Catchment Change Network.net

My team and I are just back from an informative few days presenting and discussing at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna.  We mostly took part in a session that explored the challenges and solutions to catchment science problems, working across the boundaries of biophysical science and softer stakeholder interactions. It is my firm belief that the real solutions to diffuse pollution will ultimately be delivered through catchment stakeholders, but I was intrigued as to why so much of this high profile meeting (our session excepted) placed so much emphasis on finessing minute details of biophysical science or model building.  Of course I too am a scientist, but it is increasingly obvious that my science will have little impact unless I work with those who know and manage the catchments.  Step by step…..

And to see more of Phil’s photos from EGU Vienna 2012

University of Oxford, St Anne’s College, 16th – 20th July 2012 

ESKTN, together with its European partners on the FP7 WaterDiss project have organised a Summer School on Flood Risk Management. The aim of the Summer School is to provide an opportunity for talented young researchers (post docs), PhD students or freelancers from all over Europe to work closely with some of the leading academics, researchers and practitioners in the field.

For Along the bottom, you can start a text chat with the group that you’re chatting with, or show a youtube video to everyone

Just returned from a meeting in Amsterdam with catchment science and diffuse pollution management  scientists and policy makers from across Europe giving me the chance to enjoying a relatively unique opportunity for free creative thinking without feeling hindered by the normal constraints of day-to-day life.  What was so exciting was mixing policy people with scientists and watching how the debate across nations focussed on how we can try to improve the diffuse water pollution problem.  Marion Walker from Catchment Change Network came with me and together we used this meeting to frame our thinking for new guidelines.  It was also great to have Dan McGonigle from Defra along with us and to feel the buzz sharing knowledge with our European colleagues.  What struck me most was how ‘bottom-up’ the UK approach is in comparison to other nation’s approaches which seemed to be more regulatory.

Click here to see more of Phil’s photos from the meeting

STAKEHOLDERS, NEXT GENERATION MODELS, AND RISK IN MANAGING CATCHMENT CHANGE 

Forthcoming International Conference at Lancaster University, UK  

25th June – 27th June 2012 

Over the last three years the Catchment Change Network (CCN) has organised a programme of workshops and meetings to discuss and develop guidelines for incorporating risk and uncertainty into the management of catchment change in the areas of flood risk, water scarcity and diffuse pollution. This final international conference will present the progress that has been made in that time in both the CCN and other projects. A particular focus will be on the research needs in both modelling the impacts of change at scales of implementation and on stakeholder involvement in the management process. Keynote speakers include Eric Wood (Princeton University), Jay Famiglietti (University of California, Irvine), Thorsten Wagener (Penn State and Bristol Universities) Keith Beven and Phil Haygarth (Lancaster University), with others still to be confirmed.

If you have any further questions please contact Marion (marion.walker@lancaster.ac.uk) or call +44(0)1524 510290.

The CCN conference will be followed directly by the celebratory workshop GLUE: 20 years on which will continue through to Thursday lunchtime.

Lancaster University, UK  27th June – 28th  June 2012 

2012 marks the 20th anniversary of the first Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation GLUE paper by Beven and Binley in 1992 and has, in addition, just passed 1000 citations on the Web of Science. The GLUE methodology has been controversial; viewed by some as simply wrong, by others as an earlier version of Approximate Bayesian Computation, and by others as a useful way of trying to reflect the impacts of epistemic errors on complex error structures in environmental modelling. This workshop will have the aim of reviewing: the way in which the GLUE controversy has illuminated the debate about how to assess uncertainty in environmental models; the philosophy that underlies the GLUE methodology; and some examples of using GLUE in practice. The workshop will start at lunchtime on Wednesday 27th June and finish at lunchtime on Thursday 28th June and will include both oral and paper presentations. The first day will be completed by a celebratory dinner in the evening.

The workshop will follow on directly from the final Catchment Change Network International Conference  on .

If you have any further questions please contact Marion () or call +44(0)1524 510290