India-UK Water Security Exchange Initiative - February 2016 visit. Final report

This report outlines the conclusions of a visit by senior Indian water managers and decision makers to the UK in February 2016. A seven day visit to the UK took place from 13th-20th February 2016, coordinated by the UK Water Partnership and funded by several UK organisations. The report is intended for India-UK Water Security Exchange Initiative participants and stakeholders

Potential impacts of climatic warming on glacier-fed river flows in the Himalaya

The Himalayan region is one of the most highly glacierised areas on Earth. Regarded as the “water towers” of Asia, the Himalayas are the source of several of the world’s major rivers. The region is inhabited by some 140 million people and ten times as many (~1.4 billion) live in its downstream river basins. Freshwater from the mountains is vital for the region’s economy and for sustaining the livelihoods of a fast-growing population. Climatic warming and the rapid retreat of Himalayan glaciers over recent decades have raised concerns about the future reliability of mountain melt-water resources, leading to warnings of catastrophic water shortages. Several previous studies have assessed climate change impacts on specific glacier-fed rivers, usually applying meso-scale catchment models for short simulation periods during which glacier dimensions remain unchanged. Few studies have attempted to estimate the effects on a regional scale, partly because of the paucity of good quality data across the Himalaya. The aim of this study was to develop a parsimonious grid-based macro-scale hydrological model for the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra basins that, in order to represent transient melt-water contributions from retreating glaciers, innovatively allowed glacier dimensions to change over time. The model initially was validated over the 1961-90 standard period and then applied in each basin with a range of climate-change scenarios (sensitivity analysis- and climate-model-based) over a 100-year period, to gain insight on potential changes in mean annual and winter flows (water availability proxies) at decadal time-steps. Plausible results were obtained, showing impacts vary considerably across the region (catchments in the east appear much less susceptible to glacier retreat effects than those in the west, due to the influence of the summer monsoon), and, in central and eastern Himalayan catchments, from upstream to downstream (effects diminish rapidly downstream due to higher runoff from non-glaciated parts)

Less to lose? Drought impact and vulnerability assessment in disadvantaged regions

Droughts hit the most vulnerable people the hardest. When this happens, everybody in the economy loses over the medium- to long-term. Proactive policies and planning based on vulnerability and risk assessments can reduce drought risk before the worst impacts occur. The aim of this article is to inform a global initiative, led by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), to mitigate the effects of drought on vulnerable ecosystems and communities. This is approached through a rapid review of experiences from selected nations and of the available literature documenting methodological approaches to assess drought impacts and vulnerability at the local level. The review finds that members of the most vulnerable communities can integrate available methods to assess drought risks to their land and ecosystem productivity, their livelihoods and their life-supporting hydrological systems. This integration of approaches helps to ensure inclusive assessments across communities and ecosystems. However, global economic assessments often still fail to connect to holistic consideration of vulnerability at a local scale. As a result, they routinely fall short of capturing the systemic effects of land and water management decisions that deepen vulnerability to droughts over time. To ensure proactive and inclusive drought risk mitigation, multiscale, systemic approaches to drought vulnerability and risk assessment can be further reinforced at a global level

Introduction [Emerging science for sustainable water resource management: a guide for water professionals and practitioners in India]

Chapter 1. “Why must we sustainably manage our freshwater?” is an easy enough question to answer when you first consider it: water is essential for life, we need water for everything from food, to health, to culture and wellbeing, and energy. However, according to a UN report on the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we are failing on each of the six global indicators for SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation (United Nations 2021). Every day we hear more bad news about the state of the planet’s water, ecosystems, species, and climate. The more challenging question is, therefore, “how can we sustainably manage our water?

Family role in paediatric safety incidents: a retrospective study protocol

Introduction: Healthcare-associated harm is an international public health issue. Children are particularly vulnerable to this with 15%–35% of hospitalised children experiencing harm during medical care. While many factors increase the risk of adverse events, such as children’s dependency on others to recognise illness, children have a unique protective factor in the form of their family, who are often well placed to detect and prevent unsafe care. However, families can also play a key role in the aetiology of unsafe care. We aim to explore the role of families, guardians and parents in paediatric safety incidents, and how this may have changed during the pandemic, to learn how to deliver safer care and codevelop harm prevention strategies across healthcare settings. // Methods and analysis: This will be a retrospective study inclusive of an exploratory data analysis and thematic analysis of incident report data from the Learning from Patient Safety Events service (formerly National Reporting and Learning System), using the established PatIent SAfety classification system. Reports will be identified by using specific search terms, such as *parent* and *mother*, to capture narratives with explicit mention of parental involvement, inclusive of family members with parental and informal caregiver responsibilities. Paediatricians and general practitioners will characterise the reports and inter-rater reliability will be assessed. Exploratory descriptive analysis will allow the identification of types of incidents involving parents, contributing factors, harm outcomes and the specific role of the parents including inadvertent contribution to or mitigation of harm. // Ethics and dissemination: This study was approved by Cardiff University Research Ethics Committee (SMREC 22/32). Findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, presented at international conferences and presented at stakeholder workshops

Understanding future water challenges in a highly regulated Indian river basin — modelling the impact of climate change on the hydrology of the upper Narmada

The Narmada river basin is a highly regulated catchment in central India, supporting a population of over 16 million people. In such extensively modified hydrological systems, the influence of anthropogenic alterations is often underrepresented or excluded entirely by large-scale hydrological models. The Global Water Availability Assessment (GWAVA) model is applied to the Upper Narmada, with all major dams, water abstractions and irrigation command areas included, which allows for the development of a holistic methodology for the assessment of water resources in the basin. The model is driven with 17 Global Circulation Models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble to assess the impact of climate change on water resources in the basin for the period 2031–2060. The study finds that the hydrological regime within the basin is likely to intensify over the next half-century as a result of future climate change, causing long-term increases in monsoon season flow across the Upper Narmada. Climate is expected to have little impact on dry season flows, in comparison to water demand intensification over the same period, which may lead to increased water stress in parts of the basin

Only the Lonely: H I Imaging of Void Galaxies

Void galaxies, residing within the deepest underdensities of the Cosmic Web, present an ideal population for the study of galaxy formation and evolution in an environment undisturbed by the complex processes modifying galaxies in clusters and groups, as well as provide an observational test for theories of cosmological structure formation. We have completed a pilot survey for the HI imaging aspects of a new Void Galaxy Survey (VGS), imaging 15 void galaxies in HI in local (d < 100 Mpc) voids. HI masses range from 3.5 x 10^8 to 3.8 x 10^9 M_sun, with one nondetection with an upper limit of 2.1 x 10^8 M_sun. Our galaxies were selected using a structural and geometric technique to produce a sample that is purely environmentally selected and uniformly represents the void galaxy population. In addition, we use a powerful new backend of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope that allows us to probe a large volume around each targeted galaxy, simultaneously providing an environmentally constrained sample of fore- and background control sample of galaxies while still resolving individual galaxy kinematics and detecting faint companions in HI. This small sample makes up a surprisingly interesting collection of perturbed and interacting galaxies, all with small stellar disks. Four galaxies have significantly perturbed HI disks, five have previously unidentified companions at distances ranging from 50 to 200 kpc, two are in interacting systems, and one was found to have a polar HI disk. Our initial findings suggest void galaxies are a gas-rich, dynamic population which present evidence of ongoing gas accretion, major and minor interactions, and filamentary alignment despite the surrounding underdense environment.Comment: 53 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in AJ. High resolution available at http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~keejo/kreckel2010.pd

Modelling small-scale storage interventions in semi-arid India at the basin scale

There has been renewed interest in the performance, functionality, and sustainability of traditional small-scale storage interventions (check dams, farm bunds and tanks) used within semi-arid regions for the improvement of local water security and landscape preservation. The Central Groundwater Board of India is encouraging the construction of such interventions for the alleviation of water scarcity and to improve groundwater recharge. It is important for water resource management to understand the hydrological effect of these interventions at the basin scale. The quantification of small-scale interventions in hydrological modelling is often neglected, especially in large-scale modelling activities, as data availability is low and their hydrological functioning is uncertain. A version of the Global Water Availability Assessment (GWAVA) water resources model was developed to assess the impact of interventions on the water balance of the Cauvery Basin and two smaller sub-catchments. Model results demonstrate that farm bunds appear to have a negligible effect on the average annual simulated streamflow at the outlets of the two sub-catchments and the basin, whereas tanks and check dams have a more significant and time varying effect. The open water surface of the interventions contributed to an increase in evaporation losses across the catchment. The change in simulated groundwater storage with the inclusion of interventions was not as significant as catchment-scale literature and field studies suggest. The model adaption used in this study provides a step-change in the conceptualisation and quantification of the consequences of small-scale storage interventions in large- or basin-scale hydrological models

Nutrient and microbial water quality of the upper Ganga river, India: identification of pollution sources

The Ganga River is facing mounting environmental pressures due to rapidly increasing human population, urbanisation, industrialisation and agricultural intensification, resulting in worsening water quality, ecological status and impacts on human health. A combined inorganic chemical, algal and bacterial survey (using flow cytometry and 16S rRNA gene sequencing) along the upper and middle Ganga (from the Himalayan foothills to Kanpur) was conducted under pre-monsoon conditions. The upper Ganga had total phosphorus (TP) and total dissolved nitrogen concentrations of less than 100 μg l−1 and 1.0 mg l−1, but water quality declined at Kannauj (TP = 420 μg l−1) due to major nutrient pollution inputs from human-impacted tributaries (principally the Ramganga and Kali Rivers). The phosphorus and nitrogen loads in these two tributaries and the Yamuna were dominated by soluble reactive phosphorus and ammonium, with high bacterial loads and large numbers of taxa indicative of pathogen and faecal organisms, strongly suggesting sewage pollution sources. The high nutrient concentrations, low flows, warm water and high solar radiation resulted in major algal blooms in the Kali and Ramganga, which greatly impacted the Ganga. Microbial communities were dominated by members of the Phylum Proteobacteria, Bacteriodetes and Cyanobacteria, with communities showing a clear upstream to downstream transition in community composition. To improve the water quality of the middle Ganga, and decrease ecological and human health risks, future mitigation must reduce urban wastewater inputs in the urbanised tributaries of the Ramganga, Kali and Yamuna Rivers

Cosmic-ray soil water monitoring: the development, status & potential of the COSMOS-India network

Soil moisture (SM) plays a central role in the hydrological cycle and surface energy balance and represents an important control on a range of land surface processes. Knowledge of the spatial and temporal dynamics of SM is important for applications ranging from numerical weather and climate predictions, the calibration and validation of remotely sensed data products, as well as water resources, flood and drought forecasting, agronomy and predictions of greenhouse gas fluxes. Since 2015, the Centre for Ecology and Ecology has been working in partnership with several Indian Research Institutes to develop COSMOS-India, a new network of SM monitoring stations that employ cosmic-ray soil moisture sensors (CRS) to deliver high temporal frequency, near-real time observations of SM at field scale. CRS provide continuous observations of near-surface (top 0.1 to 0.2 m) soil volumetric water content (VWC; m3 m-3) that are representative of a large footprint area (approximately 200 m in radius). To date, seven COSMOS-India sites have been installed and are operational at a range of locations that are characterised by differences in climate, soil type and land management. In this presentation, the development, current status and future potential of the COSMOS-India network will be discussed. Key results from the COSMOS-India network will be presented and analysed