Resilient Catchment Communities

Delivering six nature-based solutions (NBS) for natural flood management across Cornwall
Tree planting Flood Management
The Resilient Catchment Communities (RCC) project is being delivered at 6 sites across Cornwall. The project has been funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund via Good Growth Cornwall & Isles of Scilly.
Westcountry Rivers Trust are the lead partner, working alongside University of Plymouth and Duchy College. The specific sites will be selected through discussions by a project steering group including the project partners, Cornwall Council, Cornwall Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency.
Resilient catchments are more able to manage extreme rainfall that could result in flood events. Resilient communities are more flood ready and able to better manage flood events. University of Plymouth will research sensors that help to inform river behaviour and flood events together with how local communities can support information gathering. Is there a point at which community led monitoring can inform at a level comparable with traditional or up and coming technological solutions?
The delivery of six Nature Based Solutions (NBS) for Natural Flood Management across Cornwall will provide accessible demonstration sites for farmers, land managers and community groups across the County to see how such interventions work. Physical site improvements at the selected sites will be undertaken with support from Westcountry Rivers Trust and local delivery partners. Duchy College as a regional centre for rural skills will provide training and support for NBS interventions. The chosen sites will incorporate a range of different NBS solutions, to include scrapes which will hold water for longer and leaky dams which will slow the flow of water through the catchment. Some sites will be more suitable for tree planting which will help to breakup soil compaction.

Reconnecting flood plain
Reconnecting flood plain
Leaky Dam
Forest site for leaky dam (image credit: WRT)
Orchard planting site
Possible site for orchard planting
About the project
Resilient Catchment Communities (RCC) is a collaborative project and approach in community monitoring of river resilience, and capacity building and capability in the design, implementation and monitoring of community-led Nature-Based Solutions to deliver Integrated Catchment Management.
  • Nature-Based Solutions address societal issues such as climate change to support ecosystems, biodiversity, and human well-being.
  • Integrated Catchment Management is the coordinated delivery of water-based societal needs, such as flood risk, drought management, pollution control and the protection of aquatic habitats and species, in one approach.
Timescale: November 2023 to March 2025
About Nature Based Solutions
After rainfall, water runs off our catchments quick and dirty causing flooding, pollution and at a later point drought, compared to a resilient system where water leaves slow and clean. Nature Based Solutions features are designed to reverse the simplification and speed up drainage patterns.
The project will increase community understanding of river resilience and the creation of six key Nature Based Solutions demonstration sites across Cornwall.
Through these, communities, farmers, environmental NGOs, contractors and funders can see how the density, diversity and interconnectedness of Nature Based Solution measures can be delivered alongside sustainable food production and the farm business model.

Project updates

In this video, research Fellow Dr Rupert Goddard gives an update on his work in Cardinham Woods for the Resilient Catchment Communities project. 
On this site Dr Rupert Goddard has installed water level sensors to monitor the effectiveness of the nature based solutions and natural flood management interventions that the Westcountry Rivers Trust have created in the river. 
The team are encouraging volunteer citizen scientists to get involved with the project by using the smart phone cradle placed opposite the site to monitor water levels. The photo recordings gathered by citizen scientists will then be sent to the team and put into a machine learning algorithm to automate reading the depth of the river.

Partners

Funders