The river Eden catchment is an important place for research on flooding and water quality. In addition to the Eden DTC project, a number of other projects are being carried out by many of the EdenDTC partner organisations; follow the links below to find out more information.
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 (pictured) 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.
Eden Catchment Community blog is a site to provide updates on some of the river catchment and community research work being carried out in the river Eden catchment and give interested people an opportunity to have their say on what is going on. In particular, the Eden Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot(EVOp) is providing updates of the workshops on the visualisation of land and water management being held in the Newby area. This project is developing a web-based portal to allow people to access environmental data and models and getting local community input is really important.
The EdenDTC project will support and enhance these projects through providing detailed time series data on water quality and quantity plus information of the catchment characterisation.
If you know of any additional projects that are active in the River Eden catchment, then please contact us and we can add them to this list.