Wetlands, Land Use and Flood Management
Background
In recognition of the need to improve understanding
between parties involved in flood management and those seeking to increase the
extent of wetland habitats for conservation, a joint statement 
on wetlands, land use and flood management was developed
by Defra and agreed by other key partners. A technical advisory group was consequently established to develop an integrated multiple objective pilot project.
Ripon Multi-Objective Pilot
Following a national selection procedure, the Laver and Skell catchments, west of Ripon, North Yorkshire, were chosen for a national multi-objective pilot project. Together these constituted a reasonable size catchment area (approximately 140 sq km) with mainly arable agriculture in the lower reaches, pasture in the middle and heather moor in the headwaters. The Ripon multi-objective project was born!
The aim of the project was to investigate the potential for delivering flood risk management through land use and land management changes at a catchment scale while also pursuing resource protection, biodiversity and access opportunities.
The pilot project is now complete, and a final progress report was published in August 2007. If you would like to have access to previous progress reports, please contact us.
Project outputs
Associated outputs
Defra have also funded a project which uses sensitivity testing to examine the impact of rural land management changes on the generation of floods:
Next steps
One of the initial stakeholders, the Environment Agency, has taken over managing the project – Ripon Phase 2; building on the ground work and realising land management changes in the Ripon area over the next few years.
Page last modified: 9 October 2007
Page
published: 10 May 2005