scientists test new ways to clean up our rivers

Paul Quinn

11.3.10
Newcastle University is to play a leading role in a £2m project designed to find new ways of cleaning up our rivers. The new national Demonstration Test Catchment (DTC) scheme on the River Eden, in Cumbria, aims to reduce the impact of agricultural pollution while maintaining sustainable food production.

Pulling together experts from Newcastle, Durham, Cumbria and Lancaster universities as well as the Eden Rivers Trust, British Geological Survey and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the team is looking to transform modern agricultural practices in a bid to prevent farm waste leaching into rivers.

“Waste and run-off from farms is a serious threat to our rivers,” explains Dr Paul Quinn, project lead at Newcastle. “But if we are to tackle the problem we need to find cost-effective, sustainable mitigation measures that can be incorporated into normal farming practice.

"Wetlands, ponds and sediment traps are just some of the schemes that Newcastle academics are testing on working farms to remove the waste before it reaches the river.

“The aim of this four-year project is to work with farmers and regulators to establish clean-up systems that benefit both the environment and the farm.”

Funded by Defra and the Environment Agency, the Eden is one of three schemes being set up across the UK to improve water quality and river ecology in line with the EU Water Framework Directive. The £2m project is the first step in a series of DTC initiatives looking to expand into many subject areas and technologies including climate change, ecology and socio-economics.

masterclass for local school students

Tom Bramald

9.3.10
Local school students attended a geomatics masterclass on Saturday 6 March. Students from Ashington, Gosforth, Bedlington and Whickham completed a task to collect and add their own survey data to Google Earth.

The morning session consisted of a workshop about geomatics and then an introduction to levelling. In the afternoon, levelling and GPS were used to collect profile data for Exhibition Park before uploading a series of points and profile charts to Google Earth.

Tom Bramald, who led the workshop, said, "The students have worked really well today. We fit a lot in to just a few hours, it is a very challenging task we set and the results of the students' work were very
impressive."

The students were very positive about the session in their feedback and they all felt more confident about their ability to progress to Higher Education as a result of attending.

constructing excellence north east awards 2010

Tom Bramald

8.3.10
Tom Bramald has been invited to be a judge for the Constructing Excellence North East Awards 2010. Held every year in May, the Awards are a celebration of everything the North East construction industry has to be proud of. Tom will be judging in the Student of the Year; Sustainability; Integration and Collaborative Working; and Project of the Year categories. Constructing Excellence North East is a forum to share best practice and to create a culture and local support network of continuous improvement.

Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research website

Richard Dawson

3.3.10
The University recently approved the formation of a Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research (CESER).

CESER is intended to provide a mechanism to further strengthen our research in Earth Systems Engineering and to act as a focal point for Earth Systems Engineering research across the University, building interdisciplinary collaborations in this recognised area of research excellence. CESER is providing analyses, tools and demonstrations to enable practical responses to the challenges of intensifying global change. We are tackling the complexity of coupled technological, human and natural systems, at a range of spatial and temporal scales. Our research is shaping the management of long term change and associated uncertainties, in particular in river basins, urban areas and nationally. For more information visit the new CESER website which can also be found on the front page of the CeG website.

CeG antarctic field season success

Matthew Burke

3.3.10
A CeG researcher has just returned from Antarctica as part of a project trying to better understand changes in the Antarctic ice sheet. The Antarctic is a remote environment, but has the potential to be a significant contributor to global sea-level rise in a warming world. Currently, the only technique capable of determining ice mass balance for the entire ice sheet is the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. Estimates of ice mass change observed by GRACE are affected by our limited knowledge of mass change deep within Earth’s interior. Fortunately, however, these mass changes also deform the crust, which is measureable by Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements and they can in turn be used to improve GRACE estimates of ice mass change. Thanks to a three year field programme led by CeG researchers, the current uncertainty in these models is one step closer to being constrained. In December 2009 and January 2010, Matt Burke installed nine GPS receivers on bedrock outcrops spread across the data sparse southern Antarctic Peninsula. These instruments will remain in situ for at least three years, recording observations every 15 seconds and enabling the team to measure movement of the Earth’s crust to better than 1 mm/yr accuracy. Following data collection and site maintenance over the following three years, the next step will be to model West Antarctic GIA. This internationally collaborative project is led by Matt King, Phil Moore, Peter Clarke, and colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey, the Universities of Durham, Ottawa and Ohio State, as well as the Delft University of technology, and is funded by the NERC Antarctic Funding Initiative.

international biofuels conference

Jennifer Harrison

10.2.10
Researchers from the Centre for Land Use and Water Resources Research (CLUWRR) attended the 7th International Biofuels Conference in Hotel le Meridien, New Delhi from 11th – 12th February 2010. Dr Jaime Amezaga presented his paper entitled “Biofuels Policy in the European Union”, which was co-authored with Samantha Boyes and Jennifer Harrison, in the first session on International Policy Experiences. The Conference, co-sponsored by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), presented a balanced view of international biofuels and development, and provoked some insightful debate.

The CLUWRR team also used their time in India for a meeting of the EU Aid Cooperation Office funded Re-Impact “Forest Based Bioenergy for Sustainable Development” project with partners from India, China, South Africa, Uganda and Austria. This included a very productive one day stakeholder workshop on biofuel production in the State of Chhattisgarh, with representatives from State Government, Indian Oil Marketing Companies, NGOs, and the State University. Fruitful discussion and plans for further collaboration were promoted by the roundtable format, and the uptake of Re-Impact methodologies for the State was successfully achieved.

Following the successful completion of the project work, Jennifer Harrison and Samantha Boyes joined field excursions to more remote parts of Chhattisgarh State. They visited existing biofuel plantations, electrified and non-electrified villages and took part in meetings with local stakeholders involved in bioenergy production or consumption. This trip concludes the Partners Meetings for the Re-Impact project which draws to a close in September 2010 after a 40 month implementation. Project outputs in the form of assessment methodologies, policy analyses and teaching material will be available via the website and also from Jennifer Harrison.

CeG student runner up in national competition

Simon Heslop

10.2.10
Simon Heslop, a PhD student in the School, came runner-up in the Colas Premium Papers Final held at the George Hotel in Penrith on Monday evening.

The event, hosted by the Northern Branch of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation and sponsored by Colas, brought together regional winners from Northern Ireland, the North East and the Midlands as well as a representative from the Society of Road Safety Auditors.

Simon’s presentation on the ‘Categorisation of drivers in relation to boredom’ stimulated a lively discussion and resulted in the award of a runners-prize. Simon is pictured here with the other finalists, Chris Jackson (current President of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation) and Arthur Thompson from Colas who awarded the prizes. Well done Simon!

success of leaky ponds is now leaking out to other projects

Paul Quinn, Mark Wilkinson

25.1.10
The proactive teams success in the Belford floods project is now being taken up in the other projects as the Journal recently reported...

dirt tells resistance tales

David Graham, Jan Dolfing

22.1.10
Environmental Chemistry: Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Soil are Increasing
Despite measures aimed at curbing antibiotic resistance, a study in Europe suggests that resistance might still be on the rise in the environment (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es901221x). The work provides data spanning nearly 70 years, and it complements public health data from patients.
 
For years, studies have shown that antibiotic resistance is up at hospitals, apparently due to clinical use of antibiotics. But antibiotics are also used in agriculture to increase productivity and prevent disease in livestock. In theory, excessive use of antibiotics could expand reservoirs of resistance in soil microbes. Antibiotic resistance genes naturally exist in soil and sewage microbes, but no long-term studies have been performed to gauge how resistance might have changed since the 1940s, when antibiotic mass production kicked in.
 
Now, environmental engineers David Graham and Jan Dolfing of Newcastle University; molecular ecologist Charles W Knapp , now at the University of Strathclyde; and Phillip Ehlert at Wageningin University in the Netherlands have found a way to delve into that past. “We thought that by extracting DNA from soil archives, we might be able to learn something about the longer term history,” Graham says. In collaboration with TAGA, a soil archive maintained by research institute Alterra at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the team quantified antibiotic resistance genes for five sets of soil samples from across the Netherlands, with one set dating back to 1940.
 
For every drug class the team examined, levels of resistance genes have significantly increased since 1940. In particular, genes that confer resistance to tetra­cycline antibiotics have spiked in recent decades, becoming 15 times more abundant than in the 1970s.
 
The work suggests that resistance research should be broadened to include environmental reservoirs so that resistance can be more efficiently mitigated in the future, Graham says. This study was relatively local, he notes, but “we suspect similar patterns also are occurring in soils from other locations around the world.”
 
“In retrospect, we should have anticipated the environmental outcome that this study documents,” says Shahriar Mobashery , who studies antibiotic resistance at the University of Notre Dame.

British Hydrological Society: third international symposium

Claire Walsh

18.1.10
Role of Hydrology in Managing Consequences of a Changing Global Environment, 19-23 July 2010, Newcastle University

Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2010
Submit your abstract via: www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/bhs2010

Every six years the British Hydrological Society hosts an International Symposium. The  International Symposium aims to bring together hydrologists from the UK and overseas during a week-long conference to discuss relevant issues and challenges facing hydrology and related disciplines.
 
All papers accepted for oral presentation will be included in Proceedings made available to delegates at the Conference. Selected papers will form a Special Issue of the British Hydrological Society/Nordic Association for Hydrology official journal – Hydrology Research.

Abstracts are invited to the following sessions:
 
Climate Change and Hydrological Risk
Flood Risk Management
Groundwater Hydrology for a Changing Environment
Hydroecology and Ecohydrology
Hydrological Prediction, Forecasting and Uncertainty
Hydrological Processes
Hydrology and the Community
Integrated Catchment Science
Remote Sensing, Hydrometry and Data Assimilation
Water Resources Management
 
For further information about the Conference, details of fees, exhibition opportunities and conference fellowships please visit the website:
http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/bhs2010