Welcome
Welcome
The £2.7M Centre for Catchment & Coastal Research (CCCR) is one of the four Research Centres of the Aberystwyth University and Bangor University Research & Enterprise Partnership. Find out more about the Research Enterprise Partnership...
CCCR brings together a multi-disciplinary consortium of leading environmental academics from the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, the Centre for Research into Environment and Health, and the Department of Computer Sciences and the newly formed Institute Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University; and the School of Ocean Sciences, the School of Biological Sciences and the School of the Environment and Natural Resources at Bangor University. There are also strong links with the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (co-located with Bangor University in the Environment Centre Wales).
Vision
CCCR’s vision is to be Internationally recognised as a research platform addressing scientific issues of major economic and societal relevance at the land-ocean interface.
Mission
CCCR Mission is to Integrate the study of rivers, estuaries and coastal waters within a single functional and linked system and thus establish a framework to provide substantial benefits for the long-term sustainable management of water, of rivers and of the land-ocean interface in Wales and internationally.
The rationale for CCCR
The expertise within CCCR spans the terrestrial freshwater and marine sciences, with a research focus on biogeochemical and biological processes that control the behaviour of the coastal zone (from river catchment to shelf edge) CCCR undertakes research into water quality, habitat protection, and hazard management in river catchments and the coastal zone with a focus on, but not exclusively the coastal and catchments environment in Wales.
The enormous physical diversity and biological richness of rivers, estuaries and coasts in Wales engenders a uniqueness that sets it apart from the rest of the UK and from much of the Atlantic littoral of Western Europe. The benefits this brings in term of quality of life, cultural vibrancy, tourism and the heritage industry and to education are numerous. However, more limited human control and intervention in land and coastal systems, which have a greater degree of ‘wildness’ and dynamism than in many other parts of the UK, also presents a significant challenge to catchment and coastal managers and regulators at a time of rapid and unprecedented environmental change. CCCR is well placed to provide the research underpinning to help inform management and policy decisions for these constantly changing circumstances.