M.Sc. Dissertation Project

Overview

The Bradford Beck (a beck is a small river) catchment is only about 60km2. It is heavily urbanised and the becks in the urban area are mostly in culverts (tunnels) and can’t be seen. The catchment has a population of about 200,000, and there about 50 Combined sewer overflows (CSOs; these are escape valves to discharge into surface water courses when the flow exceeds the capacity of the sewer, in principle when rainfall is high). The main river has multiple tributaries. Pollution is frequently observed at the downstream end of the culvert in dry weather. During 2020, Yorkshire Water installed some flow and quality monitors around the catchment, monitoring every 15 minutes for a year to help understand the cause and effect of pollution in the river.

Objectives

The overall aim is to help the Friends of Bradford’s Becks understand the hydraulics of the catchment better so they can target their investigations into pollution. They would like to know how flow accumulates and the speed with which pollution moves through. Specifically:

• Obtain and organise flow, quality and rainfall data for the period.

• Use GIS to estimate the catchment area for each tributary.

• Calculate how flow accumulates along the river in different seasons in both dry and wet weather and relate this to the increases in catchment area.

• Identify notable water quality events and use these to calculate transit times and speeds for various reaches of the river.