Catchments, Sub-Catchments and Private Spaces: Scale and Process in Managing Microbial Pollution from Source to Sea

Exeter. He is a rural policy specialist and a rural sociologist with particular interests in applying interdisciplinary approaches to policy-relevant research and in direct engagement in the policy process. research background is in soil hydrology and water flow pathways, and microbial transfer and survival within agricultural environments. University of Exeter. A human geographer by training, his research interests are in the contemporary culture and environment of rural England. She has over 20 years research experience in solute and sediment transport processes, wetland hydrochemistry and diffuse pollution. David Chadwick is an environmental scientist. He graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne with a degree in Agricultural and Environmental Science before completing his PhD on The Effects of Climate on Decomposition in Coniferous Ecosystems at the University of Lanaster. He has worked at North Wyke Research (formerly part of IGER) for 16 years. Since 2001, he has led a number of research groups with aims of improving manure nutrient utilisation, and to determine the impacts of managing livestock and their manures on diffuse pollutants (principally forms of nitrogen, phosphorus and faecal indicator organisms) to water and emissions (ammonia, nitrous oxide and methane) to air. His recent research has focussed on the development and assessment of management practices to reduce losses to the environment and determine the secondary effects of introducing those management practices. He has (co)authored over 60 publications in refereed journals. Initially he was employed as a post doctoral researcher on the RELU project, Sustainable and Holistic Food Chains for Recycling Livestock Waste to Land, but now works on a variety of DEFRA projects. He obtained a first class honours degree in Environmental Analysis in 1999 and followed this with a PhD investigating the microbiological performance of constructed wetlands to reduce diffuse pollution. After completing his PhD he spent a short but fruitful postdoctoral period, investigating germ warfare and biocidal wipes before joining the interdisciplinary RELU project team. Abstract This paper examines the implications of adopting catchment scale approaches for the sustainable management of land and water systems. Drawing on the findings of an interdisciplinary study examining how farm management practices impact on the loss of faecal indicator organisms (FIOs) and potential pathogens from land to water, the paper argues that the overwhelming focus on integration at the catchment level may risk ignoring the sub-catchment as an equally appropriate unit of hydrological analysis. Further the paper suggests that many of …