Upcoming workshop on land and water management: an update from the scientists in the river Eden

In early October we are holding a workshop event at the EdenDTC Centre based at Sewborwens Farm at Newton Rigg, Penrith. The idea behind the workshop is to provide an update on the work we are doing in the river Eden and also ask for your help in evaluating an online tool we have developed to explore the linkages between land use and land management and flooding. There will be the opportunity to visit some of the monitoring equipment being used to look at water quality in the Eden catchment and for you to ask questions about what work is being carried out. The event is split into three sessions, with the last session a repeat of the first to allow for people who cannot make the earlier time. Details are provided below (timings approximate):

3:30 – 5:00pm Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot tool demonstration[1]

5:00 – 5:30pm Coffee break

5:30 – 6:30pm Eden Demonstration Test Catchment update and visit to monitoring equipment

6:30 – 7:00pm Break for food

7:00 – 8:30pm Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot tool demonstration¹ (Repeat of 3:30pm – 5:00pm session)

8:30 – 9:00pm Round up and meeting close

The workshop will be held on Wednesday 10th October and if you are interested in attending or would like further information, please contact Ellie Mackay by email e.mackay@lancaster.ac.uk. If you are planning to attend please can you state which sessions you would like to attend (3:30pm - 7:00pm or 5:30pm - 9:00pm) and if you have any dietary requirements by Wednesday 3rd October.

---

[1] we are developing an internet-based tool to visualise environmental data, focussing on the issues of flooding and water quality. This tool forms part of a two year national pilot project called the Environmental Virtual Observatory. We are currently in the evaluation phase of this project and therefore need your input and feedback on the design of this tool and what should be done to improve it to better suit your needs.

What other flooding and water quality research is going on in the Eden?

The river Eden catchment is an important place for research on flooding and water quality. In addition to the Eden Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot project, a number of other projects are being carried out; follow the links below to find out more information.

The Eden Demonstration Test Catchment (Eden DTC) project's aim is to develop a large-scale research platform to test measures for reducing diffuse pollution from agriculture. As part of the project, a wide range of high-tech equipment for measuring data about the local environment is being installed in the catchment. This includes near real-time measurement of stream water quality and flow level which is available through their website. The project is also developing on-farm measures for trying to reduce diffusion pollution from agriculture in collaboration with the local farming community.

 

ALFA UK is based in the Eden river catchment and is part of a European initiative which aims to help protect people against the effects of flooding by creating new capacity for water storage within river catchments. In the Eden, this involves identifying and demonstrating ecologically sustainable solutions for storing water within the catchment and managing river flows. Research is being carried out to investigate the ability of rural land use adaptations to decrease river peak flood flows and increase base low flows. The project involves a whole range of people in the Eden catchment from communities to farmers and land owners. It aims to deliver a number of practical projects such as the Thacker Beck Flood Alleviation Scheme to demonstrate sustainable solutions for river flow management and look at the wider benefits such as those to wildlife, farming and recreation.

MOPS2 is a project looking at Mitigation Options for Phosphorus and Sediment by using field wetlands to mitigate diffuse pollution in agricultural catchments. The six year project (2008 – 2013) has three sites in the Eden catchment where a variety of different edge-of-field constructed wetlands have been installed.  The sites cover both sandy and silty soils types and are located at Whinton Hill, Crake Trees Manor and Newton Rigg. The aims of these sites are to establish the effectiveness of ponds and wetlands for controlling diffuse pollution by quantifying the soils and phosphorus trapped by the systems.

 

SCIMAP is project focussed on identifying the locations within a landscape where diffuse pollution from agriculture may potentially be a problem. This approach generates risk maps for diffuse pollution within catchments by assessing both the sources of pollution and their likely connectivity to water courses. The risk based approach used, allows the prioritisation of management activities to address hydrologically well-connected land areas and risky land uses. The approach has been used in a number of river catchments including the river Eden.

If you are aware of any other active flooding or water quality projects going on in the Eden area, please let us know so we can include links to them here.

Land and water management workshop in Morland

A big thank you for everyone who attended the recent workshop held in October at Morland village hall. 

At this meeting we introduced the Eden Demonstration Test Catchment and pilot Environmental Virtual Observatory projects by showing examples of the live data being collected in the Morland area and a demo of the visualisation tool being developed using some of this data. The live data available includes rainfall, river level, water quality and webcam images. There was a lot of interest in the water quality data, particularly how water quality in the Beck relates to water quality elsewhere and whether there were water quality problems. There was also interest in understanding better the losses of nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen to the river from the farmland.

The visualisation tool demo showed an example of how we could bring together live data from different sources in the river Eden to let the user view web cam images simultaneously with river flow or water colour information. For the second part of the demo we discussed the development of a land use and flood risk tool. The idea behind this tool is to consider how flood risk may be altered by changing land use or land management. This tool would simulate the water level in a river and therefore possible flood risk using measured rainfall and landscape characteristics which affect how the water runs off the land such as the soils, vegetation and use of water-retaining features such as ponds. We discussed possible scenarios of how land use might change in the future, as we want your help in devising these scenarios. We are now working on three of the scenarios we discussed, these are current farming practices, runoff management and farming and farming with some increased woodland, if you have ideas for others, please let us know.

 
Our plans for the next 6 months are to continue to develop the demo visualisation tool based on some of the things we discussed at the meeting, including potentially adding in data and simulations of water quality variables such as nutrients and sediment. We hope to be able to demonstrate it to you at a later meeting and/or by sending you an internet link to the demo, so you can try it out for yourself. We are really keen to get your feedback and opinions as part of the work and we would welcome your questions, comments and thoughts on the project in the comments below.

What is the Eden EVOp about?

The Eden EVOp is part of a national pilot project called the Environmental Virtual Observatory. The idea of this project is to combine numerous sources of environmental information such as data sets, models and knowledge into one web-based platform accessible to everyone from an interested citizen to a scientist or decision maker. An important part of this project involves talking to local communities about what environmental issues they think are important and getting help in designing a landscape visualisation tool for the Morland area in the river Eden, which can be used to learn about the local environment, share knowledge and eventually help make better environmental decisions. In this pilot project we are particularly interested in your views on flooding and water pollution.

Our project is working alongside The River Eden Demonstration Test Catchment (Eden DTC) project. The purpose of this project is to develop a large-scale research platform to test measures for reducing diffuse pollution from agriculture. A lot of information about the local environment is being collected as part of this project and the The Eden DTC website displays live data showing river levels, web cams images, rainfall information and water quality data which we hope to use in the Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot.