Hedgerows and hydrology - CEH paperblog 5

Our latest paperblog highlights some of the recently published scientific papers led by or involving researchers from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

• A new study in Global Change Biology describes results from a nine-year N perturbation, manipulation experiment carried out by CEH scientists on an ombrotrophic bog, Whim (a site in the Scottish Borders). Ammonium and nitrate were provided in rainwater spray in differing amounts, plus a rainwater only control, via an automated system coupled to site meteorology. The work was led by Dr Lucy Sheppard.

• A study recently published in Biological Conservation examined changes over 70 years in hedgerow floral diversity, including the impacts of management. The paper, led by CEH's Jo Staley with colleagues James  Bullock, John Redhead, Danny Hooftman and Richard Pywell, used a unique botanical dataset for 357 hedge sites across a study area of 2600 km² in Dorset, collected in the 1930s and again in 2001. 

• Professor Helen Jarvie of CEH, working with other CEH scientists and scientists based in the US, has written a new paper examining water quality remediation and the challenges it faces from "legacy phosphorus". The paper is published in Environmental Science & Technology.

• Three CEH hydrologists led by Dr Alison Kay have undertaken a study of uncertainty and sensitivity issues around estimating changes in 20-year return period flood peaks in Britain. The research is published in the journal Hydrological Processes.

• Professor Mike Acreman of CEH and Profesor Joe Holden from the University of Leeds have published a new article on "How Wetlands Affect Floods". It was published in Wetlands, the official scholarly journal of the Society of Wetland Scientists, in mid-August. They focused on two example wetland types (upland rain-fed wetlands and floodplain wetlands) to demonstrate why there are differences in flood functions both within and between wetland types.

Open access publishing is increasingly becoming the 'norm' in scientific publishing in the UK. To end this month's paperblog, we highlight three papers, all open access, which involve CEH scientists.

• First, Dr Bethan Purse of CEH co-authored a review of "Culicoides biting midges, arboviruses and public health in Europe" published in Antiviral Research, led by Simon Carpenter from the Pirbright Institute.

• Second, three CEH scientists have collaborated on a paper examining upland streamwater nitrate dynamics in CEH's long-term field sites at Plynlimon in Wales. The manuscript, describing work led by the University of Reading, is currently under discussion in Biogeosciences Discussions (until 3 October 2013). All data reported in the paper are freely accessible via the CEH Information Gateway.

• Finally, and also under discussion until 3 October 2013, Mike Bowes of CEH, working with colleagues at Newcastle University, is co-author of a new paper in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences looking at nutrient pollution modelling and monitoring. The example used is the river Frome catchment in Dorset, an area which CEH scientists know well, having carried out many years of research there.

Barnaby Smith - Media Relations Manager

Additional information

If you'd like a fuller picture of new papers from CEH, just follow the CEH Paper Alerts Twitter feed, which lists CEH peer-reviewed papers newly published online. Full details of Centre for Ecology & Hydrology science publications, including those published in peer-reviewed science journals, are eventually catalogued on the NERC Open Research Archive (NORA).

Those of you who follow the scientific literature will know some journal websites require registration and some are subscription-only. CEH, as part of NERC, is working with publishers and funders to make more of our output open access, and we have indicated above where this is the case.

We also publish lots of our other outputs including biological records atlases and project reports. More details can be found in the publications section of the CEH website.