.
The purpose of this work is to come to terms with long-term diffuse pollution, but at the same time to develop an understanding, through interrogation of past research data that may shed understanding with historic background knowledge in comparison with today’s newly developed baselines.
The practical changes to farming practise being implemented in the research areas will allow an immediate opportunity to notice alterations in the sub-catchments biological and chemical makeup though in the main rivers these small changes will not be noticeable. The whole catchment changes will though be possible to be extrapolated from the findings of the small scale trial areas if the actions taken were replicated across whole catchments.
The work being carried out on the Hampshire Avon will also allow a better understanding of the historic use of fertiliser and the geology’s ability to act as reservoirs of nutrient enrichment to watercourses. The long-term profile may allow a way of estimating the timescales needed to flush the systems through.
