Various water quality parameters covering a pre and post-planting regime (Halladale study 1995-2010)
The Halladale Experiment: The effects of conifer afforestation on a sensitive freshwater environment
Our study was driven by concerns that afforesting the headwaters of the Upper Halladale River in North Scotland would affect water quality and the local salmon fishery. The main issue was the threat of increased surface water acidification due to pollutant scavenging by the growing conifer forest but there were also worries about the impact of the soil disturbance and hydrological changes accompanying ploughing and drainage operations and nutrient losses following planned fertiliser applications. The headwaters support important spawning and nursery areas for salmon and were therefore considered to be especially vulnerable to afforestation. Following an initial one-year study to evaluate the potential impacts, the scheme was agreed and planting proceeded in 1996. This presented an ideal opportunity to continue the monitoring to look at the short, medium and long-term effects of afforestation and forest growth on the chemistry and biology of a sensitive freshwater system. Water samples are regularly taken from six sites and analysed for a wide range of water quality parameters. The results of our study will also assess the efficacy of forest management practices in protecting the freshwater environment. See papers below for more details: Forestry Commission (1994). Final report on research at Halladale, February 1993 to April 1994. Forest Research, Farnham, Surrey, UK. Forestry Commission (1997). The sustainability of afforestation development within Highland catchments supporting important salmonids fisheries – the Upper Halladale Rive. Research report for the period January to December 1997. Forestry Commission (1999). The Sustainability of Afforestation Development within Highland Catchments Supporting Important Salmonid Fisheries - the Upper Halladale River. Research Report for the Period January - December 1999. T.R. Nisbet, J. Pitman & S. Broadmeadow (2007) ANC Response Function for Salmonids: An Assessment of the Critical Limit for Protecting Surface Waters from Acidification in Scotland. Forest Research, Farnham, Surrey, UK. Shah, N.W. and Nisbet, T.R. (2016) The short and long-term effects of peatland conifer afforestation on water quality in a sensitive freshwater system. Manuscript in preparation. Attribution statement:
dataset
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/data.defra.gov.uk/Forestry/FC_OpenData/FR/Halladale_to2010.xlsx
protocol: WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
name:
description:
275f77e4-75df-41a3-a042-4fdb158a8fe0
eng
http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/27700
environment
OpenData
Scotland
Halladale
Environment
Research
Water quality
Turbidity
hydrology
publication
2010-01-13
-3.875
-3.86
58.355
58.345
http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/doc/country/scotland
1995-11-03
2010-11-01
creation
2016-01-11
publication
2016-03-17
biannually
Data creation involved taking water quality samples from the Upper Halladale River Catchment and analysing the samples in the Alice Holt chemical laboratory; the data has been standardised to a monthly time scale. The results consist of approximately one year of baseline data prior to afforestation (January 1995 to January 1996) and a further 14.5 years after afforestation (to December 2010). The data has been checked for erroneous results but outliers have not been removed unless the laboratory has reported a problem or if the data is wildly out of range. The net result is that very few sample points have been removed from the long-term data set.
Open format | MS Excel (XLSX)
2010
Contains Forestry Commission information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.
Forestry Commission
mapping.geodata@forestry.gov.uk
description: Forestry Commission Website
pointOfContact
Forestry Commission
mapping.geodata@forestry.gov.uk
pointOfContact
2020-03-19