The Annual CIEEM Irish Conference

With a very exciting line up planned for Athlone on February 28 2019, covering a range of topics that would be of interest to ecologists, hydromorphologists and all people working in the water environment. Hear about the Catchment CARE project and the Pearl Mussel Project. With talks by the River Restoration Centre, Irish Water, the Irish Environmental regulatory body –EPA, and distinguished keynote speakers such as Mary Kelly-Quinn from UCD and Ken Irvine of the IHE Delft Institute this conference is one not to be missed!

Key topics for discussion will be how the River Basin Management Plans are to be rolled out and what this will mean for current waterway management practices. Also, what innovative approaches in catchment management may do help improve our water quality and assessment approaches.

JBA will be contributing to the conference by providing a joint Hydromorphology-Ecology presentation on recent river restoration project examples which achieved restoration of not just local processes and impacts, but those at a larger catchment scale of both hydromorphology and ecology.  These river works were based on an understanding of catchment-wide interactions and dynamics, sediment sources and sinks, river flow regimes and interactions with ecological receptors.  

A JBA poster presentation will also be on display at the conference which will highlight the Holnicote project; a case study on Natural Flood Management and ways of working with natural processes. This project which was commissioned by DEFRA, to produce hard evidence to support range of natural flood management (NFM) measures, using a partnership approach. The project had some tangible outcomes including the following successes: 1. During the extremely wet winter of 2013/14 in Somerset, there was no flooding in the vulnerable villages in the catchments that had experienced regular flooding in the past, containing nearly 100 properties at risk with an insurance value of £30M. 2. The creation of flood storage areas helped to deliver a 10% reduction in flood peak during a severe storm in late December 2013.

We look forward to learning much about Ireland’s Water Environment from a regulatory and scientific perspective and to meeting the professionals behind the key changes soon to be implemented. 

A full programme of the day’s events can found here.