The role of alkalinity in setting water quality metrics: phosphorus standards in United Kingdom rivers.

UK implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directive (for the 2015-2021 cycle) Ecological Status (ES) classification for river phosphorus is based on the calculation of reference conditions for reactive phosphorus (RP) using river alkalinity measurements. Underpinning this approach is that the alkalinity is primarily from rock weathering and is free of anthropogenic influences. However, the potential contribution of anthropogenic alkalinity needs to be considered and, if possible, quantified. In the rural South West River Basin District of England, 38 river sites were examined with respect to river alkalinity loads in order to test this consideration. At river base flow when RP can cause enhanced algal growth, 9 sites (24%) had effluent alkalinity contributions amounting to 25-49% of the total riverine alkalinity load, while 11 (29%) of the sites received ≥50% of their alkalinity load from effluent. When flows increased above base flow to Q95 flow at these 11 sites, catchment diffuse run-off became the largest load of alkalinity at 9 of the sites, and that at the Q95 flows, combined effluent and diffuse alkalinity loads contributed 68-100% of the total alkalinity load. Anthropogenic alkalinity is likely to be present in diffuse run-off, but it is difficult to apportion alkalinity loads between natural and contaminant sources. It is likely that diffuse loads of alkalinity will dominate on the annual timescales used to assess WFD compliance, even at sites where ground water alkalinity dominates at base river flows. In principle, inclusion of anthropogenic alkalinity in the calculation of ES boundary concentrations for RP may lead to a relaxation of the standards. In practice this may not follow. It is likely that at the river sites used initially to develop the algorithms now used for P standard setting, anthropogenic alkalinity was present, to varying and unknown degrees, and that this alkalinity would have influenced the measured and reference RP and biological metrics on which the P standards are based. Apart from RP, alkalinity is also used to underpin water quality metrics for additional chemical and biological parameters, and for this reason, understanding the complex factors determining river alkalinity loads should be an important task for water quality regulators

Decay of escherichia coli in soil following the application of biosolids to agricultural land

The decay of Escherichia coli in a sandy loam soil, amended with enhanced and conventionally treated biosolids, was investigated in a field experiment following spring and autumn applications of sewage sludge. Control soils, without the application of biosolids, were also examined to determine the background indigenous populations of E. coli which are present in the environment. The survival of indigenous E. coli and populations of E. coli applied to soil in biosolids, is assessed in relation to environmental factors influencing pathogen-decay processes in soil

Modelling the impacts of agricultural management practices on river water quality in Eastern England

Agricultural diffuse water pollution remains a notable global pressure on water quality, posing risks to aquatic ecosystems, human health and water resources and as a result legislation has been introduced in many parts of the world to protect water bodies. Due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness, water quality models have been increasingly applied to catchments as Decision Support Tools (DSTs) to identify mitigation options that can be introduced to reduce agricultural diffuse water pollution and improve water quality. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied to the River Wensum catchment in eastern England with the aim of quantifying the long-term impacts of potential changes to agricultural management practices on river water quality. Calibration and validation were successfully performed at a daily time-step against observations of discharge, nitrate and total phosphorus obtained from high-frequency water quality monitoring within the Blackwater sub-catchment, covering an area of 19.6 km2. A variety of mitigation options were identified and modelled, both singly and in combination, and their long-term effects on nitrate and total phosphorus losses were quantified together with the 95% uncertainty range of model predictions. Results showed that introducing a red clover cover crop to the crop rotation scheme applied within the catchment reduced nitrate losses by 19.6%. Buffer strips of 2 m and 6 m width represented the most effective options to reduce total phosphorus losses, achieving reductions of 12.2% and 16.9%, respectively. This is one of the first studies to quantify the impacts of agricultural mitigation options on long-term water quality for nitrate and total phosphorus at a daily resolution, in addition to providing an estimate of the uncertainties of those impacts. The results highlighted the need to consider multiple pollutants, the degree of uncertainty associated with model predictions and the risk of unintended pollutant impacts when evaluating the effectiveness of mitigation options, and showed that high-frequency water quality datasets can be applied to robustly calibrate water quality models, creating DSTs that are more effective and reliable

Transactions costs in rural decision-making: The cases of funding and monitoring in rural development in England

Public domain decisions in rural England have become more complex as the number of stakeholders having a say in them has increased. Transactions costs can be used to explore this increasing complexity. The size and distribution of these costs are higher in rural areas. Grouping transactions costs into four - organizations, belief systems, knowledge and information, and institutions - two of the latter are evaluated empirically: growth in the bid culture, and monitoring and evaluation. Amongst 65 Agents of Rural Governance (ARGs) in Gloucestershire, both were found to be increasing over time, but those relating to finance were a greater burden than those of monitoring: the latter can improve ARG performance. Increasing transactions costs in rural decision-making appears to be at variance with ambitions of achieving 'smaller government' through, for example, the Big Society. Smaller government is likely to be shifting the incidence of these costs, rather than reducing them. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Conceptualising sustainability in UK urban Regeneration: a discursive Formation

Despite the wide usage and popular appeal of the concept of sustainability in UK policy, it does not appear to have challenged the status quo in urban regeneration because policy is not leading in its conceptualisation and therefore implementation. This paper investigates how sustainability has been conceptualised in a case-based research study of the regeneration of Eastside in Birmingham, UK, through policy and other documents, and finds that conceptualisations of sustainability are fundamentally limited. The conceptualisation of sustainability operating within urban regeneration schemes should powerfully shape how they make manifest (or do not) the principles of sustainable development. Documents guide, but people implement regeneration—and the disparate conceptualisations of stakeholders demonstrate even less coherence than policy. The actions towards achieving sustainability have become a policy ‘fix’ in Eastside: a necessary feature of urban policy discourse that is limited to solutions within market-based constraints

The political sustainability of climate policy: the case of the UK Climate Change Act

This paper assesses the forces working for and against the political sustainability of the UK 2008 Climate Change Act. The adoption of the Act is seen as a landmark commitment to action on climate change, but its implementation has not been studied in any depth. Recent events, including disagreements over the fourth carbon budget and the decarbonisation of the electricity sector, shows that while the Act might appear to lock in a commitment to reducing emissions through legal means, this does not guarantee political lock-in. The assumption, made by some proponents of the Act, that accountability of political leaders to a public concerned about climate change, via Parliament, would provide the main political underpinning to the Act is criticised. An analysis of alternative sources of political durability is presented, drawing on a framework for understanding the sustainability of reform developed by Patashnik. It is argued that the Act has helped create major institutional transformations, although the degree to which new institutions have displaced the power of existing ones is limited. The Act has produced some policy feedback effects, especially in the business community, and some limited investment effects, but both have been insufficient to withstand destabilisation by recent party political conflicts. The Climate Change Act remains at risk

Biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys

This paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present,and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s. Working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects,we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems. The legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production. In the 1970-80s, promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed. Where the territorial and scalar vision was breached, it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher-value biofuel to the North rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today. However, controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions, and to their local impacts becoming more widely known. South/South and North/North trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities. As assumptions of a food-versus-fuel conflict have come to be challenged, legitimacy questions over global agri-business and trade are spotlighted even further. In this context, visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising. These include large-scale biomass-for-fuel models in Europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global South to compete, and smallscale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the South