Review of Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy during the First World War by Laura Rowe

Review of Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy during the First World War by Laura Row

Review of The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 by David G. Morgan-Owen

Review of The Fear of Invasion: Strategy, Politics, and British War Planning, 1880-1914 by David G. Morgan-Owen

Review of Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy during the First World War by Laura Rowe

Review of Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy during the First World War by Laura Row

Perturbations to nutrient and carbon cycles by river damming

The damming of rivers represents one of the most far-reaching human modifications to the flows of water and associated matter from land to sea. Globally there are over 70 000 large dams whose reservoirs store more than seven times as much water as natural rivers. Due to increasing demands for energy, irrigation, drinking water, and flood control, the construction of dams will continue into the foreseeable future. Indeed, there is currently an ongoing boom in dam construction, particularly focused in emerging economies, which is expected to double the fragmentation of rivers on Earth. Essential nutrient elements such as phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), silicon (Si), and carbon (C) are transported and transformed along the land-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC), forming the basis for freshwater food webs in lakes, rivers, wetlands, reservoirs, and floodplains, and ultimately for marine food webs in estuarine and coastal environments. The dam-driven fragmentation of the rivers along the LOAC will significantly modify global nutrient and C fluxes via elimination from the water column in reservoirs. In this thesis, I quantify in-reservoir elimination and transformation fluxes for phosphorus (P), silicon (Si), and organic carbon (OC), with the goal of determining (1) how much Si, P, and organic C (OC) are retained or eliminated globally due to river damming, (2) how damming modifies the balance of productivity (heterotrophy vs. autotrophy) in river systems worldwide, (3) to what extent damming changes nutrient speciation or reactivity along the LOAC, and (4) if reservoirs retain or eliminate certain nutrients more efficiently than others, and if so, how this decoupling changes nutrient ratios delivered to coastal zones. I address these research questions at the reservoir scale, by quantifying nutrient elimination in Lake Diefenbaker, Saskatchewan, and through the development of spatially explicit global nutrient and carbon models. In Chapter 2, I present a reservoir-scale field study of reactive silicon dynamics in Lake Diefenbaker, a reservoir in Canada’s central prairie province of Saskatchewan. I use a year-round dataset of surface water samples and sediment cores to construct a Si budget for the reservoir, including an estimation of the amount of Si buried in the reservoir annually. I use this study to illustrate the differences in retention of Si relative to N and P, and put forth the hypothesis that river damming results in a decoupling of nutrient cycling. This study acts as an introduction to the concept of differential nutrient retention in reservoirs, which I go on to show at the global scale for Si, P, and C in reservoirs in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Following Chapter 2, I address my research questions by developing a mechanistic approach to global scale biogeochemical modelling. This approach yields spatially explicit results, which allows for the quantification of regional watershed and coastal trends, as well as lumped continental changes. In Chapter 3, the modelling approach itself is introduced, through application to the Si cycle. I show, via a meta-analysis comparing the distribution of physical and chemical parameters of published reservoir Si budgets to reservoirs worldwide, that the existing literature Si budgets are severely limited in their ability to represent the dataset of global reservoirs. I then introduce the mechanistic approach by developing a biogeochemical box model representing Si dynamics in reservoirs. I assign rate expressions to transformation fluxes and input/output fluxes, which are constrained as uniform distributions between limits that encapsulate possible global ranges. Using a Monte Carlo approach, I allow the model to randomly select each rate constant independently for 6000 iterations, generating a database of hypothetical Si dynamics in reservoirs worldwide. I use this generated dataset to establish expressions relating Si retention to water residence time, which I apply to an existing database of global reservoirs. Ultimately I develop a global estimate of dissolved and reactive Si burial in reservoirs for year 2000. Chapters 4 and 5 use the same modelling approach presented in Chapter 3, but applied to riverine P and organic carbon (OC) fluxes. Because the cycles of P and OC have been studied in more detail than Si in the literature, it is possible to constrain higher order probability density functions (PDFs) for many rate constants. In the case of OC, it also becomes possible to use a statistically significant semi-empirical approach to calculate a number of fluxes, as expressions to predict OC dynamics have been established from globally applicable datasets. Using the upstream-catchment area-normalized Global-NEWS model’s watershed yields as input to each reservoir, I use the 1970, 2000, 2030 and 2050 model predictions to estimate historical and predict future P and OC elimination by dams. In Chapter 4, I show that damming retains 12% of the global total P load to watersheds in year 2000, potentially rising to 17% by 2030. In Chapter 5, I show that global OC mineralization in reservoirs exceeds carbon fixation (P<R); the global P/R ratio, however, varies significantly, from 0.20 to 0.58 because of the changing age distribution of dams. I further estimate that at the start of the 21st Century, in-reservoir burial plus mineralization eliminated 4.0 ± 0.9 Tmol yr-1 (48 ± 11 Tg C yr-1) or 13% of total OC carried by rivers to the oceans. Because of the ongoing boom in dam building, in particular in emerging economies, this value could rise to 6.9 ± 1.5 Tmol yr-1 (83 ± 18 Tg C yr-1) or 19% by 2030. Chapter 6 ties the previous global scale P and Si model together, plus a global scale N model (Akbarzadeh et al., in preparation), to predict changes to nutrient ratios delivered by rivers to the coastal zones. I use this analysis, in combination with anthropogenic nutrient loading data, to contextualize the role of river damming as a driver of changing nutrient limitation in the coastal shelf zones of the world. Results indicate that dams preferentially eliminate P over Si, and Si over N, from the water column. I show that while damming drives riverine N:P ratios up, anthropogenic nutrient loading is shifting these ratios down, increasing the prominence of N-limitation in river water discharged to the coasts. Because of the preferential elimination of Si over N, the net rise in N-limitation increases the prominence of Si-limitation in coastal river discharge, potentially creating conditions suitable for harmful algal blooms to develop. My results show that damming is driving a severe reorganization of global nutrient cycles along the entire LOAC. By quantifying the changes to multiple nutrient cycles, I show that a multi-nutrient management approach is needed in heavily dammed watersheds, as deliberate reduction of one nutrient species flux can have unintended consequences on other nutrient elements. These alterations persist from the reservoir to the river’s discharge into coastal zones. The effects of damming on nutrient cycling, in combination with other human pressures and management strategies, therefore have the potential to affect ecosystems worldwide

The Finnish Battle for Identity: Finnish Socialism, Nationalism and Russian Ideological Intervention in the Finnish Civil War

The Finnish Civil War, fought from January to May 1918, was one of the many small scale Eastern European conflicts fought in the ideological and ethnic turmoil that followed the Russian Revolution and the First World War.  The war was fought between socialist Finnish Reds and conservative Finnish Whites. Despite its class conflict characteristics, the Civil War was manufactured by the Whites as a War of Liberation from Russia. The Whites successfully mobilized Finnish nationalism by exploiting the nature and history of Finnish socialism to reveal contradictions in socialist policies and painting the Reds as puppets of Russian communists

Global Dam‐Driven Changes to Riverine N:P:Si Ratios Delivered to the Coastal Ocean

River damming alters nutrient fluxes along the land-ocean aquatic continuum as a result of biogeochemical processes in reservoirs. Both the changes in riverine nutrient fluxes and nutrient ratios impact ecosystem functioning of receiving water bodies. We utilize spatially distributed mechanistic models of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and silicon (Si) cycling in reservoirs to quantify changes in nutrient stoichiometry of river discharge to coastal waters. The results demonstrate that the growing number of dams decouples the riverine fluxes of N, P, and Si. Worldwide, preferential removal of P over N in reservoirs increases N:P ratios delivered to the ocean, raising the potential for P limitation of coastal productivity. By midcentury, more than half of the rivers discharging to the coastal zone will experience a higher removal of reactive Si relative to reactive P and total N, in response to the rapid pace at which new hydroelectric dams are being built

Global Controls on DOC Reaction Versus Export in Watersheds: A Damköhler Number Analysis

The relative capacity for watersheds to eliminate or export reactive constituents has important implications on aquatic ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry. Removal efficiency depends on factors that affect either the reactivity or advection of a constituent within river networks. Here, we characterized Damköhler number (Da) for dissolved organic carbon (DOC) uptake in global river networks. Da equals the advection to reaction timescale ratio and thus provides a unitless indicator for DOC reaction intensity during transport within river networks. We aim to demonstrate the spatial and temporal patterns and interplays among factors that determine DOC uptake across global river networks. We show that watershed size imposes a primary control on river network DOC uptake due to a three orders of magnitude difference in water residence time (WRT) between the smallest and largest river networks. DOC uptake capacity in tropical river networks is 2–6 times that in temperate and the Arctic river networks, coinciding with larger DOC removals in warm than in cold watersheds. River damming has a profound impact on DOC uptake due to significantly extended WRTs, particularly in temperate watersheds where most constructed dams are situated. Global warming is projected to increase river network DOC uptake by ca. 19% until year 2100 under the RCP4.5 scenario

Effects of pH and Dissolved Silicate on Phosphate Mineral-Water Partitioning with Goethite

Release of sorbed phosphate from ferric iron oxyhydroxides can contribute to excessive algal growth in surface water bodies. Dissolved silicate has been hypothesized to facilitate phosphate desorption by competing for mineral surface sites. Here, we conducted phosphate and silicate adsorption experiments with goethite under a wide pH range (3–11), both individually (P or Si) and simultaneously (P plus Si). The entire experimental data set was successfully reproduced by the charge distribution multisite surface complexation (CD-MUSIC) model. Phosphate adsorption was highest under acidic conditions and gradually decreased from near-neutral to alkaline pH conditions. Maximum silicate adsorption, in contrast, occurred under alkaline conditions, peaking around pH 10. The competitive effect of silicate on phosphate adsorption was negligible under acidic conditions, becoming more pronounced under alkaline conditions and elevated molar Si:P ratios (>4). In a subsequent experiment, desorption of phosphate with increasing pH was monitored, in the presence or absence of dissolved silicate. While, as expected, desorption of phosphate was observed during the transition from acidic to alkaline conditions, a fraction of phosphate remained irreversibly bound to goethite. Even at high Si:P ratios and alkaline pH, dissolved silicate did not affect phosphate desorption, implying that kinetic factors prevented silicate from displacing phosphate from goethite binding sites