Flood Management in Borderlands

Status: Ongoing
Type of Project: Research Report
Principal Investigator: Dr Liz Oughton, Newcastle University (Email)
Website

 

Objectives

The aim of this project is to help develop better resilience to flooding through natural flood management in a rural area. It will do so by supporting the development of networks of knowledge exchange and cooperation between stakeholders including land managers, members of statutory agencies, and local government, businesses, and local residents. The area to be studied lies on the English-Scottish border, covering sub-catchments of the river Tweed. The landscape includes moorland, forestry, upland livestock grazing and arable farming. In addition to the administrative difficulties of managing a river across a border the area is subject to complex environmental designations and rural development regimes that make integrated management difficult. Climate change projections suggest this region may experience more severe weather and associated flooding in the future. There is thus a pressing need to increase the flood resilience of the region.

The project will be organised through four work packages. The first will re-examine existing data and previous academic studies of natural flood management. Using findings from these data we will ask selected groups of expert stakeholders to make choices about the possible land management options. Wider comments from the community will be recorded through a questionnaire survey. Researchers will return to the expert group of stakeholders with the maps that combine both natural science information on soils and water in the catchments with a wide range of local views. An important part of the project will be to understand how different stakeholders learn as new knowledge becomes available. The project will work with the Tweed Forum, a charitable organization committed to sustainable catchment management that brings together stakeholders from both sides of the border. Tweed Forum will give administrative support and will work shadow the project to ensure continual exchange between researchers and stakeholders.