Head of Land Management, Annabel Martin, explains the connections between healthy soils and healthy rivers this World Soils Day.
Many of the problems that our rivers systems face, often at the top of the hill. Rivers are so much more than the flash of water you glimpse in the bottom of the valley – they are connected to the whole landscape, and we need the whole landscape to be healthy if we want our rivers to thrive.
Soil is everywhere, and how well it functions plays a massive part in the health of a river system. Most of the soils in the Westcountry are of a type that for most of the year should allow the water to penetrate the soil surface and then trickle down through natural cracks and fissures, until it reaches clay or rock. At which point it will travel more laterally and sometime later will end up in an aquifer, in gravels under the river bed, or it may emerge as a crystal clear spring in the side of a hill.
However, much of our landscape is managed, and we need a lot of our land to produce food.. Fortunately, the same soil conditions that we need for optimal crop growth are the same ones that we need for the river system. As any farmer or gardener will tell you, success or failure of a crop can be down to two weeks; cultivate two weeks too early and the soil may be too sticky, and will compact and limit water movement; spread manure two weeks too late and again the soil will compact, and water (including the nutrients from the manure) will run off the top.
Our farm advisors take a spade with them when they visit farmers because they know that getting the soil structure in optimal condition helps to reduce downstream flooding and helps to minimise pollution. Soil is everything to a farmer and it’s everything to the river. In fact it’s of huge importance to us all, which is why Westcountry Rivers Trust is shouting about it on World Soils Day.