Showing posts with label science area. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science area. Show all posts

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

Water Resources science area - embracing ecology and hydrology

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 recent weeks we have profiled these on our blog.

In this post, we take a closer look at our Water Resources science area, which is led by Dr David Boorman. In this area our research embraces ecology and hydrology, water quality and water quantity.

CEH research activity in Water Resources includes long-term observation of
surface waters.
Our work aims to give insight into relationships between the natural water resource and its dependent ecosystems.


Research activity includes the development and deployment of novel monitoring techniques to quantify extremes, dynamics and fluxes of water, associated chemicals, biota and sediment, as well as assessing threats of pollution to the aquatic environment and human health.


We maintain nationally important datasets and make these available for further research.


Water resources serve the competing and often conflicting requirements of agriculture, industry, households, power generation, navigation, flood protection and recreation. They must be allocated and used in a sustainable and equitable way whilst maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Future research objectives for CEH include understanding and representing in models the pressures, processes and fluxes that control the availability, distribution and quality of water resources nationally and globally.  We also provide the evidence required to facilitate the management of water resources and provide the evidence base for policy development.


Current work includes establishing delivery of the first operational Hydrological Outlook service for the UK; integrating web-based delivery of UK flood data into the National River Flow Archive; launching a real-time service describing soil moisture across the UK, and establishing a national inventory of lake assets and a global lake observatory based on Earth observation.


For more details of these and other research objectives in our Water Resources science area, please see our Science Area Summary [PDF].

Additional information


CEH Science Strategy 2014-2019

Staff page of Dr David Boorman, Water Resources Science Area Lead

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Friday, 28 March 2014

Sustainable Land Management Science Area at CEH

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. 

This post focuses on our Sustainable Land Management science area, which is led by Dr Richard Pywell. The research we undertake in this area is delivered in the context of ensuring adequate provision of food, fuel and water while conserving biodiversity and vital ecosystem functions.

CEH develops practical solutions to restore and enhance ecosystem
functions that deliver goods and services crucial for human wellbeing,
such as pollination services for crops and biodiversity.


Population increase, climate change, pollution and other environmental stresses are expected to have highly detrimental impacts on ecosystems and natural resources vital for human wellbeing and livelihoods. Therefore novel land management approaches to optimise natural resources are needed.




CEH's sustainable land management science area aims to understand the threats to semi-natural and highly managed ecosystems, and their component resources. From this understanding, we will develop robust strategies to conserve vital resources and increase their resilience to environmental change. We will also develop practical approaches that can be applied at the field, farm and landscape scale to restore and enhance the ecosystem functions and services crucial for human wellbeing and livelihoods.

Our research activity involves experiments, long-term monitoring, the development of practical land management and restoration techniques, engagement with practitioners and industry and the support of policy development.


Our science helps to protect, restore and enhance ecosystem functions that support food production, such as pollination and pest control.



We also engage with practitioners and the farming industry to develop new, innovative eco-intensive farming systems that are practical and commercially viable.


Future objectives include constructing spatial decision-support tools to balance demands on limited land; developing and testing management and restoration strategies; mapping potential deficits and vulnerabilities of pollination and pest control services to environmental stress; and supporting future land management policies that meet the challenges of sustainable intensification and multi-functional land use.

For more details of these and other objectives in our Sustainable Land Management Science Area, see our Science Area Summary [PDF].

Additional information


CEH Science Strategy 2014-2019

CEH Science Areas

Staff page of Dr Richard Pywell, Science Area Lead for Sustainable Land Management
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Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Soil Science Area at CEH

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 each of these on our blog.

This post focuses on our Soil Science Area, which is led by Professor Bridget Emmett. Sound scientific knowledge of soil functioning is essential to assure UK and global security for food, fuel and water.


The multidisciplinary research at CEH makes us ideally placed to develop new understanding of soil function and the relative importance of soil biota, physical and chemical properties and their emergent properties across scales. We apply this knowledge for improved sustainable management of soil and the ecosystem services soils provide.

Soils are critical for life. As well as providing nutrients and water to grow food, they help regulate floods and droughts, they play an important role in modulating the greenhouse gases which control our climate, and they support a large and diverse biological community.


But such societal benefits depend crucially on soil quantity and condition, both of which are at risk from threats such as over-exploitation, contamination and climate change. Understanding and managing the diverse and sometimes conflicting services provided by soils demands an integrated, multidisciplinary approach.
CEH's soil science expertise is multidisciplinary and allows us to develop new
understanding across scales.


CEH's current and future research objectives include new tools and data, for example we are developing in partnership a UK Soils Observatory and an enhanced mySoil app. We are aiming to increase understanding, for example of the links between biological and physical structure of upland soils and their implications for water and carbon services. We will quantify the impacts of land use change to energy crops on soil carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions for the UK, and we are developing web interfaces with partners to deliver real-time soil sensor data.



For more details of these and other research objectives in our Soil Science Area, please see our Science Area Summary [PDF].


Additional information


CEH Science Strategy 2014-2019

Staff page of Professor Bridget Emmett, Soil Science Area Lead

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Friday, 14 March 2014

Pollution & Environmental Risk science area at CEH

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.

This post focuses on our Pollution & Environmental Risk Science Area led by Professor Richard Shore. Through this area, CEH will provide scientific evidence and risk assessment for sustainable management of chemicals while protecting people and the environment.

Chemicals include pharmaceuticals, radionuclides, macronutrients, trace elements and organic and inorganic pollutants. The development, manufacture and use of chemicals contributes billions of pounds to the UK economy per annum, yet they can have hazardous properties that pose risks to human health, food production and the environment.

Solardomes at CEH's Bangor research site: state-of-the-art exposure
facilities to study the impacts of ozone on a range of plant species.


CEH research objectives include short and long-term monitoring to quantify concentrations, pools, fluxes and impacts of key environmental pollutants.


We study pollutant transport, fate, exposure, effects to discover or predict impact on organisms, human health, ecosystems and their services. We aim to reduce uncertainty with which we predict environmental dynamics, bioavailability and impacts of environmental pollutants, improve hazard screening and risk assessment processes for current and emerging technologies and provide training, tools and approaches for the more realistic assessment of environmental exposure concentrations and risks from manufactured nanomaterials.


CEH runs the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme, a long-term, national monitoring scheme that quantifies the concentrations of contaminants in the livers and eggs of selected species of predatory and fish-eating birds in Britain. We monitor the levels of contaminants to determine how and why they vary between species and regions, how they are changing over time, and the effects that they may have on individual birds and on their populations.


The Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme is also a part of the WILDCOMS collaborative network, formed between the various UK surveillance schemes that monitor disease and contaminants in vertebrate wildlife.

CEH also has a well-established international reputation in radioecology research, the study of the behaviour of radioactive elements in the environment and measuring exposure to radiation of humans and other organisms.


Temporary storage site for radioactive waste at Kawauchi, Japan. In October 2013 Dr Brenda Howard
of CEH was part of an International Atomic Energy Agency international expert mission to
review remediation efforts in areas affected by the Fukushima Daiichi accident.


Read more about our Pollution & Environmental Risk Science Area, including a Science Area Summary [PDF], on the CEH website.

Additional information


CEH Science Strategy 2014-2019

Staff page of Professor Richard Shore, Pollution & Environmental Risk Science Area Lead



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Friday, 28 February 2014

Natural Capital science at CEH

We're delivering our new Science Strategy (2014-19) through a number of Science Areas and underpinning activities. Find out more about each area as we profile them over the coming weeks in a series of blog posts.

This post focuses on our Natural Capital Science Area, headed by Professor Mike Acreman.


Soil, insect pollination, water, food, nutrient cycling, flood control etc - we rely on goods and services provided by the natural environment. The concept of natural capital as the stock of environmental assets will inform decisions on how we use our natural resources and manage the environment sustainably.

Wetlands, such as this blanket bog on the Isle of Harris, provide essential ecosystem
functions and services, including regulation of water quality, sustainable control and
mitigation of flooding, greenhouse gas reduction, essential habitats for plants and
animals, and cultural and recreational facilities.

CEH carries out a wide range of research into wetlands in the UK and overseas.


CEH has unrivalled and longstanding expertise in the science of the natural environment that underpins natural capital. We'll use surveys, experiments, analysis and modelling to produce detailed knowledge of water, soils, plants, animals and atmosphere provided by the UK environment.


Research objectives in this Science Area include assessing the extent, quality, trends and vulnerability of the UK's natural capital. We also define ecosystem services that flow from the natural and managed environment, quantifying short and long-term trends and natural variations.


We'll also work with other experts in economics, health and sociology, to evaluate the benefits of natural capital to human well-being, how to balance exploitation with protection and where to target management and restoration efforts. For example, we are a partner member of the Natural Capital Initiative.


Long-term monitoring helps us record how natural capital is changing and identify the causes of change. For example, CEH coordinates the UK Environmental Change Network, and operates the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme in partnership with Butterfly Conservation and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.



More details of our Natural Capital Science Area, including a Science Area Summary [PDF], are available on our website.

Additional information


CEH Science Strategy

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Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Ecological processes and resilience - science area at CEH

We're delivering our Science Strategy (2014-2019) through a number of Science Areas and underpinning activities. Find out more about each area as we profile them over the coming weeks in a series of blog posts. 

This post focuses on our Ecological Processes & Resilience science area, which is headed by Dr Allan Watt. Understanding of ecological processes, particularly those that affect the resilience of species, is needed to maintain ecosystems and the delivery of ecosystem services.

The benefits that flow from biodiversity and ecosystem services are increasingly under threat from environmental change. Threats include habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources. The threats are exacerbated by pests, diseases, alien invasive species and other drivers of global environmental change.


In our research we combine long-term datasets and use citizen science, models and experimental systems to examine the impacts of single and multiple drivers, including socio-economic drivers, on populations, species and ecosystems.


Other research objectives include assessing strategies to adapt to climate change in forestry, assessing lake restoration techniques, quantifying links between biodiversity and resilience to invasion by pests across a range of ecosystems, and linking time-series data from different trophic levels to assess the degree of synchrony of species interactions.


Long-term monitoring activities that help us in this Science Area include the Isle of May Study,  the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme and Loch Leven surveillance.



Find out more about our Ecological Processes & Resilience Science Area, including a Science Area Summary [PDF], on the CEH website.

Additional information


CEH Science Strategy

Lake restoration research at CEH

Staff page of Dr Allan Watt
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Monday, 24 February 2014

Understanding Biosphere - Atmosphere Interactions and feedbacks

CEH's new Science Strategy, which was published in January 2014, 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 the strategy through a number of Science Areas and underpinning activities.

Over the next few weeks you can find out more about each Science Area as we profile them in a series of blog posts.

The first Science Area to focus on is Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions. There are crucial societal and environmental issues relating to air pollutants, greenhouse gases, and global carbon and nitrogen cycles. CEH research aims to understand and quantify interactions between the biosphere and atmosphere based on measurements, experiments and modelling of greenhouse gases, reactive air pollutants, water and energy.




CEH's long-term investigations at Auchencorth Moss, an ombrotrophic peat bog
in Midlothian, demonstrate that these areas remove significant amounts of carbon
from the atmosphere. Photo: Barnaby Smith/CEH.

See more photos of Auchencorth Moss field site on Flickr.


Developing the policy basis for addressing these issues demands the combination of monitoring and modelling of the exchange of gases, aerosols, particulate material, energy and water at land and water surfaces, and effects on local, regional and global climate.



Read more about our Bioenergy crops research in our Energy and the Environment portal.

CEH has studied the impact of bioenergy crop land-use changes
on soil carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions.



CEH science quantifies environmental impacts and provides evidence
for policy-makers.

Our Nutrient World, published in February 2013, highlighted how humans have massively altered the natural flows of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. While this has had huge benefits for world food and energy production, it has caused a web of water and air pollution.

The Review of Transboundary Air Pollution, published in June 2012, found that the chemical climate of the UK has changed dramatically over the last 30 years and continues to change as a consequence of UK and European policies to solve air pollution problems.

Recently published research and commentaries highlight some of our work in Biosphere - Atmosphere Interactions.







Read more about Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions on the CEH website, including a Science Area Summary [PDF].
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