Supervisory team: Steve Rushton, Hannah Earp, Aileen Mill, Heather Sugden, Pip Moore, Sarah Coulthard, Clare Fitzsimmons, Roy Sanderson

Partners: Natural England, Environment Agency

Keywords: Environmental restoration, Coastal environment

LIFE WADER (Water and Disturbance Environmental Restoration on the Northumberland coast) is a five-year project that will improve river, intertidal and marine habitats and the species that depend on them. The project area covers the Northumberland Coast and the cross-border Tweed catchment (England and Scotland).

Aim: 

LIFE WADER will focus on the following issues which are impacting on the project area:

• The need to improve water quality within the Tweed catchment and Northumberland coast

• Excessive levels of macro algae in intertidal areas

• Control of invasive non-native species in river, dune and intertidal areas

• The effects of human recreation on wildlife

MRes students are invited design research projects to work with the multidisciplinary WADER team. Projects can be field, desk or lab based allowing students to work with researchers, practitioners and policy delivery teams. Students can access extant datasets for modelling projects or collect new data alongside the current sampling and monitoring programme.

List of potential associated MRes project areas:

Water bird and environment interactions

Invasive species management

Remote sensing for environmental monitoring

Invertebrate sediment interactions

Sediment diagenesis

Macroalgal impacts on sediment biogeochemistry

Human impacts on coastal systems

Impacts of interventions for system restoration

Freshwater nitrogenous pollution and impact on opportunistic macroalgae

Skill development: 

• Data management and analyses
• Species ID
• Pollution modelling
• Spatially explicit modelling and mapping using R  
• Working with stakeholders
• Presentation and report writing

Target Journal: People and Nature

Thanks,
Aileen