Coastal/Farmland Overlap

For the East Grampian coast, agriculture shouldn't be treated purely as a land based activity rather need to be seen as a catchment-to-coast issue. The local coastal zone includes significant arable and livestock farming and the traditional definitions identified agriculture as a key land use along the north-east coastal strip. However with the modern day agricultural practices which is intensive there are lot of environmental challenges like nutrient runoff from fertiliser, manure and slurry, soil and sediment loss, livestock-related faecal contamination, pesticides, and drainage from cultivated land into burns, rivers, transitional waters and coastal waters, which affect our natural marine environment.

 The prominent challenge is non-point sources which acts as rural diffuse popllution difficult to identify individual identifiable pipe or source which become signifiacant at catchment scale, including fertiliser loss, poor application practice, livestock access to watercourses, soil erosion and faecal bacterial contamination.