By Jayna Connelly, Science Communicator
Mild winters, periods of flooding and then extended dry spells are increasingly becoming part of the UK’s new climate reality. Managing these extremes is no easy task for farms, or for the people and wildlife that depend on them. Understanding how land management can help soils cope better with both heavy rainfall and drought is therefore more important than ever.
At the Allerton Project, researchers are working to find practical answers. As part of the Water Friendly Farming project, the team is using a rainfall simulator to measure how water moves through soil under different land management approaches. By recreating intense rainfall events, the experiment allows researchers to see how well soils absorb water, how much runs off the surface, and how different management choices influence these processes. Ultimately, the aim is to answer a key question: can we manage land in ways that reduce runoff, improve soil health and protect watercourses during extreme weather?
Water Friendly Farming is the UK’s longest running and most detailed catchment scale agri environment research project. It is designed to test how effective different land management measures are at reducing the impacts of farming on rivers, streams and the wider freshwater environment, while maintaining productive farmland. The project is a long term collaboration between the Freshwater Habitats Trust, GWCT’s Allerton Project, the University of York, the Environment Agency, and landowners across three study catchments.
By combining long term monitoring with hands on experiments like the rainfall simulator, Water Friendly Farming is helping to build a clearer picture of how soils, water and farming interact, and how thoughtful land management can play a crucial role in making farms more resilient in a changing climate.