The death of the conker tree?

We need your help to discover whether blue tits may be the salvation of the UK’s conker trees, which are currently under attack from a leaf-mining moth.

The moth arrived in London just ten years ago, and has since spread across most of England and Wales. The moth caterpillars eat the leaves of the conker tree while hiding inside them, so damaging the leaves and causing them to turn brown and making the tree appear as if autumn has come early.

Since 2010 the Conker Tree Science project, led by Dr Michael Pocock at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and Dr Darren Evans at the University of Hull, has been trying to find out the extent of the damage from the moth and also examine possible solutions to the problem.  The scientific team has involved members of the public in a series of  "missions". Mission 1 asked members of the public to contribute data on the spread of the moth across the UK; Mission 2 examined how many alien moths are being killed by pest controllers; Mission 3, launched today, asks members of the public to count the number of bird attacks on horse-chestnut leaves.

Each bird attack creates distinctive holes in the top surface of the leaf, where the caterpillar of the leaf-mining moth was living. Each attack means one less moth, and so could result in less damage to the horse-chestnut trees.

To take part in this real scientific research visit the Conker Tree Science website.

More details of the new mission ‘Bird Attack’ can be found here.

The Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner moth Cameraria ohridella Credit Dave Kilbey

A blue tit in front of horse-chestnut leaves that are covered with brown patches of damage caused by the caterpillars of the leaf mining moths. Credit: Richard Broughton/CEH

The signs of a bird attack on the leaf mine home of the alien moth that is damaging our horse-chestnut trees. Credit: Dr Michael Pocock/CEH

 

From drought to flood – An Olympian Summer for hydrological change

Just four months ago more than ‘half of Britain was in drought’ with the UK facing its most severe water shortage since 1976. The Environment Minister was urging households to cut back on the amount of water they used, some rivers in England were at their lowest April levels for 36 years, and your correspondent was quoted in the Guardian stating “This [the late April rain] is not the solution for the deep aquifers which have been at some of the lowest levels ever recorded. We are still looking at next winter rainfall to recharge these.”

As many of you will have noticed the driest March in the UK for 59 years was followed by the wettest April in 101 years. The accumulated rainfall since then has been remarkable. In the four months from the beginning of April to the end of July rainfall amounts were the highest on record (from 1910) by a considerable margin in almost all regions of Great Britain, and provisionally the highest in the England & Wales rainfall series from 1766. Groundwater resources have recovered to levels that expert hydrologists and geologists had thought wouldn’t occur until the end of a (hopefully wet) winter 2012-2013. All hosepipe bans in southern England have been lifted and although groundwater levels remain low in slowly-responding parts of the Chalk and the Permo-Triassic sandstone, our most recent monthly Hydrological Summary for the UK was able to confidently state “The transformation in water resource status since early April is without any close modern parallel.”

Back in early May I was also asked by John Vidal of the Guardian to comment on what may happen if the ‘monsoon’ like conditions in April continued. My words, reproduced in the next day’s paper, were, "If it carries on like this for another few months things may improve [from a hydrological point of view]. But by then we will all be totally fed up." My prophecy was partially correct, the rain did carry on, and things did improve, but as far as I can tell, we’re not all totally fed up, perhaps thanks to an amazingly successful Olympics! Oh well, I suppose two out of three isn’t bad!

The July 2012 Hydrological Summary for the UK

Barnaby Smith



April to July 2012 UK River flows






The Plynlimon catchments - an open air laboratory

The Plynlimon catchments in central Wales are the most important intensively studied long-term research basins in the UK. Managed by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), Plynlimon is among the key European and world sites in terms of catchment science - not just for the length of the records gathered (40 years and counting) but crucially because of the breadth of measurements, spanning hydrology and including water chemistry, groundwater studies, geomorphology, ecology and atmospheric science.

With the study now in its fifth decade, and inspired by a new paper* by Dr Mark Robinson, working with former colleagues John Rodda and John Sutcliffe, who played key roles in establishing Plynlimon, we take a look at the history behind the establishment of one of CEH's most significant scientific experiments, a long-term environmental monitoring project which has evolved and adapted to stay relevant to current problems and scientific needs.

Landscape view over the Plynlimon catchments in central Wales (photo: Simon Grant / CEH)

In the mid-20th century, against a backdrop of population growth, rising living standards and post-war industrial recovery, there was growing concern in the UK about increased demand for water and possible future water shortages. A severe drought in summer 1959 and dry winters in 1962/3 and 1963/4 underlined the belief in government circles that a national plan for water use was needed, as it seemed likely that demand would soon outstrip available resources.

There were concerns too about other factors potentially affecting water availability, not least the government's policy of encouraging widescale tree planting on reservoir catchments. The rapid growth characteristics of the conifer and the cheapness of the land resulted in conifer plantations on many upland regions of Britain throughout the first half of the 20th century. However, there were conflicting scientific views on the hydrological impact of forests, with some catchment studies, particularly in the USA, indicating that tree cover could reduce water yield relative to short vegetation.

Research in the late 1950s by Frank Law Senior, a water engineer in north-west England, tried to find out more about the water balance of woodlands under British conditions. His conclusions were controversial: that afforestation of the Stocks reservoir catchment area was substantially reducing runoff, with the additional evaporation representing a reduction in reservoir yield of over one third. At a time of anticipated increasing domestic and industrial water demands, the debate about water versus forestry was set for the decades ahead.

British hydrology and water industry were still rather fragmented in the decade after the Second World War, but these national pressures meant that more rational management of water resources was required. The particular need to understand the role of vegetation in the hydrological cycle led to the creation by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) of a Committee on Hydrological Research in 1961. This committee soon proposed the establishment of a specialist unit to be responsible for applied research into surface water hydrology, including studies of the water balance of catchment areas in relation to land use.

The new Hydrological Research Unit was set up in the following year and attached to the existing Hydraulics Research Station at Wallingford in Oxfordshire. A steering group was appointed to guide its studies, with a range of potentially competing stakeholder representatives from the Forestry Commission, Nature Conservancy, Water Research Association, Met Office and Agricultural Research Council.

The Unit was asked to conduct a hydrological study of catchments with contrasting land cover, preferably grassland and coniferous forest, since that was seen as the land use distinction most likely to reveal differences in behaviour and was the most common source of land use concern.  The catchments would need to be on watertight geology, and it was felt that the difference in water used by the two vegetation types would be most clearly apparent in relatively dry climate.

Where exactly to base the experiment was not a straightforward decision. It proved difficult to identify pairs of almost identical catchments that differed only in their vegetation and had landowner agreement for access. Plynlimon was not even on the original eight potentially suitable paired catchments identified. The climate criterion was later relaxed to include ‘wet’ sites, and the adjoining headwater catchments of the Severn and the Wye rivers draining the slopes of Pumlumon Fawr, i.e. Plynlimon, were added to the list, and later judged to be the most promising of the possible sites. The headwaters of each catchment provide a land use contrast between the two major upland land uses: moorland (Wye) and plantation forest (Severn).

In addition to the ongoing scientific debate concerning forest evaporation, the organisational framework for UK environmental research was undergoing major change as part of a wider government reorganisation. In 1965 the HRU was transferred to the newly formed Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The Unit’s remit was then expanded to encompass all aspects of the hydrological cycle including physical and applied studies, instrumentation and mathematical modelling.

The Plynlimon study officially started on 1 January 1967, with the NERC Annual Report foreseeing it as being an “outdoor laboratory of immense value to all sciences”. The delays in establishing a field site actually afforded the opportunity to develop expertise in cutting edge instruments and new technologies. There was pioneering work (widely adopted elsewhere) on neutron probes for soil water content measurement, as well as automatic weather stations capable of operating at remote locations, and new raingauge designs for windy sites.

Cefn Brywn crump weir on the River Wye, late 1960s

In recognition of the growing importance of hydrological research in Britain, NERC designated the HRU as a full component institute: on 1 April 1968 it became the Institute of Hydrology, which later became part of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The Plynlimon study played a crucial role in proving beyond doubt the potentially serious reduction in water flows resulting from afforestation, leading to major changes in the management of water and land use by resource managers and policy makers.

Work continues at the Plynlimon catchments to this day. CEH conducts long-term measurements of weather, streamflow and chemical fluxes. We use this information to look for time trends, understand the processes operating, and investigate the impacts of land use on water resources, floods, drought flows, stream sediment and dissolved chemicals and acidification. 

Other Plynlimon research highlights

·        The original aim of the Plynlimon catchment experiment was to make measurements which could resolve the uncertainties concerning the water use of conifer forests. It not only helped to answer this question but subsequently developed into a long-term multi-disciplinary project.

·        Building upon the established catchment infrastructure, hydrochemical measurements commenced and now more than almost 30 years are available, together with the longer record of hydrological data.

·        The Plynlimon catchments have been one of the more successful catchment studies, advancing science and its findings have directly altered UK forestry environmental policy and informed UK government policy.

·        The Plynlimon study provided a considerable stimulus to the development of the science of hydrology in Britain. The research findings have been reported in more than 500 papers in refereed journals, and much of the Plynlimon record has been freely available to the international research community for decades, and is also accessible via the internet from the CEH Information Gateway.

  

Summarising the importance of the Plynlimon catchments, Dr Mark Robinson told us, “We owe a great debt to the farsightedness of the stakeholders and academics who recognised the need for, and supported the establishment of, the research catchments at Plynlimon. The catchments provided an important focus in British hydrology, promoting excellence in experimental hydrology and advancing our understanding of the physical processes controlling the hydrological cycle.”

Additional information

* The full paper reference is: Robinson, M., Rodda, J.C., and Sutcliffe, J.V. (2012), Long-term environmental monitoring in the UK: origins and achievements of the Plynlimon catchment study. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00534.x 

View archive photos from Plynlimon on Flickr

CEH: Why monitor upland catchments? [PDF, 4.95mb]

How safe are nanoparticles? The NanoFATE project is finding out…

The NanoFATE project is the subject of a major feature in the latest issue of International Innovation magazine, published today (6 August 2012).

Nanotechnology is employed in a diverse range of industries and sectors to create or enhance materials and products at the fantastically small nano level (one-billionth of a metre). Nanoparticles have been used in familiar consumer products like suntan lotions, eyeglasses and food packaging as well as in sectors such as computer technology, biology and medicine. But alongside the rapid advances in such technology is the need to reassess the environmental risk assessments that help ensure nanotechnology is managed and implemented safely.

NanoFATE is a major EU-funded collaborative project that investigates the fate and effects of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) in the environment, from their initial entry into the environment (for example, whether through vehicle exhaust fumes into the air, or suntan lotion or anti microbial additives washed down the plughole), through to their different forms and effects, to whether there is a potentially toxic impact on water, soil etc.



NanoFATE involves advanced imaging. Here the spatial distribution of metals in organs of a woodlouse
exposed to silver ENPs is captured at the Diamond Light Source (UK) Synchotron by NanoFATE's
Cardiff, Aveiro, Oxford and NERC teams.



Now halfway through its four-year programme, the project is the subject of a major feature in the latest issue of International Innovation magazine, which is published today.

The NanoFATE project coordinator is Dr Claus Svendsen, an ecotoxicologist with the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), who talks to the magazine about the potential environmental issues presented by engineered nanoparticles, some of the practicalities involved with such a collaboration (NanoFATE is a multidisciplinary project involving 12 partner organisations from 9 European countries), applications resulting so far from the project and its scientific highlights.

Claus and other project leaders from the University of Oxford and Vrije University, Amsterdam, also talk about NanoFATE's major components, as well as its aims of providing tools and knowledge that can be applied in practice.

Claus tells the magazine, "We constantly improve assessment realism as we build better understanding of ENPs' environmental behaviour, organisms' uptake and resulting toxicity. The final aim is to make dynamic risk maps for Europe by meshing our developing knowledge on ENP safety with accurate exposure prediction models."

Additional information

• International Innovation is available to read online. The NanoFATE article appears on pages 15-17
• More information on the NanoFATE project
• Dr Claus Svendsen's staff page at CEH

The Mike Majerus Memorial Lecture 2012

On the day she delivers the first Mike Majerus Memorial Lecture, Dr Helen Roy of CEH reflects on just why Mike was such an inspirational scientist

Wonderful life: the legacy of an inspirational evolutionary biologist

Today I have the honour of giving the first Mike Majerus Memorial Lecture at the Royal Entomological Society's Annual Meeting (Ento ’12), hosted by Anglia Ruskin University. 

Mike Majerus was an evolutionary ecologist with an enthusiasm for science communication and collaboration that was simply inspirational.

I met Mike in his beloved field station at Cambridge University during the early days of my PhD studies and can vividly remember my excitement.  He had just published the New Naturalist Ladybirds – a book that had captivated me throughout the Christmas holidays.  Surrounded by ladybirds, aphids and students, with ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ playing in the background, Mike was in utopia.

Mike was inspirational to so many people because of his knowledge, enthusiasm and passion for working with others.  His ethos of collaboration resulted in a rich and productive research career – a wonderful life, not only for Mike, but also for those who had the opportunity to work with him.  He encouraged everyone to communicate their research as widely as possible and he epitomised this through the invigorating way he chose to convey his excitement in the natural world. 

Mike Majerus (right) describing ladybirds in winter for
BBC Radio 4's Saving Species programme.

Putting together the memorial lecture in his name has given me the opportunity to reflect on the many lessons that I learnt from Mike.  It follows on from a week in which I have attended a two-day meeting convened by the Convention on Biological Diversity to develop a global partnership addressing the threats of invasive non-native species. 

The context of the partnership demands effective communication and a spirit of collaboration in which all parties share information and work together - just the philosophy that Mike so eloquently advocated. 

Helen Roy

Additional information

The first Mike Majerus Memorial Lecture is delivered on Wednesday 18 July 2012 as part of the Royal Entomological Society's Ento '12 meeting (18-20 July). See the full programme [PDF, 2.26mb]

View slides from Helen's presentation [PDF, 1.96mb]

Dr Helen Roy's staff page at CEH

Nearly 2000 non-native species established in Great Britain (CEH News)

Mapping to inform conservation and habitat restoration

The latest issue of Science for Environment Policy, the European Commission’s environment news service for policy-makers, has highlighted a recent Biological Conservation paper by CEH scientists Dr Danny Hooftman and Prof James Bullock. Their paper, “Mapping to inform conservation: a case study of changes in semi-natural habitats and their connectivity over 70 years”, published earlier this year, developed an ecological mapping method to analyse habitat changes and declining ecological connectivity over large areas and in a 70-year period in high resolution.

The paper’s selection for inclusion in the Science for Environment Policy newsletter underlines its potential policy relevance at both the UK and European scale.

UK Land Cover Map 2000





During the research, funded by the EU SCALES project, the scientists digitised historic land use maps of Dorset from the 1930s and compared the results to CEH’s UK Land Cover Map from 2000* to assess the changes. The historic maps were a result of the first Land Utilisation Survey done in the UK in the 1930s, initiated by Laurence Dudley Stamp, later professor of geography at the London School of Economics, which is considered an early example of volunteer recording. 

After digitising the maps, the scientists combined the Dudley Stamp map with soil maps to derive a habitat classification, a method to make the habitat types comparable to the Broad Habitat Types of Land Cover Map 2000.  Their study revealed large decreases in semi-natural habitats and severely reduced connectivity among the remaining fragments. The most important driver for the loss was agricultural intensification combined with afforestation of grasslands and heathlands.

The findings have particular relevance as an important first step for those engaged in habitat restoration work at landscape and regional scales. Analyses such as those presented in the paper not only quantify the scale and pattern of habitat loss but are important to inform land-use planning to restore biodiversity.

Danny told us, “Although it is important to note a number of caveats to the approach, the work  shows the value of such maps to identify the magnitude of the land-use conflict problems for semi-natural habitats. Only when the spatial scale of connectivity and habitat size problems are properly quantified in a region, can mitigation measures be assigned with a higher chance of success for successful restoration.”

Additional information

"Mapping to inform conservation: a case study of changes in semi-natural habitats and their connectivity over 70 years" is published by Biological Conservation. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2011.09.015

Science for Environment Policy news alert

Dr Danny Hooftman's staff page at CEH

Prof James Bullock's staff page at CEH

EU SCALES project

More information on the Land Utilisation Survey maps

* Since the research began CEH has published an updated UK Land Cover Map. Click here for more details of Land Cover Map 2007.

One week on: Reflections on the first national farm pollinator survey

Staff and students from Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) were heavily involved with the first ever national farm pollinator survey on 17 June which took place as part of Open Farm Sunday. One week on Lucy Cornwell and Olivia Richardson, two MSc students spending the summer at CEH, describe the important role they played in a very successful day.

Sunshine, stag beetles and sibling rivalry

   

2012 is the first year that a national citizen science pollinator monitoring scheme has been attempted. On June 17^th, ecologists from CEH and Syngenta, and other local experts, travelled to over 20 farms around the country to coordinate this project. Along with Morag, an ecologist from CEH, I was based at Crowmarsh Battle Farms in Oxfordshire where local school children had been invited to visit for the first time. To celebrate this, the sun came out on our farm (and luckily many others across the country!) leading to a huge sigh of relief from everyone involved. From 2pm a steady stream of visitors arrived, all very eager to take part in the survey. Our two sites were a wheat field and neighbouring field margin containing a mix of wildflowers.

Sunshine helped to attract a good selection of invertebrate life to the wildflowers, with particularly high numbers of bees and flies. The children were really enthusiastic about hunting for insects, and had very clear ideas about what they would see; “Stag beetles, definitely”. Sibling rivalry was very high, and answer sheets were closely guarded to prevent copying. Despite some unrealistic predictions and serious competition levels, everyone was thrilled with their results and left with a little more knowledge and passion for wildlife.

Searching for pollinating insects



Around 60 people visited Crowmarsh Battle Farm, and we managed to collect 22 surveys, a great result. Nationally we have received over 500 records from 30 farms across the country. These cover ten different farm habitats, five each of crop and non-crop. From this data we will be able to investigate geographical patterns – is there a North/South divide? We will also be able to determine the most important farm habitats for invertebrates, which should help to provide advice for farmers who want to increase pollinator populations on their land.  

So far it seems that the pollinator monitoring project has been a great success, providing a very interesting dataset and helping to connect people with farmland wildlife. To quote Toby, age 6 who visited College Farm in Duxford; “I think it’s super”. 

Lucy Cornwell

Pollinators and sunshine

 “A bee, a bee, I’ve found a bee, come and see!” As an MSc student from the University of Leeds, doing my dissertation at CEH’s headquarters in Wallingford, it was great to hear the enthusiasm of a small child about wildlife on Open Farm Sunday. Although my project isn’t related to pollinators, when I heard about the fantastic opportunity of helping with the Pollinator Survey, I knew I wanted to get involved. This was the first time that the Pollinator Survey had been run and it sounded like an excellent way for Citizen Science to help research such an important topic that affects us all, as well as create greater awareness and enthusiasm about the wildlife that surrounds us every day.

Olivia helps a young volunteer complete the survey



On the day, I went with a team of three members of CEH staff to College Farm in Cambridgeshire, one of the farms participating in Open Farm Sunday. It was a gloriously sunny day (Thankfully! We all had imagined that we might be standing by our site under umbrellas…) and everyone we met at the farm immediately made us feel welcome and were very helpful in setting up the survey. Our first task of the day was to select the two habitat areas where the pollinator survey would take place: a crop habitat and a non-crop habitat. The whole survey would consist of looking for pollinators on flowers (aided by an invertebrate key) at the crop habitat as well as at the non- crop habitat for five minutes each. After much discussion, we chose an area a short distance from the tractor rides which had an abundance of flowering plants, with the option of either Oilseed rape (Brassica napus) or Potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants as a crop habitat. A strip of flowering field margin that ran along the crops was classed as the non-crop habitat.

Once we were set up, we eagerly awaited the public to arrive to try out the survey. After the farm was open, we didn’t have long to wait, with children racing each other to reach us at the site. A range of generations, from grandparents to toddlers came to our site, all interested to hear about what we were doing and how they could help. When the survey had been explained, members of the public, either in groups or as individuals started searching at each habitat for invertebrates aided by CEH experts and invertebrate keys. It was great to see how quickly everyone (from the experienced to complete novices) got involved in the survey, with children and adults alike amazed at the variety of different species of invertebrates seen. Throughout the day, you could hear groups of children shouting at each other when they found something. The afternoon was a great success with groups of people coming in a constant flow and with over 40 pollinator surveys undertaken within a few hours. There was such a positive attitude towards learning about wildlife from the survey; it was a really great thing to see.

Olivia Richardson

Additional information

Latest results from the Pollinator Survey from the Open Farm Sunday website

More details about the farm pollinator survey from the Open Farm Sunday website.

More photos from the Open Farm Sunday pollinator survey

Watch videos about the pollinator survey on our YouTube channel