Surface Water - Groundwater Interaction Research in Chalk Catchments: UK Lowland Catchment Research Programme (LOCAR)

The focus of new European legislation on integrated management and, in particular, on ecological quality, raises major scientific and technical questions. These require improved understanding of catchment systems and hydro-ecological interactions that can only be obtained from integrated and multi-disciplinary experimental research. The main water supply aquifers in the United Kingdom, namely the Cretaceous Chalk and Permo-Triassic Sherwood Sandstone, are situated, for the most part, in lowland England, particularly in the Midlands, South and South East. These aquifers have a major, often dominant influence on the river systems that they underlie. These lowland permeable catchments present a particular set of challenges; management pressures are great, the scientific understanding of the major UK aquifers is poor, and tools for the integrated modelling of surface water-groundwater interactions and associated hydro-ecological processes are limited. In response to these factors, the LOwland CAtchment Research programme (LOCAR) was conceived. The programme also provides intrumented catchments to address some of these scientific issues. This paper describes the programme and early results of research into the influence of lithostratigraphy and karst features on surface water/groundwater interaction in the two Chalk LOCAR catchments.