Catherine Sefton

My main research interest is the hydrology of intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams. I am also interested in developments in hydrometric data analysis and interpretation, especially for peak flows and zero flows.  

I first worked at CEH from 1992-1997, applying a rainfall-runoff model to catchments in England and Wales, and developing a regionalisation technique for the estimation of flow in ungauged catchments. I also contributed to assessments of the impacts of climate change on UK river flows and the acidification of groundwater in Wales.

Following a career break, I spent ten years at the Environment Agency as a water resources hydrologist, with a focus on assessing the impacts of artificial influences on low flows. This included determination of conditions on licences for hydropower schemes and groundwater and surface water abstractions, and investigating the causes of low flow incidents. I also published the monthly West Thames Water Situation Report, contributed to case files for pollution incident prosecutions and surveyed the source migration of groundwater-fed streams.

Returning to CEH in November 2015, I now sit in the Hydrological Status and Outlooks Group.  As Data Quality Coordinator of the National River Flow Archive, I take a lead on long-term improvements in data and metadata holdings, and on projects concerned with hydrometric network appraisal and the application of the peak flow data.  I am a National Hydrological Monitoring Programme (NHMP) author, writing editions of the monthly Hydrological Summary, and appraising extreme hydrological events for papers and blogs.  My main research interest in the hydrology of intermittent and ephemeral rivers arose from seeing the need as a practitioner for appropriate water resources tools that would help to protect them from overabstraction.  Our subsequent projects have developed statistical models of hydrological intermittence at both catchment and national scale, as well as metrics and visualisations to characterise and communicate the dynamic behaviour of intermittent and ephemeral streams.  As an active contributor to EU COST Action 15113 Science and Management of Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams (2016-2020), I took the national lead in a citizen science initiative of hydrological observation, and in the development of a European catalogue of intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams.