CEH science at EGU 2015

CEH scientists are among those presenting research updates to the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna this week (12-17 April 2015). The meeting brings together scientists from all over the world to discuss aspects of Earth, planetary and space sciences.

Abstracts of oral and poster presentations led by CEH scientists and students can be found below:

• Sources of greenhouse gases and carbon monoxide in central London (UK). Carole Helfter
• Ecosystem-scale trade-offs between impacts of ozone and reactive nitrogen. Ed Rowe
• Eddy-covariance data with low signal-to-noise: time-lag determination, uncertainties and limits of detection. Ben Langford
• Concentrations and behaviour of atmospheric ammonia above the Amazon rain forest. Eiko Nemitz
• Deriving a speciated atmospheric nitrogen budget at Auchencorth Moss, a background in south east Scotland. Marsailidh Twigg
• Hydrological assessment of radar-raingauge merging techniques using the Grid-to-Grid model. Paul Mattingley
• Development of a UV miniaturised Fourier Transform Spectrometer (MicroFTS) for the detection of Dissolved Organic Carbon in water. Paul Scholefield
• Hydroecological impacts of climate change modelled for a lowland UK wetland. Andrew House.
• Effects of ploughing on land-atmosphere exchange of greenhouse gases in a managed temperate grassland in central Scotland. Carole Helfter
• Intercomparison of six fast-response sensors for the eddy-covariance flux measurement of nitrous oxide over agricultural grassland. Eiko Nemitz
• Assessing the impact of African wetlands on rainfall. Christopher Taylor 
• Humus and humility in ecosystem model design. Ed Rowe
• Attributing spatial and temporal changes in soil C in the UK to environmental drivers. Amy Thomas
• Sustained impact of drought on wet shrublands mediated by soil physical changes. Maria Dominguez
• Evidence of change in UK atmospheric composition as a result of Icelandic volcanic emissions in 2014. Marsailidh Twigg
• Effective Eruption Modelling project: assessing UK impacts of trace species and sulphur deposition. Christine Braban
• The sensitivity of global ozone predictions to dry deposition schemes and their response to climate change. Federico Centoni
• Detecting soil moisture impacts on convective initiation in Europe. Christopher Taylor
• Soil organic carbon mining versus priming - controls of soil organic carbon stocks along a management gradient. M Carmen Blanes
• Land surface energy budget during dry spells: global CMIP5 AMIP simulations vs satellite observations. Belen Gallego-Elvira
• Probability density functions for use when calculating standardised drought indices. Cecilia Svensson
• A scenario neutral approach to assess low flow sensitivity to climate change. Eric Sauquet
• MetNH3: Metrology for ammonia in ambient air. Christine Braban

Additionally, Dr Eiko Nemitz is a convenor of two sessions on Biosphere-atmosphere exchanges while Bob Moore is convening a PICO session on hydrological forecasting.

On Thursday, Prof Christel Prudhomme is one of the panel of experts taking part in the Young Hydrologic Society's session on Meet the expert in hydrology - The mystery of evaporation.

Good luck to everyone taking part!

Not in Vienna? All great debates, union symposia, press conf., some medal lectures at #EGU15 are being streamed live! http://t.co/4ONMdfAvZ6
— EGU (@EuroGeosciences) April 13, 2015

Dr Paul Scholefield is one of the CEH scientists presenting at EGU2015 this week:

Very pleased to be presenting on the @STFC_Matters carbon sensor today at #EGU15 @CEHScienceNews @HughMortimer http://t.co/CqUKvnHrwE
— Paul Scholefield (@DrScholefield) April 14, 2015

Below, poster presentation by Christine Braban and colleagues in the Natural Hazards session on Atmosphere emissions from volcanoes and their dispersion:

Effusive Eruption Modelling project: Assessing UK impacts of trace species and sulphur deposition

EGU 2015 is taking place at the Austria Center Vienna. Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0 BambooBeast

Related links

European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2015

CEH Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions science area

CEH Natural Hazards science area

CEH lakes research presented at 2015 Aquatic Sciences Meeting

A number of CEH's lake researchers are in attendance at the 2015 Aquatic Sciences Meeting taking place this week in Granada, Spain (22-27 February). See below for details of oral and poster presentations. You can follow updates from the meeting on Twitter with #ASLO2015.

• An assessment of benthic-pelagic coupling of arsenic in a shallow lake recovering from industrial pollution (Kinghorn Loch, UK). Justyna Olszewska
• Detecting the full suite of signals from freshwater lakes and attributing their cause. Stephen Maberly.
• Long-term effects of dredging on sediment phosphorus in a shallow lake - Barton Broad, Norfolk, UK. Alanna Moore
• Understanding phytoplankton community phenology: creating a long-term index of seasonal timing related to traits and physical drivers. Eleanor Mackay
• Assessing macrophyte recovery in lakes treated with Phoslock. Kate Waters.
• Investigating multiple critical transitions in Loch Leven (1968-2013). Stephen Ives.
• Controlling internal phosphorus loading in lakes using geo-engineering: lessons from multiple whole lake experiments. Bryan Spears.

Photo: CEH scientists carrying out restoration research at a lake in Scotland

 

Related links

2015 ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting

UK Lake Restoration research at CEH

Lake Ecosystems research at CEH

CEH at the BES-SFE Joint Annual Meeting

The annual meeting of the British Ecological Society is a little different in 2014: for the first time, it joins up with the Société Française d’Ecologie for a joint conference.

The idea is to bring together ecologists from the two countries to promote exchange and debates and "strengthen cooperation between the French and British researchers of tomorrow". The meeting takes place at the Grand Palais in Lille, the capital of French Flanders, from 9-12 December 2014.

Scientists and students from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology are represented in a number of sessions, giving presentations and showcasing scientific posters on a range of topics including tree health, citizen science, agricultural ecology and climate change. Detailed information on all the talks and posters is available via the event app, although session and speaker names are outlined in the PDF programme.

You can also follow all the chat on Twitter with #BESSfe.

Wednesday 10 December 2014

Session: Macroecology, Biogeography and Landscape 

Nick Isaac presents on Butterfly abundance is determined by food availability mediated by species traits

Louise Barwell has a poster on Predicting species distributions at fine spatial scales

Session: Welcome to the dark side - Opportunities challenges and solutions for synthesizing global soil biodiversity

Rob Griffiths presents on Soil bacterial biogeography: using landscape scale surveys to predict and interpret local effects of land use change

Session: Generation and maintenance of genetic diversity in tropical forests

Stephen Cavers presents on Understanding genetic diversity in tropical tree species

Session: Long-term monitoring in agro-ecosystems

Marc Botham presents on The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: what can long-term monitoring tell us about the state of butterfly populations on farmland?

Session: Ecological Genetics and Molecular Ecology

Rory O’Connor (Phd student with the University of Leeds and CEH) has a poster on Habitat specialism and population genetics in the Adonis blue (Polyommatus bellargus) and Chalkhill blue butterflies (Polyommatus coridon): Higher specialism is associated with a more fragmented population structure

Thursday 11 December 2014

Session: Forest ecology

Nick Ostle (CEH Fellow) presents on Don’t mess with the moss! Boreal forest floor carbon cycling

Emma Sayer (Lancaster University) working with Lindsay Banin: Are Dipterocarps Different? The role of seedling traits in growth rates in Bornean tropical forests

Session: Infectious disease ecology and evolution

Susan Withenshaw presents on Experimental manipulation of Bartonella transmission within wild multi-host rodent communities

Session: Plant-pollinator interactions

Adam Vanbergen presents on Grazing alters insect visitation networks and plant mating systems

Session: Marine Ecology and Ecosystems

Sarah Burthe presents on Assessing the vulnerability of the marine bird community in the western North Sea to climate change and other anthropogenic impacts

Session: Conservation Ecology Management and Policy

Suzanna Mason has a poster on Change in rate of range expansion under climate change varies across taxonomic groups

Session: Plant-Soil Interactions and Biogeochemistry

Ben Jackson has a poster on Localized N2O emissions associated with actino rhizal nodules of black alder

Session: Food Webs, Networks and Complexity

Callum Macgregor (Phd with the University of Hull and CEH ) has a poster on How does light pollution affect nocturnal pollination interactions?

Friday 12 December 2014

Session: Global Change Ecology

Sabine Reinsch presents on High resolution of soil respiration measurements help model plant vs soil derived components of soil respiration under warmer and dryer conditions

Session: Ecological Implications of Tree Diseases

Lindsay Maskell presents on Tree diseases: Potential landscape changes

Michael Pocock presents on Monitoring to assess the impacts of tree diseases: integrating citizen science with professional monitoring

Session: Agricultural Ecology

Danny Hooftman presents on Enhancing environmental benefits from Agri-Environment schemes: an optimisation tool

Elwyn Sharps (Phd with Bangor University and CEH) presents on Agriculture, nest predation and trampling by livestock: Even light grazing of salt marshes causes high rates of nest mortality in Common Redshank Tringa tetanus

Session: Celebrating Citizen Science

Helen Roy presents on Celebrating 50 years of the Biological Records Centre

Jodey Peyton presents on Open Farm Sunday Pollinator Survey: Citizen science as a tool for pollinator monitoring?

Session: Invasive Species

Steven White presents on Modelling the spread of Xylella fastidiosa in Puglia, Italy

Session: Climate Change Ecology

Tom Oliver presents on High intensity land use inhibits the ability of communities to track climate warming

Session: Consumer-Resource Interactions

Sara Ball presents on Size matters: body size determines functional response of ground beetle interactions

Session: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function

Susan Jarvis presents on Species richness-productivity relationships in UK vascular plants

Good luck to all those taking part!

Related links

Storify of CEH activity at #BESSfe

British Ecological Society 2014 Annual Meeting





The Opera House in Lille, the capital of French Flanders

CEH at the British Hydrological Society National Symposium

Several CEH scientists are in Birmingham this week at the 12th British Hydrological Society National Symposium. This year’s theme is “Challenging hydrological theory and practice.”

The symposium, which takes place from 2-4 September 2014, is one of the main meetings for the UK’s hydrological community, a community in which CEH plays a key role, through both our research on issues such as water resources, floods and droughts, and our extensive hydrological data management remit.

CEH has a stand at the conference. Visitors are being shown this video highlighting the wide range of hydrological research we carry out:



Ten CEH staff are speaking at the conference on a wide range of subjects. Their presentations are as follows:

1. Natural or designer environmental flows for a changing world? Prof Mike Acreman

2. Predicting physical habitat sensitivity to abstraction. Cedric Laizé

3. Overdispersion in peak over threshold (POT) flow data and its effect on flood frequency practice.
Dr Ilaria Prosdocimi

4. The new FEH rainfall depth-duration-frequency model: results,
comparisons and implications. Lisa Stewart

5. What do we talk about when we talk about drought? Jamie Hannaford

6. Real-time modelling of surface water flooding hazard and impact at
countrywide scales. Dr Steven Cole

7. Presentation of the new CEH-GEAR dataset: fine resolution daily and monthly
areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use Dr Maliko Tanguy

8. Can land use and land management make a difference to water
availability? Helen Houghton-Carr

9. How do we want to access hydrological data over the web? Matt Fry

10. Ensuring UK hydrometric data is fit-for-purpose through a national
Service Level Agreement. Katie Muchan

Conference attendees are tweeting using the hashtag #BHS2014

Links

Conference website

Conference programme

CEH science at EGU2014

The breadth of CEH science has been well represented in several sessions at this week’s European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2014 in Vienna. The event brought together more than 11,000 scientists from all over the world into one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. Check out our Storify for a flavour of what’s been going on for CEH or scroll down for abstracts of our lead talks and posters.

Abstracts

Stephen Thackeray presented an update on the Shifting Seasons and climate change phenology project which he leads. For more details of the project, visit the webpage.

Andrew Chiverton: Which catchment characteristics control the temporal dependence structure of daily river flows?

Kelly Mason: Regulation of Boreal soil respiration - evidence from a Swedish forest fire chronosequence

Ed Rowe: Towards an understanding of feedbacks between plant productivity, acidity and dissolved organic matter

James Miller: Assessing the relative and cumulative impacts of future urbanisation and climate change on storm runoff in a peri-urban catchment

Steven Cole: Probabilistic flood forecasting for Rapid Response Catchments using a countrywide distributed hydrological mode

Kerry Dinsmore: Aquatic carbon and GHG losses via the aquatic pathway in an Arctic catchment

Cecilia Svensson: Improving winter river flow forecasts for the UK

Andy Robertson: Land use change to Miscanthus - measured and modelled changes in soil carbon fractions

Carole Helfter: Effects of winter temperature and summer drought on net ecosystem exchange of CO2 in a temperate peatland

Andy Robertson: Using an input manipulation experiment to partition greenhouse gas fluxes from a commercial Miscanthus plantation in the UK

Cecilia Svensson: Seasonal UK river flow forecasts based on persistence and historical analogy

Jessica Adams: Estimating sources and fluxes of dissolved and particulate organic matter in UK rivers

Kerry Dinsmore: Multisite comparison of drivers of methane emissions from wetlands in the European Arctic - influence of vegetation community and water table

Garry Hayman: Wetland methane modelling over the Scandinavian Arctic - performance of current land-surface models

Additionally, our scientists have been busy collaborating with many international colleagues who also gave talks at the event: topics included the Globolakes project, atmospheric ammonia, emissions modelling at the field scale, monitoring changes in peatland, greenhouse gas production from shallow lakes and ponds, soil organic carbon dynamics, vulnerability of ecosystems to extreme climatic events, water quality sampling, streamwater nitrate dynamics, soil status in drought, crowd-sourcing data with the mySoil app, historical flood information, using isotopes in Arctic catchments, the sensitivity of river reaches to water abstraction, soil hydraulics, peatland modelling, microbial carbon turnover and hazard assessment for volcanic eruptions.

Kelly Mason, Research Associate in Plant-Soil Interactions at CEH, presented
work on regulation of boreal soil respiration, which was carried out with
colleagues from CEH, Lancaster University, University of Washington and Bangor
University. Photo: Andy Robertson

Posted by Paulette Burns

Making ecology count at the INTECOL Congress, London

The 11th INTECOL Congress, the world's largest international ecology meeting, comes to London next week (18-23 August 2013) as part of the centenary celebrations of the British Ecological Society, and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology scientists and PhD students will be there!

The theme of this year's Congress is "advancing ecology and making it count". It's a very significant event: the ecological science to be presented covers everything from aquatic ecology to island biogeography to species interactions, through a series of 43 symposia, 31 workshops, 56 oral sessions, 11 plenary talks, 500 posters, as well as social events and scientific trips. More than 2000 ecologists from 67 countries will be attending. Details of all the sessions can be found on the INTECOL website or with the very useful app produced for the conference.

We highlight just some of the CEH participants below to give a little taste of our own ongoing research in the field of ecology.

Stephen Thackeray, a lake ecologist based at our Lancaster site, is among those scientists who will deliver a keynote talk in one of the symposia. Stephen, who is currently coordinating the NERC-funded phenology project "Shifting seasons, climate change & ecosystem consequences", will present on Friday on trophic asynchrony: definitions, drivers and consequences in aquatic and terrestrial systems. The phenology symposium looks at perspectives from ecosystems across the International Long Term Ecological Network.

Busy both organising and presenting during the week is ecologist Matt Heard. Along with Adam Vanbergen of CEH, who is science coordinator of the Insect Pollinators Initiative, and Simon Potts, University of Reading, Matt has organised a symposium for Thursday entitled "Threats to an ecosystem service: evaluating multifactorial pressures on insect pollinators". The keynote at the symposium will be delivered by Claire Kremen of the University of California.

Pressures on pollinators are a global concern

During the symposium, Matt will present results from a project led by Claire Carvell of CEH that is aimed at helping to understand the effects of land management and habitat structure on bumblebee behaviour and colony dynamics. Additionally, Matt is involved in a separate session on Wednesday on the theme of agricultural ecology, when he will talk about how agri-environment scheme management enhances wildlife diversity and abundance at different scales.

Michael Pocock, co-author of the recent Guide to Citizen Science, is organising a workshop on citizen science to take place on Thursday afternoon. This will give participants the opportunity to hear about some of the leading technologies in citizen science and to try out some for themselves, maybe even be inspired to collaborate on some new ideas. Michael, who co-leads the Conker Tree Science project and who researches the complexity of ecological networks, will also be presenting a talk in a separate session that will look at the diversity of environmental and ecological citizen science.

Helen Roy, coordinator of the UK Ladybird Survey and another co-author of the Guide to Citizen Science, will also be involved in the workshop. Helen also has a separate talk on scanning for aliens in a session on invasive species which she will also chair.

Other CEH scientists presenting throughout the week include Owen Mountford on assessing the quality of agri-environment agreements, Ed Rowe on predicting effects of nitrogen pollution on soils, Danny Hooftman on mapping ecosystem services and biodiversity, Tom Oliver on impacts of climatic extremes, Gary Powney on species distribution change, Rosie Hails on population dynamics and Nick Isaac on trends in the status of UK biodiversity.

Dorset landscape. Ecosystem services and biodiversity changes in the
county over 70 years were mapped for a CEH study.

Importantly, an event like INTECOL also gives the opportunity for a number of our PhD students to present details of their projects in both talks and poster sessions. Those giving talks include Philip Martin, CEH and Bournemouth University, who will present "Carbon pools recover more quickly than plant biodiversity in tropical secondary forests", and Andrew Cole, CEH and Lancaster University, who will present on climate change and plant diversity effects on grassland function.

Good luck to everyone taking part, especially those who are travelling long distances to share details of their work. If you're not at INTECOL itself, keep your eyes peeled for press coverage of some interesting new science. Meanwhile, the hashtag to follow on Twitter is #INT13.

Reflections on the science underpinning the EU Biodiversity Strategy

CEH is involved in a number of cross-European partnerships and initiatives – international collaboration is a major feature of our science. One such initiative is ALTER-Net (a Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network), which comprises 26 partner institutes from 18 European countries. ALTER-Net integrates research capacities across Europe: assessing changes in biodiversity, analysing the effect of those changes on ecosystem services and informing policy makers and the public about this at a European scale.

Together with the European Commission, ALTER-Net has organized a major conference which has been taking place in Ghent, Belgium this week, during which participants are discussing the implementation of the 2020 European Biodiversity Strategy. Specifically, conference members are looking for scientifically sound, evidence-based recommendations on how to implement and realize the strategy. More than 200 scientists from 66 research institutes and more than 25 countries are taking part – not only is CEH among those helping to organise the event, along with Belgian lead organisers INBO, we also have scientists speaking during the main programme, and have organised some of the side events.

The location for the conference is an Augustinian monastery, probably an ideal place to “retreat” to for focused thought and discussion (the whole conference lasts for four days).

Outcomes

The conference recommendations will be presented to EU policy makers and it is expected they will form a starting point for the European Platform on Biodiversity Research Strategy (EPBRS) meeting to be held under the Irish EU Presidency in Dublin in May.

Why an EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy?

After the overall failure of the previous European strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010, the EU adopted a new strategy in 2011, with a 2050 vision and a 2020 headline target. This 2020 target was defined as:

"Halting the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in the EU by 2020, and restoring them in so far as feasible, while stepping up the EU contribution to averting global biodiversity loss."

The EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy includes six mutually supportive and interdependent targets that respond to the objectives of the 2020 headline target:

1. Conserving and restoring nature
2. Maintaining and enhancing ecosystems and their services
3. Ensuring the sustainability of agriculture, forestry and fisheries
4. Combating invasive alien species
5. Addressing the global biodiversity crisis
6. Contributions of other environmental policies and initiatives

In a series of workshops, groups of scientists and policy makers will discuss the targets, before presenting their recommendations during the final plenary session on Thursday afternoon (April 18 2013).

More about the conference can be found on the ALTER-Net website. Dr Terry Parr from CEH was one of the speakers during Tuesday morning's plenary session on  "Biodiversity, ecosystems and sustainability - how to maintain, enhance and convince in the future". Others taking part in the session included the Finnish research institute SYKE, IRSTEA of France, the European Commission's DG Environment, and the University of Paris-Sud. On Wednesday, Dr Helen Roy of CEH will take part in a session focused on invasive alien species, while on the same day Dr Andrew Sier of CEH leads a side event which will look at developing new initiatives for ALTER-Net to undertake.

Get updates from the event on Twitter using #ALTERNetConf. More information on CEH's international collaborative work can be found on our main website.

Related CEH links

Dr Terry Parr

Dr Helen Roy

Dr Andrew Sier

CEH science at the EGU 2013 General Assembly

Scientists from CEH are joining 11,000 others at the EGU annual assembly in Vienna this week to present progress and results from a range of hydrological and other projects.

The annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union, running until Friday 12 April, is the place to meet every kind of earth, atmosphere and ocean scientist and even get the latest data from the Curiosity rover on Mars. It's one of the two largest annual gatherings of geo-scientists in the world, with participants from almost 100 countries.

Hydrology is always a feature, along with volcanology, planetary and earth science, atmosphere, climate, energy and resources. CEH’s hydrology-related presentations and posters will highlight our latest research in floods, droughts and predicting hydrological change.

Chris Taylor is presenting his work that shows afternoon rain is more likely over drier soils (relating to his recent Nature paper) and convening a session on African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis.

Ilaria Prosdocimi will explain a case study based on old Ordnance Survey maps that could take UK flood estimation forward from a steady state model to allow for the effects of increasing urbanisation and climate variability on flood risk.

Jamie Hannaford’s poster describes a unique international dataset, a network of more than 1200 “Reference” catchments (undisturbed by human activities like reservoirs and urbanisation) across Europe and North America where we can identify natural, climate-driven changes in river flow regimes. Jamie and his co-workers will use this broad network to quantify long-term changes in the frequency of major floods (events that occur on average every 25 to 100 years) for the first time on a continental scale.

Ignazio Giuntoli, a PhD student with CEH and the University of Birmingham, will present a poster looking at several models to assess future water security. Early results from two of the models suggest that water deficit is expected to increase in two “hotspots”: Northern Latin America and Southern Europe.

Bob Moore is convening a session on Friday on Hydrological forecasting: challenges in uncertainty estimation, data assimilation, post-processing and decision-making.

Thomas Kjeldsen, a co-author of several presentations on improving our understanding of European flood hydrology, is not attending but has just been appointed an Editor of the EGU journal Hydrology & Earth System Sciences (HESS).

CEH science is also represented beyond hydrology.  In a session on energy, resources and the environment, Niall McNamara reports on initial findings from a project investigating greenhouse gas balances of land use transitions into energy crops, while Andrew Robertson presents on carbon dioxide emissions for a Miscanthus plantation. Meanwhile, Mike Billett and colleagues' research on peatlands and the carbon cycle is also being presented.

Finally, CEH Fellow Professor John P Burrows, formerly our Director of Biogeochemistry and now with the University of Bremen in Germany, delivers the Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal Lecture on Wednesday. Professor Burrows receives the medal for atmospheric-earth system research. (Bjerknes was a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who made a fundamental contribution to electricity working with Hertz and then moved to wave motions, which are the basis of modern weather prediction).

Congratulations and good luck to all those involved this week!

Further information

Access the full European Geosciences Union 2013 Assembly Programme

Read a news story about Chris Taylor's work showing afternoon rain is more likely over drier soils

Global change, plant-soil interactions and ecosystems services.

Dr Nick Ostle of CEH is an ecologist and biogeochemist interested in global change effects of land use, climate change and atmospheric deposition on biodiversity and other ecosystem services. He also has a history of work on plant-soil interactions and their influence on carbon and nitrogen cycles in peatlands and grasslands in the UK and around the world.  Nick was one of the speakers at this year's inaugural Plant Science conference held at the John Innes Centre in April, designed to showcase the wealth of plants science undertaken in the UK.

You can watch the video of his talk now, made available on YouTube by the conference organisers. It includes examples of CEH's research activities which involve a combination of long term plant-soil surveys, field scale experimentation and measurements, and laboratory manipulations.

• Video talks from the meeting
• Plant Science 2012