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 scientists collaborating with global freshwater citizen science programme

CEH scientists working on a project investigating water pollution in urban areas have teamed up with Earthwatch to train citizen scientists in carrying out water quality monitoring. The collaboration has come about via Earthwatch’s Freshwater Watch programme, which aims to study fresh water quality around the globe by engaging employees from participating organisations as citizen scientists.

The POLLCURB project, led by CEH, is looking at how water pollution relates to change in urban areas, in particular change brought about by population growth, and what it may mean for water quality and quantity in the future.

POLLCURB is collaborating with the Earthwatch programme by training citizen scientists, in this case employees from Shell, to monitor water quality in the river Thames and two of its tributaries, the Mole and Ember, using a handheld multiparameter probe.

CEH's Mike Hutchins (centre) teaching participants
how to use the probe. Photo: Richard Sylvester / Earthwatch.

Dr Mike Hutchins of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology is lead investigator on POLLCURB. At a recent citizen science training day at Wimbledon Common, Mike gave an overview of the project before teaching the budding citizen scientists from Shell how to use the monitoring probe, taking them into the field to gain first-hand practice.

Probe dunking. Photo: Richard Sylvester / Earthwatch.

The participants will visit the Thames sites several times over the next six months to collect data on temperature, turbidity, organic matter, algae and oxygen levels, producing a monthly dataset for each location. As well as collecting data for POLLCURB, they are also carrying out Freshwater Watch’s global parameters at each of the sites, which include collection data on nutrient levels.

Looking at the data collected. Photo: Richard Sylvester / Earthwatch.

Mike told us a little more about the value of the collaboration. He explained, "As POLLCURB is investigating how urban growth influences local water bodies I am keen to get people living in those very towns and cities involved and, in particular, for them to have the opportunity to use some of the equipment that professional scientists are currently using on a day-to-day basis.

"The data the citizen scientists are collecting will benefit me, in terms of improving the models I am using to predict river water quality, and also regulators, who will gain further knowledge of some specific rivers of interest to them."

Looking at results. Photo: Richard Sylvester / Earthwatch

Mike added, "The project with Earthwatch / Shell is flexible and I hope will gain some of its own momentum. There is potential to expand the number of sites or increase the frequency of visits, and also I am particularly enthusiastic about the scope for participants to monitor other local water bodies in which they may have a particular personal interest."

Earthwatch and CEH collaborators at one of the monitoring sites on the
Thames near Hampton Court. Photo: Mike Hutchins / CEH.

For more detailed information on the POLLCURB project, visit the project website.

Additional information

FreshWater Water has already recruited more than 1700 citizen scientists in over two dozen cities around the world. Data collected are uploaded to freshwaterwatch.thewaterhub.org

Staff page and research interests of Dr Mike Hutchins, CEH

More about the citizen science training day from Earthwatch

Posted by Paulette Burns, Media Coordinator

CEH contributes to new BES report on impact of extreme weather events on freshwater ecosystems

Dr Linda May and Dr Francois Edwards recently led the CEH input to a British Ecological Society Centenary report on the impact of extreme weather events on freshwater ecosystems. The report was launched at a special reception on Tuesday 25 June 2013 at Westminster.

Lake and river ecologists from across the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology were involved in contributing to the report, which aims to provide more information on the problems that floods, droughts, heatwaves etc present for freshwater systems, affecting water quality and quantity.

The launch event was attended by more than 100 people and included speeches from Andrew Miller MP, BES President Professor Georgina Mace and Huw Irranca-Davies MP, who officially relaunched the BES Ecological Issues series, which the new report has been published within.

Earlier in the day Dr Edwards helped run a workshop based on the report at the "Future Water 2013 Building resilience:  A sector fit for the future" meeting at the Royal Geographical Society.

To accompany the full report, a short 2-page summary and policy brief was also published.

Read the full report: The Impact of Extreme Events on Freshwater Ecosystems (7.40mb, PDF from the BES website)

More about the launch event can be read on the British Ecological Society blog.

Executive summary and policy brief

Additional information

RGS meeting agenda

Staff page of Dr Francois Edwards, CEH

International Day of Biodiversity - Water & Biodiversity

Today is the International Day of Biological Diversity and this year's theme is Water & Biodiversity. CEH undertakes a huge amount of research and monitoring to understand the pressures on freshwater biodiversity and its crucial role in delivering benefits to nature, society and the economy. These benefits are not always obvious, but one of our most significant long-term monitoring sites, Loch Leven, at Kinross in Scotland, provides some interesting examples, including a case just this month when the largest brown trout ever recorded as being caught on the loch was landed, beating a record that had stood for more than 100 years.

The historic event coincided perfectly with an international meeting at the site to discuss the benefits of biodiversity in delivering ecosystem services.

News of improved angling at Loch Leven has been spreading across the world in recent years and this record catch is likely to attract even more visitors to the area, with consequent economic benefits both to the fishery and other businesses such as local hotels.

Importantly, this record catch reflects wider improvements in the biological health of the lake as a result of reductions in phosphorus pollution from surrounding industry, sewage and agriculture. Other improvements includes fewer algal blooms, the return of sensitive plant species and an increase in aquatic birds that feed on the plants, such as the pochard. 

A swan at Loch Leven - photo by Laurence Carvalho



CEH has collected data at Loch Leven since 1968 - it is one of more than 30 lake and river sites contributing biodiversity data to the UK Environmental Change Network, managed by CEH. Scientists at CEH have used this information to help identify the main causes of water quality problems at the site. Loch Leven is an excellent example of a lake that supplies a wide range of ecosystem services, including water supply, tourism and the fishery, as well as being an important wetland biodiversity site, supporting nationally and internationally important populations of wildfowl.

The benefits of managing ecosystem services better is precisely what the meeting in Kinross was focused on. Project teams from two major EU-funded research projects on this topic, OpenNESS and OPERAs, were there to discuss how to ensure that scientific knowledge on ecosystem services and natural capital is used by land managers, businessmen and policymakers to generate sustained benefits for nature, society and for the economy. One area of collaboration between the projects will be a joint pool of 35 case studies across the globe. CEH are leading two case studies in the OpenNESS project, one at Loch Leven and one examining the Cairngorms National Park.

What you can do to help our freshwater biodiversity research:

• Get involved in the recording of freshwater biodiversity via the online recording website iRecord, which is being developed by the Biological Records Centre
• Track invasive freshwater plants using the mobile phone app PlantTracker, which is integrated with iRecord

 

Further information

International Day of Biological Diversity

CEH research on freshwater biodiversity at Loch Leven

CEH research in the Cairngorms National Park

UK Lake Restoration research at CEH

Environmental Change Network

OpenNESS: http://www.openness-project.eu/

Loch Leven Fisheries Blog:  Loch Leven record smashed

CEH News (July 2012): Loch Leven water quality quality is best for 20 years