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Five new and much-needed research projects have been launched to investigate how pollution affects UK rivers.
Freshwater ecosystems today face multiple pressures from a cocktail of pollutants including chemicals, microplastics, pharmaceuticals, invasive species and land management practices.
As a result, most UK rivers fail to achieve good ecological status, with only 14% of waterways in England, less than half (46%) in Wales, 50% in Scotland and less than a third (31%) in Northern Ireland. grade
Poor water quality can result in the loss of aquatic invertebrates and fish, threaten the structure and stability of aquatic food chains, be hazardous to bathing, and increase drinking water treatment needs and costs.
Researchers have been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and Defra with £8.4 million to understand changes in the quality of UK freshwater programmes:
- Examine how pollutants enter, leave and interact with rivers and supporting ecosystems
- Determine how the movement of pollutants will change with changes in the water cycle
- Build better tools to monitor and measure pollution.
A £1.6 million project led by the University of Bristol will study how UK water quality affects livestock farming practices.
Livestock farming is the dominant farming type and source of organic matter pollution in UK freshwater, with 10 million cattle and over 30 million sheep on 10 million hectares of grassland, representing over half (57%) of all UK agricultural land. .
Project lead Penny Jones, professor of biogeochemistry in the university’s School of Geographical Sciences, said: “When livestock excrement is discharged into water it changes its physical, chemical and environmental quality and function. These materials include inorganic nutrient contaminants that are commonly included in routine water quality monitoring programs across the UK, but there are also many other compounds that are not monitored.
“These include nutrient-rich organic matter, pathogens, pharmaceuticals, and hormones that cause significant damage to freshwater ecosystems, and present a continuing problem for drinking water in recreational water use, fisheries and shellfisheries, and livestock farming.”
Climate change-induced increases in water temperatures and changes in flow regimes also accelerate the biological processing of these materials in freshwater, while increased rainfall may further influence on-farm storage capacity, thwarting efforts to reduce the impacts of livestock farming on UK freshwater.
Professor Jones said: “The project will provide new insights into how these stresses, environmental characteristics and management efforts interact to change UK water quality in livestock-dominated catchments.”
Field sites include Conwy, Bristol Avon and 50 more catchments in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and livestock farming regions in the north and west of England.
The programme’s Fresh Water Quality Champions, Professor Pippa Chapman and Professor Joseph Holden, from the University of Leeds, said: “There are huge water quality pressures on UK rivers. This is likely to increase with climate change.
“Through this innovative program we will develop cutting-edge environmental science that is focused on improving the quality of the UK’s freshwater. Through collaboration between researchers, water and land managers and policy makers, this program will help ensure that our rivers and other waterways are more resilient to future climate and land-use change.”
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