10th British Hydrological Society Symposium

The 10th British Hydrological Society Symposium has been announced, which includes a session on water quality. See below for more information:                                                      
                                 
The symposium will take place from 15th until 17th September at the University of Exeter.
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The theme for this Symposium is: 'Sustainable Hydrology for the 21st  Century'.
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The sub-themes are:
Water Resources
Flood Risk Management
Climate change and Water     
Hydrometeorology
Urban Water  
Ungauged Catchments
Hydroecology 
Water Quality
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Abstracts (up to 150 words) should be sent by 15 January 2008   to  bhs_symposium_2008@ex.ac.uk.
Please indicate which sub-theme the abstract is for and provide the details of the author(s) name, title, affiliation and qualifications and whether the abstract is to be considered for inclusion as a paper or as a poster presentation.
Sponsorship packages are available and the symposium provides an excellent opportunity for employers to meet and talk to students and
others working in hydrology.
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Contact:Dr Soon-Thiam Khu bhs_symposium_2008@ex.ac.uk
Please visit us at http://www.ex.ac.uk/bhs2008/ <https://owa.ncl.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ex.ac.uk/bhs2008/>  for the latest information and to register your interest.
We invite you to come and celebrate 25 years of BHS with us in Exeter!
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BHS 2008 Conference Office
Centre for Water Systems
Room 182, Harrison Building
School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics
University of Exeter
North Park Road
EXETER UK EX4 4QF
Telephone: 01392-263732
http://www.events.ex.ac.uk/bhs2008/index.php/bhs/ <https://owa.ncl.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.events.ex.ac.uk/bhs2008/index.php/bhs/>

Professor David Scholefield retires

DSC_2264
Originally uploaded by wq0109

At the end of 2007 David retired from his long term career at IGER and North Wyke. David was an inspirational and substantive scientist and amongst other things his work helped us understand and prevent nitrate leaching from agricultural land. Here are some photos of David's retirement seminar and party held earlier in December. Phil.

Climate change, land use and runoff theme - first posting

Hello from the "Climate change, land use and runoff theme". Jointly with Bob Evans, I'm leading the theme under IWAM. We hope to post more soon, but for now here are some thoughts on how some of my current work relates to the theme. Last year, I published a paper with Richard Betts looking at global river flows under climate change. This found changes in total annual flows for most of the globe - increases in high latitudes and decreases in areas like Southern Europe and the Mediterranean.



Changes in seasonality were also found - such as earlier runoff peaks in spring in Siberia due to earlier snow melt. Now Met Office Hadley Centre climate models are being extended to include large scale crop models, and soil carbon and nitrogen models as well as river flows, my questions for the theme are:

• How will changes in rainfall and river flow affect soil erosion?
• How will climate change affect nutrient losses in agricultural systems?
• How will these changes interact with future land use changes?
• What is the impact of these changes on the agricultural system (productivity, management, irrigation..)?

The paper on river flows can be found here:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112791019/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Defra announces: Ecosystem Approach-Action Plan

Defra have recently sponsored several research projects looking into how an Ecosystem Approach could be followed in the UK. They have just released 'Securing a healthy natural environment' report that sets out how Defra (and the broader UK Government) will adopt an Ecosystem Approach for a more holistic, integrated and adaptive approach to natural resource management. A key aspect is assessing the state of the evidence base and improving the two way communication between researchers and policy makers- key objectives of IWAM!

Recent thinking on IWRM at CAIWA 2007

At a recent workshop on Critical Perspectives on IWRM Theory and Practice at CAIWA 2007

Nigel Watson (Lancaster, UK) presented a case that the implementation of IWRM needs rethinking. This has implications for Policy and Practice:

•IWRM should be designed around the principle of multi-party collaboration

“…the pooling of appreciations and/or tangible resources, e.g. money, labour etc., by two or more stakeholders to solve a set of problems which neither can solve individually.” (Gray, 1985, p.912)

•Move away from programmed (blue-print) implementation for IWRM and adopt an adaptive approach

“The ideal of adaptive implementation is the establishment of a process that allows policy to be modified, specified and revised – in a word, adapted – according to the unfolding interaction of the policy with its institutional setting. Its outcomes would be neither automatic nor assured, and it would look more like a disorderly learning process than a predictable procedure.” Berman (1980, p.210)

More detail to be found at:

‘Critical Perspectives on Integrated Water Management’
Special Issue of The Geographical Journal, Volume 173, No. 4,
December 2007.
Edited by Nigel Watson, Gordon Walker and Will Medd

Phosphorus research goes underground in NZ

NERC and Defra contribute to BiodivERsA programme

Link to NERC