Generic modelleing of faecal indicator organism concentrations in the UK

To meet European Water Framework Directive requirements, data are needed on faecal indicator organism (FIO) concentrations in rivers to enable the more heavily polluted to be targeted for remedial action. Due to the paucity of FIO data for the UK, especially under high-flow hydrograph event conditions, there is an urgent need by the policy community for generic models that can accurately predict FIO concentrations, thus informing integrated catchment management programmes. This paper reports the development of regression models to predict base- and high-flow faecal coliform (FC) and enterococci (EN) concentrations for 153 monitoring points across 14 UK catchments, using land cover, population (human and livestock density) and other variables that may affect FIO source strength, transport and die-off. Statistically significant models were developed for both FC and EN, with greater explained variance achieved in the high-flow models. Both land cover and, in particular, population variables are significant predictors of FIO concentrations, with r2 maxima for EN of 0.571 and 0.624, respectively. It is argued that the resulting models can be applied, with confidence, to other UK catchments, both to predict FIO concentrations in unmonitored watercourses and evaluate the likely impact of different land use/stocking level and human population change scenarios

Social network analysis as a tool for marine spatial planning: Impacts of decommissioning on connectivity in the North Sea

Connectivity of marine populations and ecosystems is crucial to maintaining and enhancing their structure, distribution, persistence, resilience and productivity. Artificial hard substrate, such as that associated with oil and gas platforms, provides settlement opportunities for species adapted to hard substrates in areas of soft sediment. The contribution of artificial hard substrate and the consequences of its removal (e.g. through decommissioning) to marine connectivity is not clear, yet such information is vital to inform marine spatial planning and future policy decisions on the use and protection of marine resources. This study demonstrates the application of a social network analysis approach to quantify and describe the ecological connectivity, informed by particle tracking model outputs, of hard substrate marine communities in the North Sea. Through comparison of networks with and without artificial hard substrate, and based on hypothetical decommissioning scenarios, this study provides insight into the contribution of artificial hard substrate, and the consequence of decommissioning, to the structure and function of marine community connectivity. This study highlights that artificial hard substrate, despite providing only a small proportion of the total area of hard substrate, increases the geographic extent and connectivity of the hard substrate network, bridging gaps, thereby providing ‘stepping stones’ between otherwise disconnected areas of natural hard substrate. Compared to the baseline scenario, a decommissioning scenario with full removal of oil and gas platforms results in a nearly 60% reduction in connectivity. Such reduction in connectivity may have negative implications for species’ distribution, gene flow and resilience following disturbance or exploitation of marine hard substrate communities. Synthesis and applications. Social network analysis can provide valuable insight into connectivity between marine communities and enable the evaluation of impacts associated with changes to the marine environment. Providing standardized, transparent and robust outputs, such a tool is useful to facilitate understanding across different disciplines, including marine science, marine spatial planning and marine policy. Social network analysis therefore has great potential to address current knowledge gaps with respect to marine connectivity and crucially facilitate assessment of the impacts of changes in offshore substrate as part of the marine spatial planning process, thereby informing policy and marine management decisions

Marine and coastal accounts for Small Island Developing States: A case study and application in Grenada

In recent decades, a concerted effort has been made to define methodologies and frameworks to account for the contribution of the natural environment to national wealth and its role in fulfilling societal and economic needs. The linkages between natural capital and human well-being are even stronger in low-income and vulnerable countries, such as Small Island Developing States (SIDS). This is particularly true for coastal and marine ecosystems and for SIDS, considering that a large portion of their population live along the coast. Therefore, SIDS would greatly benefit from systematically assessing and recording the condition and services provided by marine and coastal habitats in ecosystem accounts. Applications of accounting frameworks to marine and coastal habitats, however, are still under development. Through a case study in the Caribbean Island of Grenada, we explore SIDS readiness to develop marine and coastal natural capital accounts, in particular framed within the guidelines of the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA). We find that, while data to compile accounts of ecosystems extent exist and may be suitable for accounting, data related to ecosystem condition are very limited. Data gaps significantly constrained the potential approaches to estimate the ecosystem services supply provided by the coastal and marine environment in our natural capital accounts for Grenada. Our case study investigation brings us to suggest initial steps for the development of ecosystem accounts in SIDS, including potential methodologies and approaches and discuss how developing a set of coherent accounts can play a key role in incorporating nature into decision-making

Impact of abiotic factors and husbandry on saprolegniosis in salmonid farms

Funding Information: This work was financially supported by the EU H2020 [ H2020-SFS-10a-2014 (ParaFishControl, grant agreement No. 634429) (PT, MS, RG, JD-U, PvW, BO & MF)], the BBSRC [ BB/P020224/1 (MS & PvW) & BB/M026566/1 (MS & PvW)] and the University of Aberdeen (MS & PvW). The authors would like to thank all the fish farmers/staff and colleagues who collaborated in the fieldwork and provided valuable information for the study. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The AuthorsPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Bottom trawl fishing footprints on the world’s continental shelves

Publication history: Accepted - 23 August 2018; Published online - 8 October 2018.Bottom trawlers land around 19 million tons of fish and invertebrates annually, almost one-quarter of wild marine landings. The extent of bottom trawling footprint (seabed area trawled at least once in a specified region and time period) is often contested but poorly described. We quantify footprints using high-resolution satellite vessel monitoring system (VMS) and logbook data on 24 continental shelves and slopes to 1,000-m depth over at least 2 years. Trawling footprint varied markedly among regions: from <10% of seabed area in Australian and New Zealand waters, the Aleutian Islands, East Bering Sea, South Chile, and Gulf of Alaska to >50% in some European seas. Overall, 14% of the 7.8 million-km2 study area was trawled, and 86% was not trawled. Trawling activity was aggregated; the most intensively trawled areas accounting for 90% of activity comprised 77% of footprint on average. Regional swept area ratio (SAR; ratio of total swept area trawled annually to total area of region, a metric of trawling intensity) and footprint area were related, providing an approach to estimate regional trawling footprints when highresolution spatial data are unavailable. If SAR was ≤0.1, as in 8 of 24 regions, therewas >95% probability that >90%of seabed was not trawled. If SAR was 7.9, equal to the highest SAR recorded, there was >95% probability that >70% of seabed was trawled. Footprints were smaller and SAR was ≤0.25 in regions where fishing rates consistently met international sustainability benchmarks for fish stocks, implying collateral environmental benefits from sustainable fishing.Funding for meetings of the study group and salary support for R.O.A. were provided by the following: David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the Walton Family Foundation; the Alaska Seafood Cooperative; American Seafoods Group US; Blumar Seafoods Denmark; Clearwater Seafoods Inc.; Espersen Group; Glacier Fish Company LLC US; Gortons Seafood; Independent Fisheries Limited N.Z.; Nippon Suisan (USA), Inc.; Pesca Chile S.A.; Pacific Andes International Holdings, Ltd.; San Arawa, S.A.; Sanford Ltd. N.Z.; Sealord Group Ltd. N.Z.; South African Trawling Association; Trident Seafoods; and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Additional funding to individual authors was provided by European Union Project BENTHIS EU-FP7 312088 (to A.D.R., O.R.E., F.B., N.T.H., L.B.-M., R.C., H.O.F., H.G., J.G.H., P.J., S.K., M.L., G.G.-M., N.P., P.E.P., T.R., A.S., B.V., and M.J.K.); the Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, Portugal (C.S.); the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea Science Fund (R.O.A. and K.M.H.); the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (C.R.P. and T.M.); the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (R.A.M.); New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries Projects BEN2012/01 and DAE2010/ 04D (to S.J.B. and R.F.); the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania and the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Tasmania, Australia (J.M.S.); and UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Project MF1225 (to S.J.)

Groundwater vulnerability mapping : an application to pesticide contamination in England

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Identifying the catchment size at which robust estimations of agricultural land use can be made, and implications for diffuse pollution modelling

Diffuse pollution is often responsible for observed concentrations of agricultural compounds being in excess of the upper limits prescribed by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) and reductions in these concentrations will probably require widespread changes in farm practice. One of the aims of the UK RELU Catchment Hydrology, Resources, Economics and Management (ChREAM) study was to assess likely impacts of WFD implementation on agricultural land use and consequent implications for water quality and farm incomes. This has involved combining data from various sources into a hydrological-economic model, incorporating an existing diffuse pollution model updated to reflect present-day land use profiles. Combining agricultural land use data with hydrological spatial units can involve a number of problems arising from the integration of a variety of data formats at a range of spatial and temporal resolutions and the aggregation of source data over different spatial extents. This paper assesses uncertainty arising from areal interpolation of agricultural census data to hydrological units. The work is illustrated through a case study of the River Derwent catchment in north-east England. The study identifies the range of spatial resolutions at which robust estimations of agricultural land use can be made and indicates that the choice of interpolation method becomes important at smaller catchment scales. In this instance, choice of method starts to affect model outcome at the scale of the River Hertford sub-catchment (approximately 8000 ha) and is influenced by catchment shape and orientation with respect to source data. Implications for diffuse pollution modelling in support of policy implementation are examined

Magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of the Upper Triassic and lowermost Jurassic succession, St. Audrie's Bay, U.K.

The St. Audrie's Bay section in west Somerset comprises the uppermost Mercia Mudstone Group, the Penarth Group and the basal Lias Group and includes a candidate Global Stratotype Section and Point for the base of the Jurassic. The magnetostratigraphy has been evaluated through 122 m of this section at 147 stratigraphic levels, which range in age from mid-Norian to earliest Hettangian. In red dolomitic mudstones, the remanence is carried predominantly by haematite, whereas in non-red lithologies, it is mostly carried by magnetite. The mean virtual geomagnetic poles fall near the mean Upper Triassic and Lower Jurassic apparent polar wander track and display the start of the northeast-directed track typical of the Jurassic. The magnetostratigraphy comprises nine major magnetozones, five of normal polarity and four reversed, together with several minor magnetozones. In the Mercia Mudstone Group, the 68 m of the Twyning Mudstone Formation examined includes three major normal magnetozones (SA2n, SA3n and SA4n) and the Blue Anchor Formation has predominantly reversed polarity (SA4r) except at its top, in the Williton Member. The Penarth Group and basal Lias Group have predominantly normal polarity (SA5 to SA6n) but short reversals occur within the Westbury Formation and at the base of the Lilstock Formation and the Lias Group (SA5r). This magnetostratigraphy is a good match with that found in the upper part of the Newark Supergroup succession in the eastern USA. The distinctive long reversal (SA4r) in the Blue Anchor Formation is equivalent to Newark Supergroup magnetozone interval E18r to E20r. Magnetozone SA5n, located mainly in the Penarth Group, probably equates with part of E22n and all of E23n in the Newark Supergroup. The reversed magnetozone, SA5r, at the base of the Lias Group, may correspond either with E23r in the Exeter Member (Passaic Formation) in the Newark Supergroup or with an undetected reverse polarity interval within the Newark Basin flood basalts. A change in the composition and diversity of terrestrial microfloras that occurs in the upper part of the Penarth Group at St. Audrie's Bay and elsewhere in the UK, is similar to that interpreted as marking the Triassic–Jurassic boundary in the Newark Supergroup. At St. Audrie's Bay, this change occurs c. 0.6 m below SA5r, within the Rhaetian, whereas in the Newark Supergroup, it occurs c. 20 m above the potentially equivalent E23r. Reconciliation of these disparities requires that either the microfloral changes are not synchronous between these locations or the change in the Newark Supergroup is time-equivalent with late Rhaetian conodont bearing strata. The correlation of marine and nonmarine Upper Triassic magnetostratigraphies is revaluated with the new data from St. Audrie's Bay, indicating the Twyning Mudstone and Blue Anchor formations are mid to late Alaunian (mid-Norian) in age. The Sevatian (late Norian) is represented by the Williton Member and the lower part of the Westbury Formation, but is incomplete because of disconformities at the base of the Williton Member and Penarth Group

Cost-effective mitigation of diffuse pollution: setting criteria for river basin management at multiple locations

A case study of the Yorkshire Derwent (UK) catchment is used to illustrate an integrated approach for assessing the viability of policy options for reducing diffuse nitrate losses to waterbodies. For a range of options, modeling methods for simulating river nitrate levels are combined with techniques for estimating the economic costs to agriculture of modifying those levels. By incorporating spatially explicit data and information on catchment residence times (which may span many decades particularly in areas of groundwater discharge) a method is developed for efficient spatial targeting of measures, for example, to the most at-risk freshwater environments. Combining hydrological and economic findings, the analysis reveals that, in terms of cost-effectiveness, the ranking of options is highly sensitive to both (i) whether or not specific stretches of river within a catchment are regarded as a priority for protection, and (ii) the criterion of nitrate concentration deemed most appropriate as an indicator of the health of the environment. Therefore, given the focus under European legislation upon ecological status of freshwaters, these conclusions highlight the need to improve understanding of mechanistic linkages between the chemical and biological dynamics of aquatic systems