Demonstration test catchments

The Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) project is a joint Defra, Environment Agency (EA) and Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) initiative.

It will develop an evidence-base for wider application to the management of river catchments across England and Wales. The project will initially set up three instrumented catchments with an integrative data infrastructure to provide a shared-use network as the framework for collaborative analysis. Research and mitigation actions in other catchments will also be drawn in and supported where relevant, to enhance the developing evidence base.

This research platform will host long-term, large-scale research projects to assess the effectiveness of on-farm abatement measures applied as part of integrated farming systems to reduce diffuse pollution from agricultural sources, deliver food production and environmental benefits across whole river catchments. It will consider the impacts and effects on both ecosystems and sustainable production and aims to reduce current uncertainties in predicting and controlling diffuse pollution from agriculture.

The DTC network will cover a range of English and Welsh agricultural land uses, geologies, soils, climatic regions and river types. An initial set of catchments (Eden (Cumbria), Wensum (Norfolk) and Avon (Hampshire) has been selected to build on existing infrastructure, datasets, knowledge and farming contacts developed through previous and ongoing initiatives, which have not previously been well linked. These catchments are presently undergoing enhanced monitoring through the England Catchment Sensitive Farming Delivery Initiative (ECSFDI).

In each Demonstration Test Catchment, a suite of experimental locations positioned on working farms will be established to host future multi-disciplinary catchment scale R&D funded by Defra, the Environment Agency, Research Councils and other organisations. Collaboration within and between research groups, and links to key stakeholders, will be fostered and promoted.

The project will be managed by Defra and WAG in collaboration with the EA.

Who will benefit from this activity?
Government
The research will provide an improved evidence-base for Defra and WAG to deliver policies that contribute to meeting WFD objectives. A policy group consisting of Defra, EA and WAG officials has been established to set the research agenda for the project. The project will deliver improved national scale models and decision support tools to predict the outcomes of proposed policy instruments.

Delivery bodies
The project will develop novel practices in water quality monitoring including the establishment of a sensor-web to control and interrogate instruments.  This will provide the opportunity for Environment Agency to design and test of these approaches on a large spatial scale will help facilitate their future development and ultimate deployment for monitoring progress against Water Framework Directive targets nationally. In addition, river basin/ catchment scale models and decision support tools that will be developed will inform future delivery approaches by the EA and Natural England. 

Researchers
The project will provide open source data and models which will be accessible to the wider research community. It will provide the physical and cyber infrastructure to cost-effectively host additional research on catchment science and freshwater ecology.

Water industry
DTC research activities will be aligned with parallel expenditure by water industry on catchment approaches to improve water quality.  The evidence provided by the project will help inform the water industry and OFWAT on the likely effectiveness of catchment scale schemes to protect drinking water sources.

Farming industry
The project will disseminate information to the farming industry on methods to mitigate diffuse water pollution whilst maintaining productivity. The testing of measures will include a socio-economic analysis of the cost effectiveness of measures and likely impact on farm business. The data generated by the project will be accessible to farmers and will help the sector improve their net environmental performance.