Long-term Impact of sewage sludge application on rhizobium leguminosarum biovar trifolii: an evaluation using meta-analysis

The Long-Term Sludge Experiment (LTSE) began in 1994 at nine UK field sites as part of continuing research into the effects of sludge-borne heavy metals on soil fertility. The long-term effects of Zn, Cu, and Cd on the most probable numbers of cells (MPN) of Rhizobium leguminosarum biovar trifolii were monitored for 8 yr in sludge-amended soils. To assess the statutory limits set by the UK Sludge (Use in Agriculture) Regulations, the experimental data were reviewed using statistical methods of meta-analysis. Previous LTSE studies have focused predominantly on statistical significance rather than effect size, whereas meta-analysis focuses on the magnitude and direction of an effect, i.e., the practical significance rather than its statistical significance. Results showed Zn to be the most toxic element causing an overall significant decrease in Rhizobium MPN of −26.6% during the LTSE. The effect of Cu showed no significant effect on Rhizobium MPN at concentrations below the UK limits, although a −5% decrease in Rhizobium MPN was observed in soils where total Cu ranged from 100 to <135 mg kg−1. Overall, there was nothing to indicate that Cd had a significant effect on Rhizobium MPN below the current UK statutory limit. In summary, the UK statutory limit for Zn appears to be insufficient for protecting Rhizobium from Zn toxicity effects

The role of alkalinity in setting water quality metrics: phosphorus standards in United Kingdom rivers.

UK implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directive (for the 2015-2021 cycle) Ecological Status (ES) classification for river phosphorus is based on the calculation of reference conditions for reactive phosphorus (RP) using river alkalinity measurements. Underpinning this approach is that the alkalinity is primarily from rock weathering and is free of anthropogenic influences. However, the potential contribution of anthropogenic alkalinity needs to be considered and, if possible, quantified. In the rural South West River Basin District of England, 38 river sites were examined with respect to river alkalinity loads in order to test this consideration. At river base flow when RP can cause enhanced algal growth, 9 sites (24%) had effluent alkalinity contributions amounting to 25-49% of the total riverine alkalinity load, while 11 (29%) of the sites received ≥50% of their alkalinity load from effluent. When flows increased above base flow to Q95 flow at these 11 sites, catchment diffuse run-off became the largest load of alkalinity at 9 of the sites, and that at the Q95 flows, combined effluent and diffuse alkalinity loads contributed 68-100% of the total alkalinity load. Anthropogenic alkalinity is likely to be present in diffuse run-off, but it is difficult to apportion alkalinity loads between natural and contaminant sources. It is likely that diffuse loads of alkalinity will dominate on the annual timescales used to assess WFD compliance, even at sites where ground water alkalinity dominates at base river flows. In principle, inclusion of anthropogenic alkalinity in the calculation of ES boundary concentrations for RP may lead to a relaxation of the standards. In practice this may not follow. It is likely that at the river sites used initially to develop the algorithms now used for P standard setting, anthropogenic alkalinity was present, to varying and unknown degrees, and that this alkalinity would have influenced the measured and reference RP and biological metrics on which the P standards are based. Apart from RP, alkalinity is also used to underpin water quality metrics for additional chemical and biological parameters, and for this reason, understanding the complex factors determining river alkalinity loads should be an important task for water quality regulators

Modelling the impacts of agricultural management practices on river water quality in Eastern England

Agricultural diffuse water pollution remains a notable global pressure on water quality, posing risks to aquatic ecosystems, human health and water resources and as a result legislation has been introduced in many parts of the world to protect water bodies. Due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness, water quality models have been increasingly applied to catchments as Decision Support Tools (DSTs) to identify mitigation options that can be introduced to reduce agricultural diffuse water pollution and improve water quality. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied to the River Wensum catchment in eastern England with the aim of quantifying the long-term impacts of potential changes to agricultural management practices on river water quality. Calibration and validation were successfully performed at a daily time-step against observations of discharge, nitrate and total phosphorus obtained from high-frequency water quality monitoring within the Blackwater sub-catchment, covering an area of 19.6 km2. A variety of mitigation options were identified and modelled, both singly and in combination, and their long-term effects on nitrate and total phosphorus losses were quantified together with the 95% uncertainty range of model predictions. Results showed that introducing a red clover cover crop to the crop rotation scheme applied within the catchment reduced nitrate losses by 19.6%. Buffer strips of 2 m and 6 m width represented the most effective options to reduce total phosphorus losses, achieving reductions of 12.2% and 16.9%, respectively. This is one of the first studies to quantify the impacts of agricultural mitigation options on long-term water quality for nitrate and total phosphorus at a daily resolution, in addition to providing an estimate of the uncertainties of those impacts. The results highlighted the need to consider multiple pollutants, the degree of uncertainty associated with model predictions and the risk of unintended pollutant impacts when evaluating the effectiveness of mitigation options, and showed that high-frequency water quality datasets can be applied to robustly calibrate water quality models, creating DSTs that are more effective and reliable

A review of the rural-digital policy agenda from a community resilience perspective

© 2016 The Authors This paper utilises a community resilience framework to critically examine the digital-rural policy agenda. Rural areas are sometimes seen as passive and static, set in contrast to the mobility of urban, technological and globalisation processes (Bell et al., 2010). In response to notions of rural decline (McManus et al., 2012) rural resilience literature posits rural communities as ‘active,’ and ‘proactive’ about their future (Skerratt, 2013), developing processes for building capacity and resources. We bring together rural development and digital policy-related literature, using resilience motifs developed from recent academic literature, including community resilience, digital divides, digital inclusion, and rural information and communication technologies (ICTs). Whilst community broadband initiatives have been linked to resilience (Plunkett-Carnegie, 2012; Heesen et al., 2013) digital inclusion, and engagement with new digital technologies more broadly, have not. We explore this through three resilience motifs: resilience as multi-scalar; as entailing normative assumptions; and as integrated and place-sensitive. We point to normative claims about the capacity of digital technology to aid rural development, to offer solutions to rural service provision and the challenges of implementing localism. Taking the UK as a focus, we explore the various scales at which this is evident, from European to UK country-level

Transactions costs in rural decision-making: The cases of funding and monitoring in rural development in England

Public domain decisions in rural England have become more complex as the number of stakeholders having a say in them has increased. Transactions costs can be used to explore this increasing complexity. The size and distribution of these costs are higher in rural areas. Grouping transactions costs into four - organizations, belief systems, knowledge and information, and institutions - two of the latter are evaluated empirically: growth in the bid culture, and monitoring and evaluation. Amongst 65 Agents of Rural Governance (ARGs) in Gloucestershire, both were found to be increasing over time, but those relating to finance were a greater burden than those of monitoring: the latter can improve ARG performance. Increasing transactions costs in rural decision-making appears to be at variance with ambitions of achieving 'smaller government' through, for example, the Big Society. Smaller government is likely to be shifting the incidence of these costs, rather than reducing them. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The political sustainability of climate policy: the case of the UK Climate Change Act

This paper assesses the forces working for and against the political sustainability of the UK 2008 Climate Change Act. The adoption of the Act is seen as a landmark commitment to action on climate change, but its implementation has not been studied in any depth. Recent events, including disagreements over the fourth carbon budget and the decarbonisation of the electricity sector, shows that while the Act might appear to lock in a commitment to reducing emissions through legal means, this does not guarantee political lock-in. The assumption, made by some proponents of the Act, that accountability of political leaders to a public concerned about climate change, via Parliament, would provide the main political underpinning to the Act is criticised. An analysis of alternative sources of political durability is presented, drawing on a framework for understanding the sustainability of reform developed by Patashnik. It is argued that the Act has helped create major institutional transformations, although the degree to which new institutions have displaced the power of existing ones is limited. The Act has produced some policy feedback effects, especially in the business community, and some limited investment effects, but both have been insufficient to withstand destabilisation by recent party political conflicts. The Climate Change Act remains at risk

Challenges and opportunities in the design and construction of a GIS-based emission inventory infrastructure for the Niger Delta region of Nigeria

© 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Environmental monitoring in middle- and low-income countries is hampered by many factors which include enactment and enforcement of legislations; deficiencies in environmental data reporting and documentation; inconsistent, incomplete and unverifiable data; a lack of access to data; and technical expertise. This paper describes the processes undertaken and the major challenges encountered in the construction of the first Niger Delta Emission Inventory (NDEI) for criteria air pollutants and CO2 released from the anthropogenic activities in the region. This study focused on using publicly available government and research data. The NDEI has been designed to provide a Geographic Information System-based component of an air quality and carbon management framework. The NDEI infrastructure was designed and constructed at 1-, 10- and 20-km grid resolutions for point, line and area sources using industry standard processes and emission factors derived from activities similar to those in the Niger Delta. Due to inadequate, incomplete, potentially inaccurate and unavailable data, the infrastructure was populated with data based on a series of best possible assumptions for key emission sources. This produces outputs with variable levels of certainty, which also highlights the critical challenges in the estimation of emissions from a developing country. However, the infrastructure is functional and has the ability to produce spatially resolved emission estimates

Score a goal for climate: Assessing the carbon footprint of travel patterns of the English Premier League clubs

Football is the most popular sport, globally and in the United Kingdom. However it generates a range of negative environmental impacts, such as climate change, due to an extensive amount of travel involved. The growing contribution of football clubs to the global carbon footprint has been recognised, but never consistently assessed. This study assesses the carbon footprint of the English Premier League (EPL)clubs, using the patterns of their domestic travel in the 2016/2017 season as a proxy for analysis. The study shows that, within the 2016/17 season, the EPL clubs produced circa 1134 tonnes of CO 2- eq. as a result of their travel, where transportation accounts for 61% of the carbon footprint. To reduce this carbon footprint, a careful review of the current corporate travel and procurement practices in the EPL clubs is necessary. This is in order to optimise the travel itineraries, prioritise more climate-benign modes of transport and contract budget accommodation providers with the ‘green’ credentials

Biofuels and the role of space in sustainable innovation journeys

This paper aims to identify the lessons that should be learnt from how biofuels have been envisioned from the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1970s to the present,and how these visions compare with biofuel production networks emerging in the 2000s. Working at the interface of sustainable innovation journey research and geographical theories on the spatial unevenness of sustainability transition projects,we show how the biofuels controversy is linked to characteristics of globalised industrial agricultural systems. The legitimacy problems of biofuels cannot be addressed by sustainability indicators or new technologies alone since they arise from the spatial ordering of biofuel production. In the 1970-80s, promoters of bioenergy anticipated current concerns about food security implications but envisioned bioenergy production to be territorially embedded at national or local scales where these issues would be managed. Where the territorial and scalar vision was breached, it was to imagine poorer countries exporting higher-value biofuel to the North rather than the raw material as in the controversial global biomass commodity chains of today. However, controversy now extends to the global impacts of national biofuel systems on food security and greenhouse gas emissions, and to their local impacts becoming more widely known. South/South and North/North trade conflicts are also emerging as are questions over biodegradable wastes and agricultural residues as global commodities. As assumptions of a food-versus-fuel conflict have come to be challenged, legitimacy questions over global agri-business and trade are spotlighted even further. In this context, visions of biofuel development that address these broader issues might be promising. These include large-scale biomass-for-fuel models in Europe that would transform global trade rules to allow small farmers in the global South to compete, and smallscale biofuel systems developed to address local energy needs in the South

Influence of design and media amendments on the performance of stormwater biofilters

Biofiltration systems are a promising retrofit option for site-constrained urban areas due to the vertical arrangement of treatment stages that leads to a relatively compact footprint. Existing knowledge about the influence of their design and configuration on hydrological, stormwater pollutant removal and long-term performance is limited and this has been identified as a barrier to their widespread uptake. Long-term simulations of lined and unlined biofiltration systems in four contrasting UK climatic regimes were used to assess the influence of climate, ponding depth, biofilter to drainage area ratio and infiltration rate on hydrological performance. The results showed that local differences in climate have a significant impact on performance and that infiltration rates as low as 0·36 mm/h are not suitable for locations in the UK with high rainfall unless the biofilter to drainage area ratio is greater than 10%. However, with higher infiltration rates (72 mm/h) a biofilter occupying only 3% of the impermeable catchment area would be capable of infiltrating 97% of annual rainfall in central England. Preliminary results of adsorption and column tests to assess the effectiveness of media amendments, specifically zeolite and granular activated carbon, for dissolved copper and phosphate removal are presented in this paper