Geography For Schools

The way in which farmers use their land can increase water quality by reducing diffuse pollution, managing floods, and ensuring that our rivers and lochs are healthy habitats for wildlife.

Water

Agriculture needs enough water for plants to photosynthesise and for animals to drink but too much water causes all kinds of environmental problems.

 

Far too much water is likely to cause flooding, which may disrupt transport, damage people’s homes and is a risk to human life.

 

Less dramatic but much more common is that there is just a bit too much water. This may wash nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, put onto the land to fertilise crops, out of the soil to pollute lakes and rivers. It can then be expensive to clean the water to make it safe for us to drink.

 

These pollutants also cause rapid growth of weedy aquatic plants, which choke other life out of the water. About half of all lakes in Europe suffer from this problem, which is called eutrophication.

 

Good agricultural management can help prevent many of these problems.

 

Rain takes longer to reach streams when there is a good cover of vegetation and a fertile soil holds water better than one that is worn out and damaged, reducing the flooding risk. Using unfarmed areas between farmed fields and streams (buffer strips) and choosing the correct type of fertiliser, applying it at the right time of year and in the right amount can all help prevent water pollution.

 

 

John Baddeley
Researcher (Ecophysiologist) at SAC Aberdeen