River Eden, Cumbria
In the River Eden catchment, we hope to demonstrate how understanding the history of human activity in catchments and their landscapes can inform their sustainable future management, and to show how that understanding can be used to engage people in informed resilience planning for their places. We will develop a toolkit that enables archival, historical and material knowledge to be centralised within a geographical information system (GIS) database.
This toolkit will develop the historic watercourses methodology piloted on the Dorset Stour and the River Culm (Devon) by Historic England and Fjordr Ltd in collaboration with local and national stakeholders so that it can be applied in multiple contexts to better understand how people have used and shaped watercourses, and adjacent lands through time, including through adaptation to flooding, drought and storms. We will explore how this information can be used to support engagement of contemporary inhabitants of these places in plans for their future resilience.