Diffuse pollution of water by agriculture: approaches to source apportionment,
risk assessment and cost-effective mitigation in Scotland.
A new 5 year SEERAD funded program of research is setting out to analyse how to
optimise the social value of water use across a range of sectors. Agriculture is a key
water user, and increasing regulatory control of water quality is leading to a search for
cost-effective approaches to mitigation of diffuse water pollution. Key issues in
Scotland are the protection of bathing and drinking waters from microbial pollution,
the prevention of nutrient enrichment in ecologically valuable surface waters, and
nitrate contamination of groundwater resources.
To address these we need to
understand the sources, the delivery pathways and potential of mitigation measures to
reduce risk of pollution, within a socio-economic framework. The seminar will
discuss the potential for combining biophysical and socio-economic assessment to
come up with pointers for policy makers.
Andrew Vinten is a senior soil and water management specialist in the Catchment
Management Group at Macaulay Institute. He is currently co-ordinator for a 5 year
SEERAD research program on Management of Water Quality. This involves
integrated assessment of socio-economic and biophysical aspects of catchment
management to achieve sustainable solutions to Water Quality problems, particularly
with respect to Water Framework Directive implementation. He has over 20 years
experience in research on impacts of land use on water quality, including nitrates,
salinity, phosphates, pesticides and faecal indicators. His current research concerns
the evaluation of Best Management Practices for diffuse pollution control in a farm
context, and the quantification of the agricultural loads of faecal indicator bacteria to
water at field and catchment scale, including those associated with over-wintering of
livestock on corrals, grazing, slurry spreading and carcass disposal. He has previous
experience in saline water and waste water irrigation water management, spending 4
years at the Volcani Institute of Soil and Water in Israel. He ran an MSc in
Environmental Protection and Management at SAC/Edinburgh University for 10
years.