Project Overview

A key takeaway message from stakeholders in the Stiffkey visioning exercise with regards ecosystem services was that they “knew what they were but not where they are”. With that in mind and wanting to use CommunityViz to model an entire catchment (The Stiffkey only visioned the central section due to technical limitations) a research project was set up to raise awareness of the ecosystem services which the Babingley catchment provides – in particular, to educate on the environmental issue of water quality and water quantity.

Key Objectives

A GIS was developed to communicate the current status of the river – where the problems lie, what land uses exist, what interventions might be possible and to gather feedback from stakeholders on what they would like to see improved. After the success of utilising CommunityViz as a tool in the Stiffkey exercise could it be used to show the location of ecosystem services in the catchment, the benefits to the ecosystem services in the planned river work and finally to see whether stakeholders learn about ecosystem services from taking a participatory role in building a catchment plan.

Outcome

After a pilot it became apparent that the Babingley was in surprisingly good condition, minor interventions were required such as enabling fish passage and reducing road and agriculture runoff but overall the river channel was less modified than almost all of the other Norfolk chalk rivers. While the catchment was predominantly agriculture (like the Gaywood to the South and the Ingol to the North) the landscape was surprisingly rural, the Babingley winding its way to the Wash out of sight, flowing for over half its length through marshes on the Western side of the A149. Additional habitats would be beneficial such as the implementation of wetaldns and some creation of flood storage areas but with such limited rural population at flood risk funding would be hard to secure.