Tamar Catchment Evidence Review

The catchment of the River Tamar and its tributaries, when combined with the other rivers that flow into the Tamar Estuary, cover a total land area of around 1,800 sq km. The River Tamar itself, which forms the boundary between the counties of Devon and Cornwall, rises in the hills of North Devon and flows 78 km southwards before entering Plymouth Sound. In addition to the River Tamar, the wider catchment includes the Rivers Tavy, Plym, Yealm, Lynher and Tiddy.

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The topography of the wider Tamar catchment is highly varied, with the main upland areas found in the western and eastern fringes of the catchment (Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor). The upper and central sections of the River Tamar catchment are largely comprised of rolling farmland where the low porosity clay soils and granite bedrock give rise to incised ‘flashy’ rivers prone to rapid onset of spate conditions. The Tamar Catchment has a diverse mixture of rural and coastal, towns and villages, and the main types of industry are agriculture and tourism. The most populated urban areas are Plymouth, Tavistock, Launceston and Holsworthy. 

Features & morphology

Principal catchment features

Map created using OS Open Data products: Terrain50TM, StrategiTM and VectorMap DistrictTM (www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload)

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50m DEM free from OS Open Data – (www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload)

Morphology Digital terrain data is very useful for visualisation of landform, while detailed accurate data representing rivers, streams and other watercourses is also a vital component of any catchment mapping process. 

Overview

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Tamar Catchment Evidence Review

Published on Oct 4, 2015

Westcountry Rivers Trust

The Tamar Catchment Partnership have adopted an ecosystem services approach to their catchment management planning activities. During this participatory process, stakeholders and technical specialists worked with a broker/facilitator to identify areas within their catchment which play, or have the potential to play, a particularly important role in the delivery of a range of benefits (ecosystem services) to society. To ensure that the resulting synthesis is robust, all of the data and evidence relating to each ecosystem service (and the environmental infrastructure that provides it) has been collated and scrutinised by the stakeholders during the discussions. Once the evidence had been evaluated, the partnership then worked to develop a series of conceptual models or ‘rules’ which could be used to define areas of the catchment most likely to play a critical role in the provision of the different ecosystem services.