The Response of Shallow Groundwater Levels to Fuels Reduction in the Middle Rio Grande Bosque

Throughout the southwest, exotic and non-native plant species such as saltcedar (Tamarix ramosissima) and Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) have transformed the environment by competing for groundwater and dominating ecosystems formally occupied by native cottonwoods (Populus deltoids ssp.) and willow (Salix sp.). Saltcedar was introduced to the Middle Rio Grande riparian forest (bosque) to control flooding and to decrease soil erosion rates due to its deep root system and prolific growth rate. This transformation, along with channelization and commensurate reduction in over bank flooding, has not only changed the ecology, structure, and composition of riparian vegetative communities, but also greatly increased the severity and frequency of wildfires. Saltcedar and Russian olive both have the tendency to produce large masses of dead dry branches or stems because of high stem mortality rates. This downed wood is the fuel that creates the swift moving wildfires in the Middle Rio Grande bosque. These fires present a major threat to structures and communities living near the bosque and causes substantial damage to the bosque environment. A study to evaluate the effects of the removal of exotic fuels was initiated in 1999 by the Rocky Mountain Research Station of the USFS in collaboration with other local organizations. Saltcedar and other exotic fuels were removed in several sections in the Middle Rio Grande bosque using three different methods to limit re-growth. In addition to determining the effects of fire propagation, the fuel reduction study included a component to investigate the impact of fuel removal on shallow groundwater resources. To determine the impacts to shallow groundwater from the fuel reduction treatment, a series of 24 shallow monitoring wells were installed and instrumented with data loggers to measure water levels. These wells were located in three different blocks, stretching from Albuquerque to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Diurnal groundwater fluctuations were analyzed from years 2003 and 2005 during summer and winter periods, and the variations at control sites (no fuel reduction) were compared with treatment sites where exotic vegetation was removed and treated with herbicide. The diurnal data showed variations between the study plots as well as seasonal variability. Overall, the average fluctuations from the summer control sites (-10.81 mm and 6.69 mm) were of greater magnitude or similar to the fluctuations from the treatment sites (- 9.98 mm and 7.58 mm). During the winter dormant season, the treatment sites (-2.89 mm and 2.58 mm) held higher average fluctuations when compared to the control sites (-1.20 mm and 0.79 mm). The results indicated there was a low impact on shallow groundwater from the removal of exotic species because of only slight differences in diurnal fluctuations between the control and treatment sites

Physical soil quality indicators for monitoring British soils

The condition or quality of soils determines its ability to deliver a range of functions that support ecosystem services, human health and wellbeing. The increasing policy imperative to implement successful soil monitoring programmes has resulted in the demand for reliable soil quality indicators (SQIs) for physical, biological and chemical soil properties. The selection of these indicators needs to ensure that they are sensitive and responsive to pressure and change e.g. they change across space and time in relation to natural perturbations and land management practices. Using a logical sieve approach based on key policy-related soil functions, this research assessed whether physical soil properties can be used to indicate the quality of British soils in terms of its capacity to deliver ecosystem goods and services. The resultant prioritised list of physical SQIs were tested for robustness, spatial and temporal variability and expected rate of change using statistical analysis and modelling. Six SQIs were prioritised; packing density, soil water retention characteristics, aggregate stability, rate of erosion, depth of soil and soil sealing. These all have direct relevance to current and likely future soil and environmental policy and are appropriate for implementation in soil monitoring programs

The challenges and affordances of online participatory workshops in the context of young people's everyday climate crisis activism: insights from facilitators

Participatory workshops can provide an equitable way of working with diverse communities to co-produce new knowledge and understanding in the context of young people’s everyday climate crisis activism. Drawing on data from interviews with seven facilitators, we consider the specific affordances and challenges provided by participatory workshops that are held online with groups including young people and teachers. We highlight that the online format can provide a powerful methodological tool for co-production, community building and developing constructive intergenerational dialogue. Although online workshops can include diverse voices, barriers and challenges remain when seeking to reduce the persistent under-representation of some groups

The Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory: Where ecology meets big data

Advances in computing power and infrastructure, increases in the number and size of ecological and environmental datasets, and the number and type of data collection methods, are revolutionizing the field of Ecology. To integrate these advances, virtual laboratories offer a unique tool to facilitate, expedite, and accelerate research into the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. We introduce the uniquely cloud-based Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL), which provides access to numerous species distribution modelling tools; a large and growing collection of biological, climate, and other environmental datasets; and a variety of experiment types to conduct research into the impact of climate change on biodiversity. Users can upload and share datasets, potentially increasing collaboration, cross-fertilisation of ideas, and innovation among the user community. Feedback confirms that the BCCVL's goals of lowering the technical requirements for species distribution modelling, and reducing time spent on such research, are being met

Cost-Effectiveness of Pre-exposure HIV Prophylaxis During Pregnancy and Breastfeeding in Sub-Saharan Africa

Antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for the prevention of HIV acquisition is cost-effective when delivered to those at substantial risk. Despite a high incidence of HIV infection among pregnant and breastfeeding women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a theoretical increased risk of preterm birth on PrEP could outweigh the HIV prevention benefit

Teacher and youth priorities for education for environmental sustainability: A co-created manifesto

What would it mean to put environmental sustainability at the heart of education? This article describes a process of inclusive, participatory manifesto-making to identify young people's (aged 16–18 years) and teachers' priorities for education for environmental sustainability across the UK. Drawing on analysis of qualitative data from over 200 teachers and young people who participated in futures and visualisation workshops, we identify key educational priorities at the levels of classroom, school, community and policy, based on consensus between teacher and youth perspectives. Whilst consensus-seeking comes with a risk of favouring ‘soft’ actions which reinforce unsustainable practices and systems, the process of identifying more desirable futures and immediate barriers that must be negotiated to reach them has the potential to create spaces for more critical pedagogies and practices. There is a need for policy makers and school leaders to recognise the interests of teachers and young people to enable greater participation in decision making at different scales, and to ensure that those with the greatest capacity bear their burden of responsibility for education for environmental sustainability

Indicators of soil quality - Physical properties (SP1611). Final report to Defra

The condition of soil determines its ability to carry out diverse and essential functions that support human health and wellbeing. These functions (or ecosystem goods and services) include producing food, storing water, carbon and nutrients, protecting our buried cultural heritage and providing a habitat for flora and fauna. Therefore, it is important to know the condition or quality of soil and how this changes over space and time in response to natural factors (such as changing weather patterns) or to land management practices. Meaningful soil quality indicators (SQIs), based on physical, biological or chemical soil properties are needed for the successful implementation of a soil monitoring programme in England and Wales. Soil monitoring can provide decision makers with important data to target, implement and evaluate policies aimed at safeguarding UK soil resources. Indeed, the absence of agreed and well-defined SQIs is likely to be a barrier to the development of soil protection policy and its subsequent implementation. This project assessed whether physical soil properties can be used to indicate the quality of soil in terms of its capacity to deliver ecosystem goods and services. The 22 direct (e.g. bulk density) and 4 indirect (e.g. catchment hydrograph) physical SQIs defined by Loveland and Thompson (2002) and subsequently evaluated by Merrington et al. (2006), were re-visited in the light of new scientific evidence, recent policy drivers and developments in sampling techniques and monitoring methodologies (Work Package 1). The culmination of these efforts resulted in 38 direct and 4 indirect soil physical properties being identified as potential SQIs. Based on the gathered evidence, a ‘logical sieve’ was used to assess the relative strengths, weaknesses and suitability of each potential physical SQI for national scale soil monitoring. Each soil physical property was scored in terms of: soil function – does the candidate SQI reflect all soil function(s)? land use - does the candidate SQI apply to all land uses found nationally? soil degradation - can the candidate SQI express soil degradation processes? does the candidate SQI meet the challenge criteria used by Merrington et al. (2006)?This approach enabled a consistent synthesis of available information and the semi-objective, semi-quantitative and transparent assessment of indicators against a series of scientific and technical criteria (Ritz et al., 2009; Black et al., 2008). The logical sieve was shown to be a flexible decision-support tool to assist a range of stakeholders with different agenda in formulating a prioritised list of potential physical SQIs. This was explored further by members of the soil science and soils policy community at a project workshop. By emphasising the current key policy-related soil functions (i.e. provisioning and regulating), the logical sieve was used to generate scores which were then ranked to identify the most qualified SQIs. The process selected 18 candidate physical SQIs. This list was further filtered to move from the ‘narrative’ to a more ‘numerical’ approach, in order to test the robustness of the candidate SQIs through statistical analysis and modelling (Work Package 2). The remaining 7 physical SQIs were: depth of soil; soil water retention characteristics; packing density; visual soil assessment / evaluation; rate of erosion; sealing; and aggregate stability. For these SQIs to be included in a robust national soil monitoring programme, we investigated the uncertainty in their measurement; the spatial and temporal variability in the indicator as given by observed distributions; and the expected rate of change in the indicator. Whilst a baseline is needed (i.e. the current state of soil), it is the rate of change in soil properties and the implications of that change in terms of soil processes and functioning that are key to effective soil monitoring. Where empirical evidence was available, power analysis was used to understand the variability of indicators as given by the observed distributions. This process determines the ability to detect a particular change in the SQI at a particular confidence level, given the ‘noise’ or variability in the data (i.e. a particular power to detect a change of ‘X’ at a confidence level of ‘Y%’ would require ‘N’ samples). However, the evidence base for analysing the candidate SQIs is poor: data are limited in spatial and temporal extent for England and Wales, in terms of a) the degree (magnitude) of change in the SQI which significantly affects soil processes and functions (i.e. ‘meaningful change’), and b) the change in the SQI that is detectable (i.e. what sample size is needed to detect the meaningful signal from the variability or noise in the signal). This constrains the design and implementation of a scientifically and statistically rigorous and reliable soil monitoring programme. Evidence that is available suggests that what constitutes meaningful change will depend on soil type, current soil state, land use and the soil function under consideration. However, when we tested this by analysing detectable changes in packing density and soil depth (because data were available for these SQIs) over different land covers and soil types, no relationships were found. Schipper and Sparling (2000) identify the challenge: “a standardised methodology may not be appropriate to apply across contrasting soils and land uses. However, it is not practical to optimise sampling and analytical techniques for each soil and land use for extensive sampling on a national scale”. Despite the paucity in data, all seven SQIs have direct relevance to current and likely future soil and environmental policy, because they can be related (qualitatively) to soil processes, soil functions and delivery of ecosystem goods and services. Even so, meaningful and detectable changes in physical SQIs may be out of time with any soil policy change and it is not usually possible to link particular changes in SQIs to particular policy activities. This presents challenges in ascertaining trends that can feed into policy development or be used to gauge the effectiveness of soil protection policies (Work Package 3). Of the seven candidate physical SQIs identified, soil depth and surface sealing are regarded by many as indicators of soil quantity rather than quality. Visual soil evaluation is currently not suited to soil monitoring in the strictest sense, as its semi-qualitative basis cannot be analysed statistically. Also, few data exist on how visual evaluation scores relate to soil functions. However, some studies have begun to investigate how VSE might be moved to a more quantified scale and the method has some potential as a low cost field technique to assess soil condition. Packing density requires data on bulk density and clay content, both of which are highly variable, so compounding the error term associated with this physical SQI. More evidence is needed to show how ‘meaningful’ change in aggregate stability affects soil processes and thus soil functions (for example, using the limited data available, an equivocal relationship was found with water regulation / runoff generation). The analysis of available data has given promising results regarding the prediction of soil water retention characteristics and packing density from relatively easy to measure soil properties (bulk density, texture and organic C) using pedotransfer functions. Expanding the evidence base is possible with the development of rapid, cost-effective techniques such as NIR sensors to measure soil properties. Defra project SP1303 (Brazier et al., 2012) used power analyses to estimate the number of monitoring locations required to detect a statistically significant change in soil erosion rate on cultivated land. However, what constitutes a meaningful change in erosion rates still requires data on the impacts of erosion on soil functions. Priority cannot be given amongst the seven SQIs, because the evidence base for each varies in its robustness and extent. Lack of data (including uncertainty in measurement and variability in observed distributions) applies to individual SQIs; attempts at integrating more than one SQI (including physical, biological and chemical SQIs) to improve associations between soil properties and processes / functions are only likely to propagate errors. Whether existing monitoring programmes can be adapted to incorporate additional measurement of physical SQIs was explored. We considered options where one or more of the candidate physical SQIs might be implemented into soil monitoring programmes (e.g. as a new national monitoring scheme; as part of the Countryside Survey; and as part of the National Soil Inventory). The challenge is to decide whether carrying out soil monitoring that is not statistically robust is still valuable in answering questions regarding current and future soil quality. The relationship between physical (and other) SQIs, soil processes and soil functions is complex, as is how this influences ecosystem services’ delivery. Important gaps remain in even the realisation of a conceptual model for these inter-relationships, let alone their quantification. There is also a question of whether individual quantitative SQIs can be related to ecosystem services, given the number of variables

The challenges and affordances of online participatory workshops in the context of young people’s everyday climate crisis activism : insights from facilitators

Participatory workshops can provide an equitable way of working with diverse communities to co-produce new knowledge and understanding in the context of young people’s everyday climate crisis activism. Drawing on data from interviews with seven facilitators, we consider the specific affordances and challenges provided by participatory workshops that are held online with groups including young people and teachers. We highlight that the online format can provide a powerful methodological tool for co-production and community building. Although online workshops can include diverse voices, barriers and challenges remain when seeking to reduce the persistent under-representation of some groups

Physical soil quality indicators for monitoring British soils

Soil condition or quality determines its ability to deliver a range of functions that support ecosystem services, human health and wellbeing. The increasing policy imperative to implement successful soil monitoring programmes has resulted in the demand for reliable soil quality indicators (SQIs) for physical, biological and chemical soil properties. The selection of these indicators needs to ensure that they are sensitive and responsive to pressure and change, e.g. they change across space and time in relation to natural perturbations and land management practices. Using a logical sieve approach based on key policy-related soil functions, this research assessed whether physical soil properties can be used to indicate the quality of British soils in terms of their capacity to deliver ecosystem goods and services. The resultant prioritised list of physical SQIs was tested for robustness, spatial and temporal variability, and expected rate of change using statistical analysis and modelling. Seven SQIs were prioritised: soil packing density, soil water retention characteristics, aggregate stability, rate of soil erosion, depth of soil, soil structure (assessed by visual soil evaluation) and soil sealing. These all have direct relevance to current and likely future soil and environmental policy and are appropriate for implementation in soil monitoring programmes

The challenges and affordances of online participatory workshops in the context of young people's everyday climate crisis activism: insights from facilitators

Participatory workshops can provide an equitable way of working with diverse communities to co-produce new knowledge and understanding in the context of young people’s everyday climate crisis activism. Drawing on data from interviews with seven facilitators, we consider the specific affordances and challenges provided by participatory workshops that are held online with groups including young people and teachers. We highlight that the online format can provide a powerful methodological tool for co-production, community building and developing constructive intergenerational dialogue. Although online workshops can include diverse voices, barriers and challenges remain when seeking to reduce the persistent under-representation of some groups