Upper Catchment Management

A catchment is a geographic area of land defined naturally by the flow of rainfall into a body of water, such as a river. The specific pressures on a catchment vary depending on the geology, climate and environmental sensitivity of the catchment, as well as the type of land and water uses in the catchment (for example: farming practices, water supply, recreation and industrial activity).

The type and extent of land and water uses in a catchment, as well as the state of the natural environment, has an impact on matters such as:

• the quality and quantity of water within the catchment;
• the extent to which the land can be effectively drained;
• the goods, services and wildlife that the catchment area can sustain.

Catchment management can therefore involve a range of different approaches across a catchment in order to achieve a number of different outcomes. These include flood risk management, managing and improving water quality, water abstraction management, improving habitats or restoring landscapes and soil quality.

Upland or upstream management can refer to the location of the relevant measures within the catchment. For example, a measure such as managing peatland and forestry at the upstream point of the water body to mitigate the impacts of flooding. There are a number of pilot schemes looking at the science and evidence around such measures. More information on the example of flood risk management is provided below.

Useful resources

Some useful resources on this topic are:

• For general context and background on flooding, including information on Catchment Flood Management Plans, see the House of Commons Library Briefing Paper on Flood risk management and funding (December 2016).
• For information on catchment-based approaches employing a range of natural flood management measures, see POSTNote on Catchment-Wide Flood Management (December 2014)
• For general context and background on water quality, including information on the catchment-based approaches, see the House of Commons Library Briefing paper on the Water Framework Directive: achieving good status of water bodies (November 2015).
• For information on managing catchments as a whole in the context of water abstraction, see POSTNote no.546 on the Reform of Freshwater Abstraction (January 2017).
• For information on upstream catchment management in the water industry, see Ofwat’s paper From catchment to customer (2011).
• For information on land management and soils, see the Environmental Audit Committee Report on Soil Health (June 2016).