A seminar held at the University of Durham on 10 July 2003,
followed by a field trip to Moor House NNR, Upper
Teesdale, the following day.
Introduction, context and seminar
conclusions Chair: Professor Bill Heal |
Abstract |
Download this summary
(PDF, 48 Kb) |
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An introduction to the Water
Framework Directive and potential implications for upland catchment
management
Dr Chris Uttley, Countryside Council for Wales |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 438 Kb) |
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The hydrology of upland UK
catchments
Professor Tim Burt, University of Durham |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 848 Kb) |
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Carbon and upland peat – causes for
concern?
Dr Fred Worrall, University of Durham |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 401 Kb) |
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Acidification, forestry and river
basin management
Dr Danny Donoghue, University of Durham |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 1.39 Mb) |
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An integrated approach to catchment
systems: mineral and organic sediment budgets
Dr Jeff Warburton, University of Durham & Dr Martin Evans,
University of Manchester |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 1.85 Mb) |
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Upland catchment conservation:
linking biological and earth sciences
Professor John Gordon & Professor Des Thompson, Scottish
Natural Heritage |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 1.61 Mb) |
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Water resource
management
Dr Chris Spray, Northumbrian Water |
Abstract |
Presentation
(PDF, 291 Kb) |
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Introduction and context
The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) led UK Upland
Habitat Action Plan Steering Group (UKUHAP SG) identified the
importance of bringing researchers, advisers and policy makers
together to consider the management of upland catchments. To date
there has been little dialogue between the different sectors of
research and advice.
This meeting sought to:
- Form linkages between freshwater, terrestrial, biological and
geographical approaches to conservation management in the
uplands;
- Improve knowledge of upland catchment processes; and
- Provide a firmer understanding of the sort of catchment
management needed to support the conservation of biodiversity in
the uplands.
More than 70% of UK water supplies is sourced from upland
catchments. Yet the hills and uplands have long been subjected to
extensive, and periodically intensive, land management (forestry,
grouse moors, sheep grazing) with little regard to the consequences
for water resources. The emerging Water Framework
Directive (WFD) has focussed attention on the need for a
more holistic approach to catchment management through river basin
management plans and the application of an ecosystem approach to
enhance habitat quality. The WFD will make significant demands on
land and water managers at all levels, and requires recognition
that the coastal, estuarine and lower river conditions are
significantly influenced by conditions in the
headwaters.
Seminar conclusions
- There are diverse and fragmented institutional interests and
responsibilities concerned with the uplands - 30 organisations were
represented amongst the 60 participants.
- The integrity of the upland ecosystems: physical, biological,
social and economic factors are intimately and extensively
interactive.
- The sensitivity of these systems to disturbance, particularly
infrequent and often localised episodes e.g. an exceptional flood
or an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, or clear-felling a
forest. Such episodes or events may be localised, but the
consequences are often widespread and long-term.
- Increasing erosion is clearly linked to 'flash' floods and
periods of drought, which may be becoming more frequent due to
climate change.
- The continuum from upland catchments, through wetlands and
lowlands, to estuaries and coastal waters. Water moves downstream
until recycled back to the uplands through the atmosphere. Fish
migrate up and down the rivers.
- There is an impressive diversity and depth of data, information
and expertise available and relevant to understanding the dynamics
of upland catchments in UK.
- The UK upland peatlands provide an extremely important carbon
store and therefore a sink for C02; this is far larger
than that found in the forests of the UK. Modelling has predicted
that trends towards increasing loss of carbon through erosion could
result in peatlands become a source of C02 by
2013.
- Reducing carbon export from upland areas should be clearly
incorporated into upland land management. There is a need for
researchers, policy makers and land managers to work
collaboratively towards developing best practice management for
carbon retention, for example through: grip-blocking; identifying
vegetation type/height and related grazing regimes.
- There is considerable evidence at Moor House NNR of natural
re-vegetation 'healing' of erosion channels. Further research is
need to better understand the triggers to the cycles of erosion and
re-vegetation, which can be applied to other upland areas.
- Increasing demands for water (quality and quantity), emerging
changes in climate, growing political pressure for carbon
conservation, and the requirements of the Water Framework
Directive, combine to highlight the need to integrate existing
information into spatially explicit models to examine potential
future changes, and how these might be best managed.
- Abstracts and powerpoint
presentations are available here on the JNCC
website. Click on the links beside the talk titles in the above in
the table of contents to access. Email addresses for all the
speakers are provided in the abstracts. A short summary paper will
also be submitted for
publication.
- Acknowledgments. We are very grateful to
Hatfield College and the Department of Geography, University of
Durham for hosting the meeting.
08 August 2003
Sally Johnson Joint Nature Conservation
Committee
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Tim Burt University of Durham
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Professor Bill Heal
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Des Thompson Scottish Natural
Heritage
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Jeff Warburton University of
Durham
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An introduction to the Water
Framework Directive and potential implications for upland catchment
management.
Chris Uttley
Water Policy Officer,
Countryside Council for Wales
The Water Framework Directive is potentially the most
important and innovative piece of environmental legislation the UK
has been required to implement to date. As its title suggests it
creates a framework for integrating many existing pieces of aquatic
legislation and ensuring compliance with those. More interestingly,
it shifts aquatic management away from the tradition of setting
chemical objective 'surrogates' for quality, and requires the UK to
set biological and hydro-morphological objectives in addition to
chemical standards. It requires the achievement of 'good ecological
status' for the whole aquatic ecosystem. In creates protection for
terrestrial ecosystems dependent upon groundwaters, and requires
the integration of the water dependent standards and objectives
required for Natura 2000 habitats and species.
The WFD is a proactive piece of environmental legislation, in
that it requires the UK to establish aspirational objectives for
aquatic ecosystems, and then put in place a programme of measures
in order to achieve them. This includes restorative measures. The
objectives and measures will be set out in a River Basin Management
Plan, which stakeholders and interested parties must be encouraged
to contribute to.
Most powerfully, the WFD requires the UK to control diffuse
pollution to the extent needed to comply with it, or with any of
the other pieces of legislation integrated into its framework. This
implies a regulatory control mechanism on a number of land
management activities; agriculture, forestry and the land use
planning process being the obvious candidates for further
controls.
It is this element that will arguably have the greatest
potential impact on upland catchments. Measures to control erosion
of sediments from upland farms may well be required. Changes in
upland forestry practice and riparian habitat management may be
needed to reduce peak flows, reduce erosion or limit the effects of
acidifcation. There may be extra pressure for liming of upland
areas to reduce the effects of acidification.
The WFD extends legal protection for the first time to upland
tributaries, headwaters and some lakes. They will be required to
meet whatever ecological objectives are established for them.
The status of peatlands in the WFD is still uncertain. If they
depend upon surface waters or groundwater aquifers for water
supply, this will offer some protection since these water bodies
will come under the protection of the WFD. Peatlands that are also
N2K sites will be required to achieve any water related standards
and objectives, including those concerned with maintaining
saturation or reducing drainage.
The WFD will play a huge contribution to furthering protection
of aquatic ecosystems, by raising general quality and ensuring
biological and morphological objectives are met. It also has
potential benefits for groundwater dependent terrestrial
ecosystems. Water dependent N2K sites potentially benefit most
through the need to include their requirements in the programme of
measures.
To take advantage of the WFD and get most benefits from it,
colleagues working in the uplands need to outline clearly where
water is an important factor in protection of the relevant habitats
and species, and need to start outlining which changes to upland
management activities will have the most beneficial impacts on
aquatic systems and upland biodiversity.
The hydrology of upland
UK catchments
Tim Burt
Department of Geography,
University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE
This presentation reviewed the essential aspects of
upland hydrology in the UK. The combination of high rainfall and
low evaporation results in large volumes of stream runoff. In most
places, rocks are impermeable while soils are thin or have
waterlogged, peaty characteristics; this combination means that the
runoff regime is invariably 'flashy' with high flood discharge and
low baseflow.
The presentation comprised four sections:
- Analysis of patterns of streamflow in upland areas
- Consideration of climatic controls on the hydrological
regime
- Description of runoff process mechanisms
- Reflection on long-term hydrological changes, both natural and
human-induced.
Underpinning the whole presentation was the concept of the
drainage basin as an integrated system, emphasising in particular
the links between hillslope runoff processes and channel response.
This forms the basis for understanding both water quality
variations in upland basins, and the integrated management of
upland catchment systems.
Carbon and upland peat –
causes for concern?
Fred Worrall
Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Durham
As part of the Kyoto Protocol developed countries are
committed to reducing greenhouse gases by 2012 to an average of 5%
below their respective 1990 levels. At the Sixth Conference of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2001, it was
agreed that countries could use carbon sequestration resulting from
human induced activities since 1990 on grazing land, by crop land
revegetation, or by forest management to help meet reduction
targets. This means that there is an increased imperative to
understand carbon dynamics of these land uses.
In the UK, peatlands are the most significant wetland
environment and the largest terrestrial carbon pool in the country.
The majority of upland peat is grazed, and as such come under the
land that could be used to meet reduction targets. However, there
is growing evidence that as the UK climate changes peatlands will
shift from net sinks to net sources of carbon. This presentation:
outlined the evidence for this shift; explored the controls upon
carbon release; and suggested possible remediation
strategies.
Acidification, forestry
and river basin management
Daniel N.M. Donoghue
Department of
Geography, South Road, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE
This paper explained the causes of acidity in the environment,
both naturally occurring and from anthropogenic sources. It then
went on to look at the evidence pointing to conifer afforestation,
which is a common land use in the British uplands, the impacting
upon the process of acidification.
A case study was presented from Galloway in SW Scotland, which
is a region with naturally acidic geology, soils and vegetation.
Parts of Galloway are heavily afforested and the fisheries
community in particular has experienced a loss of suitable habitat
for salmonids with the acidifying effect of non-native conifer
plantation forestry. We investigated the regional relationships
between high flow water chemistry, juvenile salmonid populations
and conifer forest cover in 91 streams spread over an area of
approximately 2000 km2 in Galloway. The results clearly
suggest that catchment afforestation has a detrimental impact on
salmonid populations probably because conifer plantations
exacerbate surface water acidification, resulting in water
chemistry characteristics which are toxic to juvenile salmonid
survival.
The implication of these findings is that appropriate
management strategies should be sought in order that forestry and
fisheries can co-exist in upland Britain. The paper looked at
recent developments which might assist with the difficult task of
river basin management in chemically sensitive catchment
areas.
Keywords: Acidification; Conifer plantations;
salmonids;
An integrated approach to
catchment systems: mineral and organic sediment budget studies
Jeff Warburton
Department of Geography,
University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE
Martin Evans
Department of Geography,
University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL
The movement of water and sediment in upland catchments is
closely related. Rapid erosion and high sediment yields are often
associated with periods of rainfall and high run-off. Evaluating
the importance of such events and the cumulative significance of
slower and less dramatic geomorphic processes can only be assessed
if a systematic evaluation of sediment, production transfer and
storage in upland catchments is undertaken.
An excellent tool for analysing upland sediment systems
involves the construction of sediment budget models. Sediment
budget models aim to recognise and quantify sediment production,
storage and transport from sources within a catchment to eventual
sediment loss at the exit from the drainage basin. In a UK upland
context a basic division can be recognised between mineral sediment
systems typical of mountain relief and organic-mineral sediment
systems more typical of blanket peat moorland.
This presentation outlined the fundamental principles of
constructing upland sediment budgets, and illustrated the
advantages of this approach for upland catchment management using
five topics:
- Contrasts between mineral sediment systems and organic-mineral
sediment systems;
- Local floods in the uplands – Catcleugh, August 2002, Moor
House, July 2002 ;
- Longer-term perspectives on sediment delivery;
- Stopping erosion of peatland gullies – lessons from sediment
budgets; and
- Benefits of sediment budgets for understanding upland erosion
and sediment dynamics
Upland catchment
conservation: linking biological and earth sciences
John E. Gordon and Des B.A.
Thompson
Scottish Natural Heritage, Edinburgh,
Scotland
Email plug-in to: Des.thompson@snh.gov.uk
This talk developed collaborative work between biologists and
earth scientists in Scotland, Sweden and the Czech Republic. At the
centre of this is work to understand the nature of change in
mountain soils, habitats and landscapes.
- Close dependencies exist between geodiversity and biodiversity
at different spatial scales in mountains. At a broad scale, habitat
distributions reflect long-term geological and geomorphological
evolution of the landscape and interactions with past and present
climates. At a local scale, there is a close, functional interplay
between landform, soils, geomorphological processes and
climate.
- Biodiversity is also a function of changes in climate and
geomorphological processes over different time scales. Over longer
time scales, patterns of Quaternary glaciation and distributions of
refuges have played an important role in accounting for present-day
biodiversity. Over shorter timescales, there are functional links
between biodiversity and current geomorphological processes, for
example in maintaining dynamic environments and geomorphological
heterogeneity.
- Extreme episodic events play a significant role in maintaining
geomorphological heterogeneity and habitat diversity.
- More empirical and, indeed, experimental data are required to
predict landscape sensitivity and the potential for irreversible
changes.
Water Resource
Management
Chris Spray
Environment Director,
Northumbrian Water Limited
This presentation outlined the complexity of providing high
quality water supplies for human use and consumption.
Upland catchment management is vital to the supply of water,
and involves many stakeholders.
However, water suppliers at present deal with problems such
as: catchment run off; bankside erosion; and effluent
(agricultural/industrial/domestic) through end of pipe methods, at
great cost to the tax-payer. Management practices upstream could
considerably reduce these costs.
The talk considered the upland catchment management methods,
such as moor gripping, to control water colour in a project in the
Pennine Uplands and Tees Valley.
The potential benefits of sustainable catchment management
with a stakeholder led partnership were identified, to overcome the
considerable challenges.