Context

Water Resources East has previously worked with JBA to complete Nature-based Solution (NbS) opportunity maps for the Wensum catchment in Norfolk and the Cam catchment in Cambridgeshire/Essex to identify ideal locations where specific types of NbS features could deliver improvements to the water environment. This project looks to extend this mapping across the entire WRE region. Benefits of the types of NbS being considered include flow and water resources, water quality and managing flood risk, with co-benefits for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, creating green jobs and amenity.

The location and scale of NbS types to be explored by this project will be founded on a physical understanding of soil types, topography and hydrology to identify where opportunities exist in the catchment. This study will evaluate a range of NbS scenarios using the Environment Agency’s regional groundwater and recharge model.

Aims

At the heart of WRE’s Regional Water Resources Plan for Eastern England is need to protect, restore and enhance the water environment. This can be achieved in many ways, but if we can use Nature-based Solutions to restore natural processes and support healthy and more resilient river flows then it may reduce the need to impose restrictions on water abstraction by farmers, water companies and other water users.

Our next Regional Plan will therefore consider the potential for different NbS interventions in isolation and in combination to improve groundwater infiltration, Q10 to Q95 flows, and long-term average water budgets in catchments.

We plan to make the NbS opportunity maps freely and publicly available via The Rivers Trust regional open-source data hub, so that they can be used and applied by a range of organisations, catchment partnerships, landowners and individuals interested in implementing NbS within their local area.

Scope

Deliverables for this project include:

  • Identification and GIS mapping of NbS potential across the WRE region, using groundwater models and national-scale datasets.
  • Estimating groundwater recharge potential from NbS through spatial analysis of national-scale groundwater information as a proxy for recharge potential. This is an extension of NbS modelling work undertaken for the Environment Agency and WRE (in the Bure, Wensum and Cam Catchments), running scenarios across the whole of the NEAC (North East Anglian Chalk) and CBO (Cam and Bedford Ouse) model areas within the Water Resources East area – see map right.
  • Preliminary scoping to establish the extent to which NbS modelling work can be extended to other regional groundwater models within the wider WRE region.

Types of NbS schemes being assessed include: runoff attenuation features, mid/upper-catchment riparian zone, mid/upper-catchment storage, lower catchment floodplain reconnection, lower catchment floodplain zone, arable & grassland land cover management, slowly permeable soils.

Resources

Water Resources Benefits of WWNP – GIS User Guide

NbS Modelling for the CBO Area – report

NbS Modelling for the NEAC Area – report

Catchment Analysis for NEAC and CBO – report

Links 

This project is linked to WRE’s partnership with the Environment Agency to deliver run-off attenuation features and monitoring trials in the Wensum and Cam, which seeks to ground truth the modelling data already generated for these two catchments.

Partners

Representatives from Anglian Water, Essex and Suffolk Water, The Rivers Trust, The Nature Conservancy and the Environment Agency sit on the project steering group.