Evaluation on flow discharge of grassed swale in lowland area

Grassed swale is an open vegetated channel designed specifically in attenuating stormwater runoff to decrease the velocity, to reduce the peak flows, and minimize the causes of flood. Therefore, the fundamental of this study is to evaluate the flow discharge of swale in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), which has flat land surface area. There are two sites of study were involved to assess the performance of swale as stormwater quantity control, named as swale 1 and swale 2. Data collection was conducted on 100 meters of length for each swale. The velocity of swale was measured thrice by using a current meter according to the six-tenths depth method, after a rainfall event. The discharge of drainage area in UTHM was determined by the Rational Method (Qpeak), and the discharge of swales (Qswale) was evaluated by the Mean-Section Method. Manning’s roughness coefficient and the infiltration rate were also determined in order to describe the characteristics of swale, which contributing factors for the effectiveness of swale. The results shown that Qswale is greater than Qpeak at swale 1 and swale 2, which according to the Second Edition of MSMA, the swales are efficient as stormwater quantity control in preventing flash flood at the campus area of UTHM

Regression trend lines of ridges and swales on the emergent beach at Gisborne, New Zealand

The emergent sand-beach system at Gisborne consists of six recognisable groups of ridges and swales. It is about three miles wide and four miles long and rises gradually from 15ft above sea level at the coast to 40ft inland. From time to time the emergent beach has been mantled with air-borne volcanic ash including ash beds of the Waimihia Lapilli, Taupo Sub-group Members 9 - 13, Taupo Pumice, and Kaharoa Ash Formations. As the dates of these eruptions are known, the times of formation of the groups of beach ridges and wales have been determined as follows: Group 1: c. 9000 B.C. - c. 1400 B.C. Group 2: c. 1400 B.C. - (?) 850 B.C. Group 3: (?) 850 B.C. - c. A.D. 131 Group 4: c. A.D. 131 - c. A.D. 1020 Group 5: c. A.D. 1020 - c. A.D. 1650 Group 6: c. A.D. 1650 - A.D. 1956 Evidence of recent earth movements has been noted in ridges and swales of Group 1, and of possible movements in those of Group 3. Changes in sea level could not be established and were taken from Wellman and Schofield. No attempt was made to distinguish directly wind-blown sand from wave-deposited sand; instead, a shell layer (assumed to be associated with the intertidal strand) was used as a marker bed to indicate the approximate sea level at the time when the shells were deposited. Elevations of ridges and swales in each group were measured on a 15,000ft transect across the beach system. Then, overall linear and quadratic regressions as well as linear regressions for each group separately were computed. For both of the overall linear and quadratic regressions the trend lines show a fall seaward, but the separate trend lines for each group are as follows: Group 1: Highly significant seaward decline. Groups 2 and 3 combined: Very highly significant seaward decline. Group 4: Highly significant seaward incline. Groups 5 and 6 combined: No significant change. The departure of the regression trend lines within Groups 1 to 6 from the overall linear and quadratic trend lines suggests that the trends of elevation across the emergent beach at Gisborne should be regarded more as a series of discontinuous trends rather than as one overall continuous trend of seaward decline. Though the overall trend of declining elevation is seaward, the corresponding fall in sea level is likely to be more apparent than real because of compounding of fall in sea level with earth movements

Scoping drug and alcohol consumption in young people on the Isle of Sheppey

Executive Summary: Scoping Drug and Alcohol Consumption in Young People on the Isle of Sheppey. Introduction: In 2008 the Sheppey Health and Wellbeing Group (SHWG) raised awareness of the need for a project on the Isle of Sheppey with a focus upon drug and alcohol abuse. The SHWG is a network of over 20 local community groups and partners involved in various local public health initiatives. The group had been concerned for some time by regular reports of drugs and alcohol abuse in Sheerness, often leading to fights and other anti-social behaviour. The University of Greenwich was identified as a suitable partner to gather data about local needs. The members of the SHWG agreed that Sheppey Matters was best placed to work with the University on this project, funding was obtained from the HEFCE funded SECC initiative and a community researcher was employed to bridge the gap between the University of Greenwich and the Isle of Sheppey. The project was overseen by a steering group of individuals from the Isle of Sheppey and University of Greenwich. The members who were Sheppey–based were as followed: Councillor Kenneth Pugh- Chair (Member Sheerness District), Mike Brown (Chair of the Sheppey Health and Wellbeing Group), Nigel Martin (Manager- Sheppey Matters) and Kelly Barshell (Community Researcher). The following individuals from the University of Greenwich were on the Committee; Professor Elizabeth Meerabeau (Dean of School, Health and Social Care), Professor Elizabeth West (Director of Research, School of Health and Social Care), Professor Roslyn Corney (Psychology and Counselling) and Dr John Foster- (Principal Research Fellow in Mental Health Nursing and Substance Use.) In addition to collecting data about local needs the project team have to date developed two pilot projects; firstly a survey of drug and alcohol use in young people attending Sheppey Academy aged 14-18 and secondly a residents survey investigating the impact of drug and alcohol use in young people on the island. The aim is to leave a legacy of research skills that would, in the long run, benefit the island’s young people. Local volunteers were recruited to assist the community researcher who commenced employment in March 2010. These volunteers have received training/supervision from researchers from the University and were able to attend 2 one day public health workshops. Health professionals and workers from the third sector attended the public health workshops on social marketing and community engagement that contributed to the legacy of the project. Methodology: This has primarily been a scoping exercise to explore drug and alcohol use in young people, though substance use data relating to adult populations has also been collected. The five main modes of data collection were as follows: • Publically available health and crime and datasets, such as hospital admission data. Similar locally focused crime-related data has proved far harder to obtain. • Survey of young people from Sheppey Academy • Residents survey conducted via the internet • Focus Groups of Young People • Stakeholder interviews with a member of the local primary care trust, street wardens, senior member of staff from Sheppey Academy, workers from local voluntary and statutory sector local drug and alcohol treatment services and commissioner of drug and alcohol services. Ethical approval was granted for the study by the University of Greenwich Research Ethics Committee in April 2010. Key Findings: Publicly Available Data • Notwithstanding some data collection anomalies alcohol-related hospital admissions for the Isle of Sheppey are disproportionate compared to the rest of Swale and Kent. • This is particularly marked for women. • No data has so far been located that would allow us to conclusively attribute anti-social behaviour to alcohol or drug use. • Hard data about drugs use and criminality on the island has been very difficult to locate. Survey of Young People: • 400 students from Sheppey Academy aged 13-19 (14.8, 0.9, Mean, SD) (males 168 (42%), females 232 (58%) replied to a survey on drug and alcohol use. • The vast majority were occasional alcohol users who other than being sick caused or encountered very few problems when drinking. • The police were active on the island and it was common for young people to have contact with them. • Less than five percent had any form of medical treatment as a result of their drinking. • Only 13% of the sample had ever used an illicit drug. • Cannabis was the most frequent illicit drug taken and this was only on an occasional basis Residents Survey conducted via the internet: • 109 responses were received and other than Leysdown all areas of the island provided responses consistent with their population levels. • The majority of respondent were 20-30 and 65+ • There was drug and alcohol related anti-social behaviour and drug dealing but it was at the same level of concern as “rubbish or litter” and “people not treating other people with respect and consideration.” Focus Groups of Young People: • Two mixed gender focus groups. Group a) students aged 16-17 from Sheppey Academy. Group b) aged 15-16 and recruited through the Sheppey Healthy Living Centre. • The participants confirmed the findings of the young people’s survey. • A number had alcohol confiscated by the anti-social behaviour vehicle but would have also welcomed having their parents informed • Alcohol was easy to obtain chiefly from off-licenses rather than pubs or supermarkets. • Alcohol was frequently obtained through parents, older siblings and older friends • Alcohol and Drug Education classes delivered in their schools were regarded as having minimal impact. A number could not remember whether they received them or not. • The main reason the participants drank was boredom • Drug use in the focus group participants was minimal and infrequent. • The participants would have welcomed greater activities such as sports or a night clubs. • One of the main problems impacting upon them was poor public transport- especially buses to the more remote parts of the island which are infrequent and stop at 7.30pm. Stakeholder Interviews: • Anti-social behaviour is not spread evenly across the island, but is concentrated around beaches and parks as follows: Warden:- area near Donkey Hill, Queenborough; Stanley Avenue, Rushenden: Manor Road, Halfway Area around car park. Minster: Lapwing Close, Harps Estate, Noreen Avenue, Bunnybank, The Glen, Redrow Estate, Appleford Drive, The Broadway, The Leas, Queens Road and behind the supermarket car park and finally Sheerness: Vincent Court, Edenbridge Drive, Beach Front, Beachfield Park, Barton Points, Marine Town, the canal, the town centre, St. Georges Avenue, the railway station and various alleyways in and around the Alma Road area. • Anti-social behaviour worsens in the summer months • Drug and alcohol use in young people on the island is largely seen as being consistent with the rest of Kent and the rest of England, though there are a small number who are encountering significant alcohol and drug–related problems. • Alcohol and drug use on the island has to be seen within the context of deprivation, isolation and perceived lack of opportunity • The main drug of choice for young people on the island is alcohol • In relation to illicit drugs in young people, cannabis use is the most prevalent followed by Ecstasy and legal highs such as mephedrone* • Problematic illicit drug use requiring treatment intervention tends to be uncommon and spread across a number of generations. • There is a perception that drug problems and drug dealing have reduced since the closure of a nightclub in Sheerness in 2004. Role of Volunteers/Public Health Workshops: One of the first tasks of the community researcher was to recruit volunteers to assist in delivering the proposed pilot studies. Prior to the advertisement being placed the project was publicised in the local press and radio. Potential volunteers were subject to a criminal records check, a process that took approximately three months so volunteers were not able to take an active role in the project until May/June 2010. Originally five volunteers were recruited, two found employment in the interim, one did not attend any meetings after initially expressing an interest and two took an active role in the study. In July 2010 a Social Marketing workshop, facilitated by two external consultants, was held at University of Greenwich Medway Campus. It was attended by thirty people including the two volunteers. The majority of the participants were professionals/volunteers with an interest in drug/alcohol use/young people who lived or worked on the island. Thus although the numbers were small a great deal of goodwill was developed that could be utilised to drive the project forward. Another workshop was held concerning enhancing community engagement in December 2010. It was a one day workshop held on two days attended by voluntary and statutory workers from the island and mainland Swale. Six individuals attended on day 1 and eight on day 2. This coincided with very cold weather so attendance was disappointing, however the courses were both positively evaluated by the participants. Establishing a legacy for the project: The project team are taking a number of steps to ensure a permanent legacy for the project. • A DVD aimed at the public health community has been made using a production company employed by Sheppey Matters celebrating the project and summarising the main findings. Key personnel from both Sheppey Matters and the University of Greenwich have been filmed in addition to young people on the island. The final result is also available in a series of pod/video casts that will be uploaded on to the web sites of Centre for Nursing and Health Care Research – University of Greenwich http://www.gre.ac.uk/schools/health/research/cnhr and Sheerness Healthy Living Centre. http://www.sheppeyhlc.org.uk • On May 27th a dissemination event for the project was held to celebrate the work and establish local goodwill to push it forward. Key local stakeholders were invited to hear the main findings being presented with ideas about providing permanent initiatives to improve health of both young people and adults on the island. • The legacy is concerned with taking steps to reduce overall drug and alcohol use on the island. The first of these concerns drug and alcohol education for young people. The focus groups confirmed that alcohol/drug education was not highly regarded by the young people. There is now a large evidence base that finds that if drug/alcohol education is to have a positive impact it has to be appropriate for age of the audience and re-inforced throughout the school career. The University of Greenwich will work to secure funding for a worker to deliver the education in an evidence based way using established templates and train teachers/youth workers etc to continue this work once the project has ended. As part of the project the work will be evaluated. • The SOS bus is a public health initiative that has been funded in part by Medway PCT and evaluated by a team from the University of Greenwich. It delivers public health interventions such as screening for diabetes and providing advice re sexual health etc and the intention now is for this bus to be used in a similar way on Sheppey. If funding can be found for this it will be particularly important in reaching the more remote parts of the island. • Data from the study has shown that many young people come into frequent contact with the police and in some cases a greater police presence would be welcomed. It is also important to note that the culture surrounding young people’s drug and alcohol use is constantly evolving-social networking packages such as facebook and twitter may produce fresh challenges for the police. The research team are now working with Councillor Kenneth Pugh to negotiate a formal advisory role with the police on the island. Note: * Mephedrone was legal at the time of the interviews. It has since been banned-see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8623958.stm). November 201

Impact of nitrogenous fertilizers on carbonate dissolution in small agricultural catchments: Implications for weathering CO2 uptake at regional and global scales

The goal of this study was to highlight the occurrence of an additional proton-promoted weathering pathway of carbonate rocks in agricultural areas where N-fertilizers are extensively spread, and to estimate its consequences on riverine alkalinity and uptake of CO2 by weathering. We surveyed 25 small streams in the calcareous molassic Gascogne area located in the Garonne river basin (south-western France) that drain cultivated or forested catchments for their major element compositions during different hydrologic periods. Among these catchments, the Hay and the Montousse´, two experimental catchments, were monitored on a weekly basis. Studies in the literature from other small carbonate catchments in Europe were dissected in the same way. In areas of intensive agriculture, the molar ratio (Ca + Mg)/HCO3 in surface waters is significantly higher (0.7 on average) than in areas of low anthropogenic pressure (0.5). This corresponds to a decrease in riverine alkalinity, which can reach 80% during storm events. This relative loss of alkalinity correlates well with the NO3 content in surface waters. In cultivated areas, the contribution of atmospheric/soil CO2 to the total riverine alkalinity (CO2 ATM-SOIL/HCO3) is less than 50% (expected value for carbonate basins), and it decreases when the nitrate concentration increases. This loss of alkalinity can be attributed to the substitution of carbonic acid (natural weathering pathway) by protons produced by nitrification of Nfertilizers (anthropogenic weathering pathway) occurring in soils during carbonate dissolution. As a consequence of these processes, the alkalinity over the last 30 years shows a decreasing trend in the Save river (one of the main Garonne river tributaries, draining an agricultural catchment), while the nitrate and calcium plus magnesium contents are increasing. We estimated that the contribution of atmospheric/soil CO2 to riverine alkalinity decreased by about 7–17% on average for all the studied catchments. Using these values, the deficit of CO2 uptake can be estimated as up to 0.22–0.53 and 12–29 Tg1 yr1 CO2 on a country scale (France) and a global scale, respectively. These losses represent up to 5.7–13.4% and only 1.6–3.8% of the total CO2 flux naturally consumed by carbonate dissolution, for France and on a global scale, respectively. Nevertheless, this loss of alkalinity relative to the Ca + Mg content relates to carbonate weathering by protons from N-fertilizers nitrification, which is a net source of CO2 for the atmosphere. This anthropogenic CO2 source is not negligible since it could reach 6–15% of CO2 uptake by natural silicate weathering and could consequently partly counterbalance this natural CO2 sink

Assessment of Natural Resources Use for Sustainable Development - DPSIR Framework for Case Studies in Portsmouth and Thames Gateway, U.K.

This chapter reports on the uses of the DPSIR framework to assess the sustainability of the intertidal environments within the two UK case study areas, Portsmouth and Thames Gateway. It focuses on statutory conservation areas dominated by intertidal habitats. Two are located in Portsmouth (Portsmouth and Langstone Harbours) and four in the Thames Gateway (Benfleet Marshes, South Thames Estuary, Medway Estuary and the Swale in the Thames Gateway). Based on the reduction of a number of pressures and impacts observed in recent decades and the improvement of overall environmental quality, all six SSSIs are considered to be sustainable in the short and medium term. In the future, it is possible that the impacts of climate change, especially sea-level rise, might result in further reduction in the area and/or quality of intertidal habitats. Further integration between conservation and planning objectives (both for urban development and management of flood risk) at local level is needed to support the long-term sustainability of intertidal habitats

The sensitivity of landscape evolution models to spatial and temporal rainfall resolution

© Author(s) 2016. Climate is one of the main drivers for landscape evolution models (LEMs), yet its representation is often basic with values averaged over long time periods and frequently lumped to the same value for the whole basin. Clearly, this hides the heterogeneity of precipitation - but what impact does this averaging have on erosion and deposition, topography, and the final shape of LEM landscapes? This paper presents results from the first systematic investigation into how the spatial and temporal resolution of precipitation affects LEM simulations of sediment yields and patterns of erosion and deposition. This is carried out by assessing the sensitivity of the CAESAR-Lisflood LEM to different spatial and temporal precipitation resolutions - as well as how this interacts with different-size drainage basins over short and long timescales. A range of simulations were carried out, varying rainfall from 0.25 h × 5 km to 24 h × Lump resolution over three different-sized basins for 30-year durations. Results showed that there was a sensitivity to temporal and spatial resolution, with the finest leading to & gt; 100 % increases in basin sediment yields. To look at how these interactions manifested over longer timescales, several simulations were carried out to model a 1000-year period. These showed a systematic bias towards greater erosion in uplands and deposition in valley floors with the finest spatial- and temporal-resolution data. Further tests showed that this effect was due solely to the data resolution, not orographic factors. Additional research indicated that these differences in sediment yield could be accounted for by adding a compensation factor to the model sediment transport law. However, this resulted in notable differences in the topographies generated, especially in third-order and higher streams. The implications of these findings are that uncalibrated past and present LEMs using lumped and time-averaged climate inputs may be under-predicting basin sediment yields as well as introducing spatial biases through under-predicting erosion in first-order streams but over-predicting erosion in second- and third-order streams and valley floor areas. Calibrated LEMs may give correct sediment yields, but patterns of erosion and deposition will be different and the calibration may not be correct for changing climates. This may have significant impacts on the modelled basin profile and shape from long-timescale simulations

Innovative Stormwater Treatment Technologies: Best Management Practices Manual

Urban stormwater carries a number of pathogens, nutrients, heavy metals, sediment, and other contaminants as surface runoff flows over land. The increase in impervious or paved surfaces associated with development in urban areas reduces the natural infiltration of precipitation into the ground. With impervious cover, precipitation collects and carries contaminants before draining into nearby surface waters. Stormwater runoff from paved surfaces in developed areas can degrade downstream waters with both contaminants and increased volumes of water. This publication aims to make information on innovative stormwater treatment technologies more available to New Hampshire’s urban planners, developers, and communities. Traditional runoff management techniques such as detention basins and infiltration swales may be preferable, but are not always practical for treating urban stormwater. Lack of space for natural solutions is often a problem in existing developed areas, making innovative treatment technologies an attractive alternative. Mostly designed for subsurface installation, urban “retrofits” use less space than conventional methods to treat stormwater. This manual provides information on the innovative stormwater “retrofit” technologies currently available for use in developed areas in New Hampshire