KE Fellowship: Sediment matters - using recent advances to unlock effective catchment decision-making
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leeds
Department Name: Sch of Geography
Abstract
We live and work in river catchments, they host our agricultural areas, green spaces, and urban centres. Rivers provide drinking water, essential for humans and nature to survive, provide jobs and act as key areas for recreation. Our society is facing many environmental challenges in our landscapes and rivers (e.g., flooding, water quality), in a changing climate, safeguarding this environment and ensuring resilience is key. A critical component of river catchments is sediment - organic and inorganic particles that cover a wide range of sizes and composition. Understanding how sediment behaves within our river catchment systems will ensure sustainability as sediment affects multiple aspects of catchments being healthy. Erosion, transport, and deposition of sediment in river catchments are natural processes, which are strongly influenced by human activities. Sediment is associated with anthropogenic pollutants (e.g. microplastics), soil erosion and carbon loss, water treatment costs, aquatic ecology and biodiversity, and the contentious issue of dredging and flood risk. Recent advances in NERC funded sedimentological research, including using satellite imagery, can have a transformative impact on integrated catchment management if fully incorporated into decision-making processes. My work will benefit the many organisations and communities working and living in river catchments.
The UK is moving towards payment for public goods in the context of the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMs), Brexit, and 'Building Forward Better'. Recent high profile studies showed that of the 86% of UK rivers failed to meet ecological good standard, and 40% of these failures were due to run off from agricultural land. There is a large demand from stakeholders to know more about how best to deal with sediment within their catchments. This fellowship aims to reduce the knowledge gap between researchers and catchment practitioners (statutory, charities, industry) by translating recent advances in understanding of sediment erosion, transport and deposition into catchment decision-making processes to deliver benefits in water quality, natural flood management and payment for outcome approaches.
The fellowship will demonstrate how NERC science is being used in practical applications in catchment management. The proposed work includes: 1) understanding what information is needed for practitioners to make decisions and the gaps that could be filled by NERC Science, 2) collating information on the costs associated with sediment, 3) demonstrating how earth observation (e.g., satellite) data can be used by practitioners, 4) secondments into organisations to rapidly embed NERC science into current and future projects, and 5) a community of practice, which will allow NERC researchers and practitioners to have a forum to discuss the latest research, best practice and shared challenges. The fellowship will work with a range of organisations including the Environment Agency, Natural England, Yorkshire Water, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Ricardo Energy and Environment who have different viewpoints, all outputs will be co-designed to ensure maximum impact and reach. The main impacts from this fellowship will be knowledge exchange across a wide range of sectors ensuring NERC science is embedded into cost-effective catchment management decisions, strengthened business cases, increased landowner engagement, and long-lasting networks.
The UK is moving towards payment for public goods in the context of the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMs), Brexit, and 'Building Forward Better'. Recent high profile studies showed that of the 86% of UK rivers failed to meet ecological good standard, and 40% of these failures were due to run off from agricultural land. There is a large demand from stakeholders to know more about how best to deal with sediment within their catchments. This fellowship aims to reduce the knowledge gap between researchers and catchment practitioners (statutory, charities, industry) by translating recent advances in understanding of sediment erosion, transport and deposition into catchment decision-making processes to deliver benefits in water quality, natural flood management and payment for outcome approaches.
The fellowship will demonstrate how NERC science is being used in practical applications in catchment management. The proposed work includes: 1) understanding what information is needed for practitioners to make decisions and the gaps that could be filled by NERC Science, 2) collating information on the costs associated with sediment, 3) demonstrating how earth observation (e.g., satellite) data can be used by practitioners, 4) secondments into organisations to rapidly embed NERC science into current and future projects, and 5) a community of practice, which will allow NERC researchers and practitioners to have a forum to discuss the latest research, best practice and shared challenges. The fellowship will work with a range of organisations including the Environment Agency, Natural England, Yorkshire Water, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Ricardo Energy and Environment who have different viewpoints, all outputs will be co-designed to ensure maximum impact and reach. The main impacts from this fellowship will be knowledge exchange across a wide range of sectors ensuring NERC science is embedded into cost-effective catchment management decisions, strengthened business cases, increased landowner engagement, and long-lasting networks.
Organisations
- University of Leeds (Lead Research Organisation)
- Kelda Group (United Kingdom) (Collaboration)
- Aire Rivers Trust (Collaboration)
- Wildlife Trusts (Collaboration)
- Natural England (Collaboration)
- Environment Agency (Collaboration)
- Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (Collaboration)
- Ricardo UK Ltd (Collaboration)
People |
ORCID iD |
Janet Richardson (Principal Investigator) |
Description | Derwent INNS |
Amount | £104,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Yorkshire Water |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2022 |
Description | Aires Rivers Trust |
Organisation | Aire Rivers Trust |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | KE activities related to topic areas of fellowship. |
Collaborator Contribution | Ensuring outputs from KEF are relevant and useful to stakeholders - updating on the RT priority areas. |
Impact | No outputs just yet - meetings to ensure the KEF is relevant and helpful to the stakeholders. |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Environment Agency - National Research team |
Organisation | Environment Agency |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Transfer of knowledge to EA national research team related to KEF aims. |
Collaborator Contribution | The National Research team are key stakeholders in the KEF, they have helped co-design the fellowship. |
Impact | Currently ensuring the KEF topic areas are relevant and will have on the ground changes in the organisation. No formal outputs yet. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Environment Agency - York team |
Organisation | Environment Agency |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Transfer of research outcomes and methods used in the project to the Environment Agency team in York who work on the Derwent Catchment. Wider lessons learnt have been applied to other EA work such as that in Bishops Dyke. |
Collaborator Contribution | Provision of expert sector knowledge. The Environment Agency team are primarily ecologists, during the project they highlighted the use of ecology macroinvertebrate data to ground truth the sediment model outputs using 'sediment sensitive species' which was then included in the project. |
Impact | Information on sediment sensitive species was integrated into the report. The Environment Team are primarily ecologists. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | Natural England |
Organisation | Natural England |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | KE activities related to KEF. |
Collaborator Contribution | Co-design of the KEF topic areas, ensuring outputs are relevant and useful for stakeholders. |
Impact | No formal outputs yet - meetings to ensure outputs of KEF are relevant. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Nidderdale AONB |
Organisation | Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Lessons learnt and processes from the Derwent work have been applied to the Nidderdale AONB area for a HLF bid on diffuse pollution. HLF bid awarded in 2020 - for £1.4 million |
Collaborator Contribution | Nidderdale AONB are using the data output to inform a bid. |
Impact | This is not multi-disciplinary and focuses on diffuse pollution. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Ricardo Energy and Environment |
Organisation | Ricardo UK Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | KE activities related to fellowship |
Collaborator Contribution | Ensuring KE outputs are relevant and useful to stakeholders |
Impact | No formal outcomes just yet - meetings to ensure that the outputs of the KEF are useful. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Yorkshire Water |
Organisation | Yorkshire Water |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Information and model outputs were discussed with Yorkshire Water including a report of the methodology, so it could be duplicated in other catchments. The outputs of the research could be used to inform catchment management. |
Collaborator Contribution | Yorkshire Water were hosted the PI during the project and supervised the development of the work by guiding the project aims. Yorkshire Water contributed via their expert sector knowledge. |
Impact | A report was written for Yorkshire Water detailing the outcomes of the research and the methods used (step by step guide); this will be hosted on the Yorkshire iCASP website in due course. Yorkshire Water is multi-disciplinary and includes ecologists and catchment managers. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | Yorkshire Wildlife Trust |
Organisation | The Wildlife Trusts |
Department | Yorkshire Wildlife Trust |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | KE activities related to topic areas of fellowship. |
Collaborator Contribution | Ensuring outputs from KEF are relevant and useful to stakeholders. |
Impact | No outputs just yet - meetings to ensure the KEF is relevant and helpful to the stakeholders. |
Start Year | 2021 |
Description | Environment Agency Local Area leads meeting |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Presentation of the KE fellowship and feedback on the proposed project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Meetings with Environment Agency on Sediment issues in the Derwent |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Ongoing meetings with the Environment Agency about sediment issues in the River Derwent. Lessons learnt from this project have been applied to other catchments such as Bishops Dyke. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022 |
Description | Presentation to Regional Flood and Coastal Committee |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Presentation of KE fellowship which has lead to feedback on the proposed ideas and new partnerships with Calder Rivers Trust and Aires River Trust. Presentation at this event also lead to a presentation to the Environment Agency local area leads. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |