Lessons from the 2018 drought for management of local water supplies in upland areas : a tracer-based assessment

Funding Information: We would like to acknowledge financial support from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (project NE/P010334/1) via a CASE industrial studentship with Chivas Brothers. David Drummond, Katya Dimitrova-Petrova and Eva Loerke are thanked for assistance with fieldwork, while we acknowledge Dr Aaron Neill for his advice on young water fraction analyses. Trevor Buckley and staff at the Glenlivet Distillery are thanked for on-site assistance and supply of data and abstraction records. We thank Audrey Innes, Dr Bernhard Scheliga, and Dr Ilse Kamerling for their support with the laboratory isotope analysis. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 The Authors. Hydrological Processes published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Tracers reveal limited influence of plantation forests on surface runoff in a UK natural flood management catchment

Study region United Kingdom (UK). Study focus Natural flood management (NFM) schemes are increasingly prominent in the UK. Studies of NFM have not yet used natural tracers at catchment scale to investigate how interventions influence partitioning during storms between surface rainfall runoff and water already stored in catchments. Here we investigate how catchment properties, particularly plantation forestry, influence surface storm rainfall runoff. We used hydrograph separation based on hydrogen and oxygen isotopes (2H, 18O) and acid neutralising capacity from high flow events to compare three headwater catchments (2.4-3.1 km2) with differences in plantation forest cover (Picea sitchensis: 94%, 41%, 1%) within a major UK NFM pilot, typical of the UK uplands. New hydrological insights Plantation forest cover reduced the total storm rainfall runoff fraction during all events (by up to 11%) when comparing two paired catchments with similar soils, geology and topography but ∼50% difference in forest cover. However, comparison with the third catchment, with negligible forest cover but different characteristics, suggests that soils and geology were dominant controls on storm rainfall runoff fraction. Furthermore, differences between events were greater than differences between catchments. These findings suggest that while plantation forest cover may influence storm rainfall runoff fractions, it is not a dominant control in temperate upland UK catchments, especially for larger events. Soils and geology may exert greater influence, with implications for planning NFM

National Soil Map of Scotland

National coverage of the main soil types across Scotland mapped originally at 1:250 000 scale. The map is based on the systematic survey of the soils of Scotland 1947 and 1981. This dataset is the digital (vector) version of the paper Soils of Scotland 1:250,000 maps and is a reconnaissance scale soil map. This dataset is an inventory of the soils of Scotland and is the only soil map that covers all of the country. This version includes both the original 1984 and the 2013 soil classification, some minor polygon corrections and some alterations to the symbology used for display. The original maps were published in the 1980s as 7 separate sheets with an associated handbook. They can now be viewed on, and downloaded from, The James Hutton Institute website. (www.hutton.ac.uk) The dataset should be cited as: Soil Survey of Scotland Staff (1981). Soil maps of Scotland at a scale of 1:250 000. Macaulay Institute for Soil Research, Aberdeen. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4646891. Metadata can be found at: https://spatialdata.gov.scot/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/B7E65842-C041-4950-BF0C-3AF06C2DBAE7 This work was funded by the Rural & Environment Science & Analytical Services Division of the Scottish Government.Data downloadable from: https://www.hutton.ac.uk/learning/natural-resource-datasets/soilshutton/soils-maps-scotland/downloa