Natural Hazards Science Area

CEH's new Science Strategy identifies three interdependent, major societal and environmental challenges: Securing the Value of Nature, Building Resilience to Environmental Hazards, and Managing Environmental Change. We're delivering our strategy by Science Areas and underpinning activities, and over the next few weeks we are profiling these on our blog.

In this post we focus on our Natural Hazards Science Area, which includes some of our work on floods and droughts. Natural hazards also include threats from parasites, pathogens and invasive species, and threats from natural air pollution incidents.

Duncan Wingham, chief executive @NERCScience, visits CEH today & finds out more about flood forecasting research pic.twitter.com/ecNeJoPLZG
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) February 14, 2014

Post by Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH).

Natural hazards are of increasing concern for humanity because of population growth and increased societal vulnerability due to trends in urbanisation and land-use change. They have been identified by the National Security Review as some of the most significant risks to the UK in terms of economic, social and environmental consequences.

A key demand is to improve our prediction and estimation of natural hazards and develop knowledge to better manage and minimise their impacts on our society, economy and environment.

RT @Michaelcranston Encouraging findings for forecasting #floods in rapid response catchments http://t.co/fs8Gd4rl1L
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) September 2, 2013

MT @ChrisBraban: co-authored volcano response planning report incl #airquality knowledge gaps/eruption response info http://t.co/CVmqKgruN9
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) October 2, 2013

Hydro-meteorological science is an important element of our research. Within CEH we have teams of scientists working on furthering our understanding of hydrological processes, water resources, water information management, hydrological status and reporting, the climate system, hydrological modelling and risk, and hydrological modelling and forecasting. Our science and data played a key role in informing UK operational agencies during the recent flooding events.

Scientists from @CEHScienceNews & @BritGeoSurvey comment on #flooding situation in the UK http://t.co/1AKZty48eK
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) February 11, 2014

The recent storms and floods in the UK – new report from @metoffice & @CEHScienceNews http://t.co/kVoxrrarKz
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) February 9, 2014

Our future research objectives include the development of physical and statistical models to better quantify the current and future risks from extreme rainfall and floods at multiple temporal and spatial scales. We are also developing web-based tools for seasonal forecasting of river flows to support flood and drought management in the UK and overseas.

What is a drought? - read more on the CEH website

CEH also has an important research role in helping to develop solutions to tackle problems caused by biological invasions.

. @BritishEcolSoc members @invasidora and @UKLadybirds gave evidence to the EAC yesterday. Find out how they got on: http://t.co/dN6XGjP9ZI
— BES Policy Team (@BESPolicy) January 23, 2014

We are working on methods to supply predictions of their arrival and spread, underpinned by rigorous risk assessment. We will deliver new systems to predict the arrival of invasive non-native species with particular focus on their pathways of arrival, spread and associated disease pathogens.

A new map of good habitats for an invasive kind of #rhododendron may help control the spread of #SuddenOakDeath http://t.co/JGqYJJS91b
— Planet Earth Online (@PlanetEarthnews) April 18, 2013

Find out more about our Natural Hazards Science Area, including a Science Area Summary [PDF], on the CEH website.

Additional information

CEH Science Strategy 2014-2019

Staff page of Nick Reynard, Natural Hazards Science Area Lead

More details on the mosquito rediscovery story

There were a few eye-catching headlines in some media outlets today announcing a new arrival, or re-arrival, to British shores. Stories in the Mirror, the Mail, Planet Earth Online and Reuters followed the publication in the journal Parasites and Vector of a paper by scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the Health Protection Agency giving details of the discovery of the mosquito, Culex modestus, in some areas of southern England.

It was a potentially difficult story to get across without being alarmist: Cx modestus is known to carry West Nile Virus in other parts of the world, although the paper, which is open access, and our accompanying press release all state clearly that the virus has not yet been found in the UK.  It is important however to understand the current distribution of Cx modestus and what associated risks, however small, it may bring.

• Here is an even more detailed question and answer document providing more context and information about the discovery
• Read the full paper



Map of Thames estuary showing satellite predictions of habitat suitable for Cx modestus. Red

dots are most similar and blue represents possible islands of habitat, darker blue being more suitable.