CatSci

An integrated study of the River Don catchment, Yorkshire.

Introduction

CatSci is a programme of up to 13 individual research projects, all of which focus on the River Don catchment. The aim is to produce an integrated study of the pressures on the ecological status of surface and ground waters in this mixed rural and urban catchment, and to design and test future management options. The CatSci project conducts research and modelling of the combined physico-chemical, ecological and socio-economic interactions in one catchment. The programme works to meet the requirements of the WFD for integrated water management. The overarching theme for CatSci, which forms a linking objective for all the projects, is that questions and solutions are sought at the catchment-scale.

CatSci will support 7*3-year and 6*1-year Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellows in the CSC. This £1 million programme, funded by the European Commission, began in October 2006 and will run for four years. The Fellows will work principally in the CSC, but will also be seconded to our collaborating partners including the Environment Agency, DEFRA, and international consultancy organisations. All Fellows must be non-UK nationals, enabling the CSC to develop links with, and gain experience from, international academic partners.

Integrated Water Management

A further theme covering novel modelling approaches to catchment science is also included within the CatSci programme, addressing the need for new modelling tools to meet the challenges of catchment science. We do not argue that modelling is the only approach to the challenges of catchment science. However, it is certainly a methodology which presents particular opportunities when working at the interface of different disciplines, and at the spatial and temporal scales, which are faced in the CSC.

As an example of the thinking being developed within CatSci, if we were concerned with the effect of physical habitat, we might want to ask how variation in the physical environment affects the type of ecological community, and hence function, found at a particular site. For the CatSci programme, this would be framed in the context of the catchment by asking what determines how the different habitat types are distributed across a catchment, and therefore how ecological diversity/function accumulates across the catchment, or where in the catchment particular functions are provided.

The research programme for CatSci is currently under development. At the broad level, the individual projects will focus on gaining a catchment-scale understanding of i) physical habitat controls on ecosystem structure and functioning; ii) water quality controls on ecosystem structure and functioning; iii) pollutant transport and attenuation; iv) socio-economic impacts of the water catchment; v) restoration and improvement . Figure 1 shows an illustration of individual projects and link between the biological and physical processes with social and economic issues for Integrated Water Management studies.