Catchment Change Network.net

Booking is now open for the Expert Forum Event for Practitioners Implementing the WFD – Leeds 17^th January 2012.

The purpose of the day is to:

• Collate and share knowledge and skills between practitioners from industry, business, academia and policy to increase compliance with the WFD.
• Establish what initiatives and research is available (either complete or ongoing) to inform implementation of the WFD.

Key themes for discussion are:

• Agriculture and rural land management
• Urban planning and diffuse pollution
• Hydromorphology – achieving good ecological potential

More information, together with the programme for the day, can be found in this flyer If you would like to contribute to discussion, please contact Viki Hirst for information on how to register to join ( a small fee is payable on registration).

To book a place at the forum, please visit the booking page.

Keith Beven, Professor of Hydrology and Fluid Dynamics at Lancaster University, featured on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on Saturday 18/11/2011.  Listen to the full discussion, generated by the second anniversary of the Cumbria Cockermouth 2007 floods, on the BBC iPlayer   (17.40 minutes into the programme).

The NERC pilot Environmental Virtual Observatory (EVO) project is now well underway.   It is, at this stage, only a pilot or proof-of-concept project but has ambitions to use cloud technology to provide a platform for observational data and model results across scales, across applications and across users from policy makers to interaction with the public (and not forgetting that it might also be useful to scientists in developing and testing methods and models by making observational data more readily available).

“Storybooks” for how different types of application might work within the EVO are already being tested with different levels of stakeholders and some of these are relevant to CCN, including the impact of land management on flood runoff generation and nutrient transfers.   As yet these use relatively simple models to explore what might happen under different future scenarios.   This allows stakeholders such as farmers to explore what impact their management actions might have on the downstream catchment. 

This is relatively simple to set up for the pilot project as a demonstration of the potential functionality of the EVO but there is also an interesting science question that then arises about how far such predictions can be made robust for different conditions around the country.    There are, after all, relatively few detailed experimental studies of land management impacts at field or small catchment scales, and those have proven somewhat difficult to model.   The impacts might indeed depend on the particular hydrological conditions during the period of the experiments.  

So there will be uncertainty about representing the impacts of such changes in these data rich sites, but most of the landscape will be data poor.   How far therefore should the knowledge exchange process in the EVO platform reflect these uncertainties, and how far should they be hidden from users so as not to confuse or lose the message?   The EVO pilot project has about a year to run and so there will be only limited time to explore such issues.  If the full project goes ahead, however, such questions will be crucial to how the platform should be used.   It is a real opportunity to explore some of the uncertainties and consequent risk impacts associated with both observations and model outputs.

The first edition of the Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC)  Newsletter is available now.

17-18^th November 2011 – Mercure St Paul’s Hotel, Sheffield City Centre.

The project at the University of Sheffield brings together research from a number of disciplines to demonstrate the gains which may be made by integrated and innovative development in urban river corridors. This conference is the culmination of the four year project, and we have pleasure in inviting you to share our results.

There is a developing consensus that rivers in the urban environment now provide an asset to the city and wider reaches, rather than being just drains for stormwater and channels of pollution. River corridors, particularly in urban settings, can offer a wealth of benefits such as landscape enhancement, ecosystem vibrancy, flood control mechanisms, and opportunities for both economic development and recreation activities.

Conference details available , or by contacting Jenny Chambers by telephone on 0114 222 5725 or by email at j.a.chambers@shef.ac.uk.

The conference programme can be downloaded .

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