Increasingly there is a requirement to develop and adopt management strategies to help deal with improving river corridor habitats, flooding and diffuse pollution. As a part of this change in emphasis, the Tarland Catchment work aims to bring scientists, regulators, agencies and the local community together to both understand the relationship between land management and how it can be improved using simple pragmatic measures.

The lessons learned from the work will be used as a demonstration from which others may learn.

The catchment is the most westerly tributary of the River Dee which is under intensive land management. Its headwaters are above the village of Tarland and it drains into the Dee through the village of Aboyne. Within the catchment there are a range of land use types. On the upper slopes heather moorland gives way to plantation forestry which in turn meets the upper fields of the farms in which beef cattle and sheep are grazed, interspersed between fields of improved grass. The major settlements are the villages of Tarland and Aboyne.