Dr Annie Ockelford from the Aquatic Research Centre was part of the team helping the Forestry Commission promote their Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) scheme at the New Forest and Hampshire County show this week.
The HLS scheme seeks to return some of the New Forest’s rivers back to a natural, meandering state and as such restore the health and biodiversity of the rivers within the New Forest.
Visitors to the stand were able to experiment with a ‘River in a Box’, a sandbox where the shape of the river can be controlled and manipulated to show different scenarios. This demonstrates how changes to river channel dimensions can affect flood risk and shows how restoring rivers back to a meandering course benefits habitats, ecology, fisheries and people.