International Collaborations
Asia
Tropical rainforests under threat: why water resources are a vital indicator of environmental health
Tropical rainforests within Southeast Asia are being removed at an unprecedented rate as an indirect result of industrialisation and oil palm production. As an unintended consequence water resources, even in the remotest regions, are becoming unfit for human consumption or for sustaining ecology. Attributing and then arresting these hydrological impacts does, however, require understanding of the fundamental water pathways and methods of simplifying their intrinsic complexity. By addressing these scientific issues, those land management practices that are the least damaging or offer greatest ecosystem service can be defined and their value highlighted.
Using a combination of high frequency, hydrological data-logging and dynamic modelling, LEC scientists have, for example, demonstrated that flood responses in Equatorial headwaters can be strongly affected by water movement along natural soil tunnels, while the introduced pathways of forestry roads have little impact on these same responses. In some contrast, forestry roads can be largely responsible for water quality deterioration in the initial stages of commercial exploitation of undisturbed rainforests; specifically by soil failure along these roads. Our unique 20-year records show that where further disturbance is prevented or minimised, soil losses to rivers can soon return to near-natural rates.
Our dynamic hydrological models have no more complexity than is warranted by the available observations. As a consequence, simulations of hydrological processes, their climatic controls and their changes resulting anthropogenic activity are more statistically rigorous and easier to explain. We are currently developing these models to show those thresholds of environmental change necessary for hydrological shifts to be observed from a sequence of natural events and cycles. These modelling techniques are also enabling us to show how direct measurements of water storage in rainforest canopies and tropical soils can be used to improve understanding of rainforest water cycling and headwater flooding.
These investigations always involve local researchers, with the objective of developing local research capacity and assisting government policy-makers in the management of rainforests. For further details of this research, please contact Dr Nick A Chappell.
Projects;
RamuSED
BaruMOD
OP3water
pathSIM
The China Bridge Project
Understanding and managing the impact and risks of agricultural waste-disposal to land
(Prof Phil Haygarth, Prof Roger Pickup and Dr Maria-Fernanda Aller)
This innovation area has an overall aim to improve the quality of life for UK and Chinese Citizens in reducing health and pollution risks from agriculture sources with a focus on:
• Managing agriculture waste to produce energy and to reduce the impact of waste in the environment, with specific interest in biochar production and its application to soil to minimize diffuse pollution from soils;
• Innovations in catchment management in combating water eutrophication by reducing diffuse pollution from agriculture sources;
• Minimising the impacts of microbial pathogens entering the environment through diffuse pollution and impacting humans through environmental exposure.
Managing agricultural waste to produce energy and to reduce the impact in the environment
This innovation will focus on the creation of activities leading towards the creation of a document that assesses current and future innovations for waste treatment and disposal of waste across China and the UK. Specifically, the focus will be:
• Conduct an impact assessment on waste and biochar application in soils and related media;
• Forecasting the future of treatments;
• Description of environment, ecological, health issues risk for treatment and waste disposal.
The wider aim here is to develop a hub to facilitate UK-Sino innovation flow, with particular emphasis on the thermal technologies for biochar production and their application in areas differing economic affluence.
Eutrophication in China and UK: common solutions to problems at different scales
Eutrophication describes the undesirable state of lakes with nutrients and the changes that occur as a result, i.e. the primary productivity of the waterbody. Resulting algal blooms have negative environmental effects that include anoxia with severe reductions in fish and other animal populations. Furthermore loss of penetrating light reduces the numbers of macrophytes. This is a worldwide problem that includes pertinent and contemporary problems for the UK and China.
In China, one example is Lake Taihu. Lake Tai’ is the third largest lake in China and is used predominantly for drinking water and recreational activities. Since 2007 it has been severely affected by an invasion of toxic algae as a direct result of nutrients entering the lake. These algae invade the surface of the water blocking the sun light causing lake ecosystem degradation – essentially the lake has turned green. Innovations are taking place to try to control the leakage of nutrients from agriculture into the lake and also with a special focus on in-lake technologies to clean up the toxic algae and find sustainable solutions for the biomass removed.
In the UK, Lake Windermere is England’s largest lake located in the Lake District Natural Park, largely used for recreation and utilities including sewage deposition and drinking water. It currently has problems due to water euthrophication and in spring 2010 the ‘great north swim’ was halted in Lake Windermere because of the proliferation of toxic Algae in the lake. Agriculture is partly to blame for the problem and in the catchments and neighbouring catchments (including the River Eden – a national Defra Demonstration Test Catchment), new innovations and solutions are being trialled to minimise the eutrophic effects on lakes like Windermere.
Focussing on this common problem, Lancaster China Bridge with their Chinese partners will explore the innovative solutions to this problem at various levels of policy governance. Exchanges between Chinese and UK participants of various governances have continued to take place recently in the Lake District (UK), with the main objective to share experiences and innovations for solving problems of land management and diffuse pollution of lakes in China and the UK. The focus will be on learning from experiences on Lakes Wuxi and Windermere and to identify future opportunities for sharing knowledge and innovative solutions together.
Australia
Peter Young is an adjunct Professor at the Australian National University, linked with the Integrated Catchment Assessment and Management Centre (ICAM), Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University College of Medicine, Biology & Environment, Canberra, ACT.
Professor Young's main role is to advise Professor A. J. Jakeman and others in ICAM on the data analysis and modelling aspects of research projects in the area of water resources. Currently, their main area of research is connected with ARC/NWC Co-Funded Centre for Groundwater Research and Training.
Europe
Spatial Ecology group at NIOO CEME (the Dutch Institute for Ecological Research, Centre for Estuarine and Marine Ecology) in Yerseke, the Netherlands, working with Dr. Tjeerd Bouma using the NIOO flume. The work Andy Folkard and Suzana Ilic are involved with is on understanding how hydrodynamics and benthic marine ecology interact and influence each other – in particular focusing on the effects and causes of heterogeneity in mussel beds and seagrasses.
Universita degli Studi di Palermo, Italy. Andy Folkard is involved in an ongoing collaboration with the Department of Civil, Environmental & Aerospace Engineering at the Universita degli Studi di Palermo, Italy, working with Prof. Goffredo La Loggia, and Drs. Giuseppe Ciraolo, and Antonino Maltese, using the Hydraulic Laboratory flume to study flow-seagrass interactions.
North America
Hydrogeophysical characterisation of permeability
Supported by funds from the US National Science Foundation, we are exploring the use of electrical measurements for the estimation of hydraulic conductivity in aquifers. Spectral induced polarisation provides electrical spectroscopic measures that are strongly influenced by electrical charge conduction and storage along the surface of charged grains, and thus can be affected by similar textural factors that influence hydraulic permeability. With colleagues in the US we are investigating these links and attempting field based studies to examine the usefulness of these tools for mapping hydraulic conductivity fields in the subsurface.
Mass transfer in aquifers
Chemical transport in the subsurface can be controlled by the reactivity of the grain surface in a porous medium but also by the pore structure. Where dead-end pores exist, chemical diffusion may occur, thus leading to an apparent retardation of contaminant migration. As part of a US Department of Energy project which is examining the migration of uranium at the Hanford site in eastern Washington State, we are studying the link between electrical spectroscopic properties of porous media and the mass transfer processes. Our aim is to establish petrophysical links between the two, which can then be exploited for field scale investigations.