Keeping back the floods

Planet EarthWinter 2016-17

Is climate change causing more UK floods? p5

Groundwater: the threat beneath our feet p8

Have we opened the floodgates on antimicrobial resistance? p16

Get to know your fluvial from your pluvial!

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EditorialWelcome to the winter issue of Planet Earth. In this issue we’ve focussed on some of the key questions that keep coming up around flooding in the UK.

We spoke to experts at the NERC British Geological Survey on the rising problem of groundwater and efforts to understand and manage it. We also cover a new report on last winter’s flooding and ask ‘Is climate change making it worse?’

Researchers bring us up to date on whether natural flood management techniques are the future and talk about an ambitious project to equip the UK to deal with coastal erosion. For those

of you who want to know your fluvial from your pluvial, we’ve got a great pull-out poster to help you tell the difference.

Meanwhile, have you ever wondered what heavy rainfall might do to our sewers? Read about the drug-resistant bacteria that could make you think twice before swimming in the sea after a storm. Once you’ve caught up with flood research, see an amazing project in Ethiopia using roads to manage water that’s already benefitted more than a million people.

Round off with tales of the coral that could give us a detailed history of climate change and of the map of what exactly lies beneath the UK.

African swamp locks in 30 billion tonnes of carbonA vast peatland in the Congo Basin has been mapped for the first time, revealing it to be the largest in the tropics.

Because of their remote location, the peatlands in the Congo Basin are relatively undisturbed. But they could face threats from drainage for agricultural plantations, particularly for palm oil, as is happening in Indonesia.

If peatlands dry out, either through changes in land use such as drainage for agriculture or reduced rainfall, further decomposition resumes, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Peat is a wetland soil made from part-decomposed plant debris, more commonly found in cool environments such as parts of Scotland and Ireland. Healthy peatlands act as carbon sinks, removing carbon from the atmosphere through plant growth. The peat’s waterlogged environment prevents it from breaking down further, locking up carbon. Year-round waterlogging is needed for peat to form in the tropics.

The Cuvette Centrale peatlands in the central Congo Basin, which we didn’t know existed five years ago, cover

145,500km2 – an area larger than England. They lock in 30 billion tonnes of carbon, making the region one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth.

Professor Simon Lewis, University of Leeds, said: “These peatlands hold about 20 years of the fossil fuel emissions of the United States of America. If the Congo Basin peatland complex was to

be destroyed, this would release billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.”

Tropical peatlands across the islands of Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea have suffered damage or loss to about 94,000km2 of peatland – mostly by forest fires or being drained for agricultural use over recent decades.

A vast peatland in the Congo Basin has been mapped for the first time, revealing it to be the largest in the tropics. Simon Lewis, University of Leeds

Front cover: Floodwater is pumped into the River Parrett at the Saltmoor Pumping Station near Burrowbridge in Somerset.© Crown Copyright 2014 LA(Phot) Rhys O'Leary www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/

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Impact of living in pollution blighted megacities to be probedScientists are examining the health effects of air pollution blighting Beijing in a major new international study.

Chinese and UK scientists will use cutting-edge technology, including personal pollution monitors for the first time, to gain a wider picture of what living in highly-polluted air conditions does to people’s health.

Air pollution is a leading cause of disease in China with high numbers of children with asthma and other respiratory illnesses and high risks of heart disease, strokes, cancer and early death.

The Chinese government has made moves to reduce pollution, but 2017 has already seen cities blanketed in smog and authorities cancelling flights, shutting highways and imposing emergency factory closures.

The new research will track 120 people in the centre of Beijing and 120 residents of a small village, Pinggu, north-east of the city, to compare urban and rural areas.

Pollution measurements and health assessments will be made in summer and winter when air quality deteriorates as demand for heating, mainly supplied by coal-fired plants, soars.

Each person will be tracked for a week, with a monitor measuring exposure to pollutants, and a GPS recording whether they are at home or work, walking, cycling or in a vehicle.

Professor Frank Kelly of King’s College London, one of the lead researchers, said: “The findings of this study can have an immediate impact on both the strategies for reducing air pollution levels and exposures, and for other public health and clinical approaches to alleviate its impact upon health.”

The study is part of a wider programme of five NERC/MRC/NSFC-funded projects due to run until 2018. Read the abstract here: bit.ly/pollutedmegacities

How does living in a polluted city affect your health?

Joann Pittman Flickr

Birds and butterflies struggle with climate changeSome of Britain’s much-loved birds and butterflies could become extinct in areas where there is not enough natural habitat to allow them to adapt to warming temperatures.

Scientists looked at data obtained between 1964 and 2009 from more than 600 monitoring sites around England to find out how birds and butterflies reorganised themselves in response to climate change.

They found that when birds and butterflies lost parts of their habitats, the effects of climate change were worse. They also concluded that larger declines were caused in birds and butterflies that are used to cold temperatures and prevented increases in birds adapted to warm weather.

Dr Tom Oliver, who led the research at the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), said: “Although butterflies are coping much better, in both cases a lack of natural habitat in our landscapes is putting species used to colder climates between a rock and a hard place by limiting their ability to find resources and survive.”

Dr David Roy, Head of the Biological Records Centre at CEH, said: “There is increasing evidence of the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Our wildlife is more resilient to negative effects of climate change if larger and better connected natural areas are available.”

Read more at www.ceh.ac.uk

Aleksey G

nilenkov/Flickr

2 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

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Halley Research Station Antarctica to close for winterNERC and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have decided not to winter at Halley VI Research Station for safety reasons. The station, which is located on the floating Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, will shut down between March and November 2017. Changes to the ice, particularly the growth of a new crack, presents a complex glaciological picture that means BAS scientists are unable to predict with certainty what will happen to the ice shelf during the forthcoming Antarctic winter. As a precautionary measure BAS will remove its people before the Antarctic winter begins.

For more info visit www.bas.ac.ukHalley IV. Ant Dubber

2016 was the world’s hottest year on recordEarth’s 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Met Office.

Not only was last year the hottest on record, it was the third year in a row to break that record. This continues a long-term warming trend, according to analyses by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

Because weather station locations and measurement practices change over time, there are uncertainties in the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature differences. However, even taking this into account, NASA estimates 2016 was the warmest year with greater than 95 per cent certainty.

“We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear”, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the institute.

The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 1.1°C since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and

other human-made emissions into the atmosphere.

Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months that make up the year – from January through to September, with the exception of June – were the warmest on record for those respective months.

Phenomena such as El Niño or La Niña,

which warm or cool the upper tropical Pacific Ocean and cause corresponding variations in global wind and weather patterns, contribute to short-term variations in global average temperature. A warming El Niño event was in effect for most of 2015 and the first third of 2016. Researchers estimate the direct impact of the natural El Niño warming in the tropical Pacific increased the annual global temperature anomaly for 2016 by 0.12°C.

Dr Ed Hawkins’ climate spirals show how temperatures have steadily increased.

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Changing Arctic ecosystems could have far-reaching implications for the UK environment and economy. NASA/Kathryn Hansen

Ice melt impact on Arctic OceanA major UK research programme will investigate the impact of diminishing sea ice on the fragile marine environment of the Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic is the fastest-changing environment on the planet, supporting complex yet still poorly-understood ecosystems. Rising global temperatures have caused drastic thinning and decline in the extent of the Arctic summer sea ice. Some scientists have predicted an ice-free summer in the Arctic Ocean within a few decades.

We do not yet know exactly how this will affect the creatures, plants and habitats of the Arctic Ocean – but it is clear that changing these diverse marine ecosystems could have far-reaching implications for the UK environment and economy. This could include influencing UK climate, migratory species and having a knock-on impact on industries such as fisheries and tourism.

Scientists will start work on research projects on how life in the Arctic Ocean is coping with dramatic changes – including ocean acidification and pollution as well as sea-ice loss – by looking at key species in the food webs such as small creatures essential to the diet of whales and commercially-important

fish, studying the ocean floor and measuring the health and resilience of the environment. Understanding how marine life is responding today will help scientists predict future changes.

Funded under NERC’s Changing Arctic Ocean; Implications for Marine Biology and Biogeochemistry research programme, 16 UK research institutions will take part in four research projects starting in February 2017.

The projects include research into how changes in sea-ice cover are affecting the productivity of the Arctic and, therefore, its ability to support marine life, and looking into past and future changes in the Arctic ecosystem by examining both the base of the food chain – marine phytoplankton – and key predators at the top – harp and ringed seal.

Other researchers will examine how the survival capacity of Calanus, a small shrimp-like animal, will be affected by changes to its food environment caused by changes in the Arctic Ocean, and examine how changing sea ice conditions impact biological communities on the Arctic Ocean’s sea floor.

Read the full abstracts of each project here: bit.ly/GOTWchangingarctic

Shellfish production surges and marine ecosystems recover The UK has seen £908m in positive net impacts as a result of a ban on anti-fouling chemicals. The bans were based on evidence produced by NERC researchers into the effects of chemicals such as tributyltin on shellfish. The UK shellfish industry and its supply chain saw a £331m benefit in the same period and the UK saw £718m in benefits such as value for anglers and divers. The NERC-commissioned analysis by Deloitte suggests that between £172.5m and £236.0m of these benefits is thanks directly to NERC-funded science.

Read more bit.ly/shellfishboost

£9m for research to boost UK local economiesNERC has funded two highly ambitious projects that will help two UK regions benefit from its world-class environmental science research.

The projects are funded under a new NERC scheme, the Environmental Science Impact Programme, which aims to translate excellent NERC-funded research into actions or policies that improve performance, resilience and sustainability, and support local growth.

The first two projects are led by University of Exeter and the University of Leeds.

Find out more at bit.ly/9mresearchforlocal

4 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

Keeping back the floods

Flood waters in Dumfries.

Winter 2015-16 floods among worst in 100 yearsA new scientific review of the winter floods of 2015-16 confirms that the event was one of the most extreme and severe hydrological events in a century.

T he study, carried out by scientists from NERC’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) in collaboration with the British

Hydrological Society recognises that the winter 2015/2016 episode ranks alongside the floods of 1947 as one of the two largest flood events of the last 100 years at least.

The appraisal brings together both river flow and meteorological data in an analysis of the events that led to extensive river flooding in northern England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of Wales over a three-month period.

Storm Desmond alone caused an estimated insurance bill of more than £1.3b when it struck on the 5th and 6th December last year and 16,000 properties in England were flooded in three months.

Cumbrian resident Dr Ed Henderson, a co-author of the review from the British Hydrological Society,

said: “The effects of the floods are personal. Thousands of Cumbrians, like people in other flood-affected parts of the country, have seen their lives upturned. Many have experienced life-changing financial losses and incredible stress. Speaking with flood victims, the words that come out are despair, fear and anxiety – fear of flooding again and the anxiety of an approaching winter. Floods don't just take your home, the place where you should feel safe, they often take your future as well.”

Lead author Terry Marsh, from CEH, said: “At a national scale the winter floods of 2015/16 were the most extreme on record. The November to January period was the wettest three-month sequence in the UK rainfall series – which begins in 1910. The associated flooding was both extensive and repetitive, and total river outflows from Great Britain following the passage of Storm Desmond in December exceeded the previous maximum by a substantial margin.”

Dr Nick Reynard, the CEH lead for natural hazards research, said: “Our new review clearly outlines the events of the last winter as one of the most severe episodes of flooding to hit the UK in the last 100 years. Communities across the country were devastated. In response we are working hard with central government to improve flood estimation, and examine how potential mitigation measures, such as natural flood management, can help us reduce the impact of flooding in future.”

The review highlights:• December 2015 was the wettest and, on

average, the warmest on record in the UK, in records going back to 1910.

• The highest ever recorded rainfall in the UK was measured when 341.4 mm of rain fell at Honister Pass in the Lake District in the 24 hours leading up to 6pm on 5 December 2015.

• Record peak flows occurred at the rivers Eden, Tyne and Lune in England of around 1,700 cubic metres per second.

16,000 properties in England were flooded in three months

istockphoto

Download the full report The Winter Floods of 2015-16 in the UK at www.ceh.ac.uk

Read Economic and Social Research Council funded research on flood recovery bit.ly/ESRCpreparingforfloods

Flooding in York. “A warmer world mmeans more intense rainfall.” ha

Is climate change causing more UK floods?Nick Reynard, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology’s (CEH) science area lead for natural hazards, reports.

R ecently, the UK has experienced some particularly extreme flooding. The 2007 inland flooding affected over 55,000 homes and businesses and was the worst we’d seen in 60 years. The winter of 2013-14 was

the wettest winter on record for the UK, and between November 2015 and January 2016 we had the most ever rain for that period, causing some of the most extreme and severe floods in 100 years. December 2015 was the wettest and, on average, the warmest on record in the UK, in records going back to 1910.

The UK has become significantly warmer over the last few decades and we know that this is because of emissions from human activities. We also know that a warmer world means more intense rainfall because, put simply, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.

istockphoto

But from there it gets complicated. Increases in the amount of rainfall and its intensity do not always lead to an equivalent increase in flooding. That makes this question extremely difficult to answer because looking back over decades’ worth of data on rainfall and river flow, we can’t neatly correlate increased rainfall with increased flooding. One reason for that is one area may be able to cope better with rainfall increases than another: perhaps because of its soil, its steepness or its size.

Our data does show that, aside from climate change, the UK has always experienced clusters of flooding events in certain periods. But it also shows that warmer temperatures might be making these periods more likely and more severe.

Increases in the amount of rainfall and its intensity do not always lead to an equivalent increase in flooding.

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Keeping back the floods

We undertook extensive work with colleagues at Oxford University to see whether we could detect man-made climate change behind recent events. We looked at the 2000 and 2014 floods in several river catchments across Britain. For

ost of these we could detect that climate change d made this flooding more likely. Although it was

clear in most cases, in some areas it wasn’t. So we plan to look at other recent flood events to find out why certain parts of a river respond differently from others.

At CEH we’re developing new ways of simulating how a complex range of factors influence flooding. We have over 40 years’ experience in developing a range of data products, tools and computer models for estimating flood frequency across river networks. Our solutions already underpin effective flood protection of houses, businesses and critical infrastructure such as transport networks, bridges, energy and water supply systems. As both climate and hydrological science evolves over the next few years, perhaps we will be able to provide a more definitive answer on this soon.

Email: nsr@ceh.ac.uk

Attribution of Autumn/Winter 2000 flood risk in England to anthropogenic climate change: A catchment-based study.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2011.06.006

Human influence on climate in the 2014 Southern England winter floods and their impacts

DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2927

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Managing flooding by working with

conwallpeo

naturechabe be f

As less

The government announced £15m for natural flood management initiatives in the 2016 Autumn Statement. To tell us more about what these methods are, we spoke to Professor Louise Bracken at Durham University, Dr Paul Quinn at Newcastle University and their colleagues from the Environment Agency – Michael Norbury and Alex Nicholson.

Over five million UK properties are currently at risk of flooding, according to the Environment Agency. Traditional, large

crete and steel flood defences such as flood s, flood gates and dams reduce flood risk where ple live. But to meet the challenges of climate nge and changes in land use, these may only ever part of a solution. In some areas they might not easible at all.

part of the range of measures we can use to en or delay flood risk to property downstream,

natural flood management (NFM) initiatives can reduce the height of flood waters at their peak. They can also help improve water quality.

But rather than ‘defending’ towns where floodwater might hit, NFM is about holding water further upstream and in the landscape. These measures are built in numerous locations along the river, its catchment area and the surrounding landscape. This slows the release of water down and into the river, giving people more time to prepare and helping keep its highest level, or ‘peak flow’, manageable as it flows towards places where people live.

NFM measures can also help improve water quality and reduce erosion by protecting and restoring riverbanks.

Most measures can be built using locally-sourced, natural materials, which also helps to reduce their carbon footprint and helps wildlife habitats to thrive. NFM measures will need replacing more

Leaky damsA dam made of wood or other natural material catches water flowing overland, later releasing it slowly into the river. The leaky dam in Belford, Northumberland can hold approximately 750m3.

Engineered Log Jams (ELJs)Secured tree trunks encased in living saplings such as willow thickets laid across the top of a river and floodplain. ELJs force high flows of water onto floodplains, reducing the amount of water flowing down the river and temporarily holding it back. The saplings can also filter out pollutants such as phosphate that may come from sewage and farming runoff.

Offline pondsA series of

connected ponds at field

margins and the river edge to

slow down surface water running into

the river.

Online ponds Closer to the river, ‘online’ ponds allow a river to overflow its banks in a controlled way via shallow inlets allowing high flows to spill into the pond.

Keeping back the floods

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Reconnecting old channels and oxbow lakes Over centuries, the courses of many rivers have been straightened or changed to save space. By reconnecting old

channels to a river’s present

route, high flows can

spill into them.

Ditch barriers Barriers in ditches or drains at field boundaries allow water to flow in normal conditions, but collect higher water levels behind them during floods. They can be built using local materials such as willow.

Leaky dams in IndiaNatural water management techniques can also be used to protect stocks of water in areas of low rainfall. For example, a type of leaky dam called a johad is a traditional tool for water management in India that stops the flow of water downhill, storing it for year-round use. Indian campaigner Rajendra Singh spearheaded efforts to reintroduce johads and Rajasthan State now has 1,500 of them. Singh won the Stockholm Water Prize for bringing water to 1,000 villages.

Keeping back the floods

Images: Mark Wilkinson, Michael Norbury, Mini Jain.

regularly than structures made of concrete or steel but using local materials, such as willow, also means that these measures are fairly low cost.

Slowing the flowNFM is about all the measures that can slow a raindrop down as soon it falls from the sky and starts to travel across the land. Here, we outline just a few of them. In the countryside techniques include managing the land and in towns it can mean using permeable materials for paving.

There are a huge range of factors to take into account and each measure must be tailored to the landscape where it’s being used. Traditional defences may be the best option in certain places but often a combination will be appropriate. Since 2004, 154 different NFM initiatives have been introduced in the UK. But given that these have mainly been used in smaller river areas, we don’t yet have enough data to predict how effective they will be in any given catchment. To improve our understanding, NERC has launched a four-year, £4m programme to find out more about their suitability and effectiveness for a range of flood risk scenarios.

These authors have been involved in various natural flood management initiatives, including some part-funded by NERC, and Paul recently served as special advisor to the government’s Future Flood Prevention Inquiry. See a map of UK NFM techniques in practice at http://bit.ly/UKNFMmap and find out more about johads here www.theflowpartnership.org

Email: Michael.Norbury@environment-agency.gov.uk.

The Belford Burn catchment in Northumberland covers fewer than

three square miles but has caused the town of Belford a long history of flooding. In July 1997, the East Coast Mainline was

temporarily shut down when the tracks around Belford Burn flooded. Paul Quinn’s team and the

Environment Agency used a range of NFM techniques in 45 locations around the river so the catchment could hold an additional 12,000m3 of water in the

landscape – that’s the size of five Olympic-sized swimming

pools.

Natural flood management in action

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Keeping back the floods

Groundwater: the threat beneath our feet

Flooding on the Somerset levels lasted many months after winter 2013/14. istockphoto

Groundwater is the ultimate invisible asset. Originating in rain and snowfall that works its way down into soil and rock, it supports key ecosystems and meets the water needs of millions. But it can also pose a potential flood risk – Dr Barry Hague went to speak to researchers at NERC’s British Geological Survey (BGS) about a lurking threat that experts are hard at work understanding and confronting.

Gaining ground on flood eventsDavid Macdonald, a senior hydrogeologist at BGS Wallingford, is part of a team shedding fresh light on groundwater flooding – and has come uncomfortably close to enduring the extreme distress this type of flooding can cause.

Back in the 1990s, David Macdonald bought a house in Oxford. Unexpectedly, his decision provided first-hand experience of what, to that point, had been a little-studied phenomenon in the UK but was destined to become a key focus of his career.

“Over the 20 years we’ve lived there, we’ve suffered six episodes of groundwater flooding,” David says. “Luckily, the water hasn’t broken into the ground-floor rooms. But it’s submerged the garden, got under the floorboards and affected the electrics and sewer system. On the upside, it’s given me a close-up view of groundwater’s role in flood events and direct insight into the difficulty of unpicking different factors that play a part in them.”

In fact, groundwater flooding – which occurs when the water table rises past ground level or begins to affect basements, cellars and subsurface infrastructure – remained largely off UK research’s radar until the exceptionally wet winter of 2000-01. This resulted in floods causing around £1bn of damage, with the culprits identified as an ‘unholy trinity’ of rainfall-related surface water flooding, river flooding and groundwater flooding. But it did deliver the jolt to develop a better understanding of groundwater flooding, which would be crucial to addressing this threat.

“Our knowledge has come a long way in the last 15 years,” says David, “but we’re not there yet. There’s still plenty to do in terms of collecting data, quantifying risk, improving forecasts and raising awareness of the potential danger to homes, businesses, communities and critical transport and other infrastructure.”

Rising concern? The key to understanding groundwater flooding is

istockphoto

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Keeping back the floods

to build up a bank of data and observations that can provide a bedrock of information for investigation and interpretation. From a standing start, real progress has been made and BGS has been heavily involved, pinpointing geological conditions where groundwater flooding could occur, casting light on how water-bearing rocks respond to extreme weather and examining events such as the severe floods of winter 2013-14.

“That winter,” David says, “water companies in Southern Britain spent an estimated £80m dealing with the effects of groundwater-flooded sewers. Unlike river flooding, groundwater floods can take months, rather than weeks, to disappear in the wake of a major flood event. It’s vital to keep that in mind when managing a flood.”

Somewhere in the region of 200,000 homes could be susceptible to groundwater flooding in England alone, with hotspots including towns and villages built on the chalk bedrock underlying much of the south and east of the UK, and the floodplains of major rivers such as the Thames. David adds a cautionary note though: “It’s still too early to say whether the risk of groundwater flooding is ramping up. Nor are we certain what the impact of climate change or changing land-use patterns may be. A priority for the research community is not just to gather more data but also to bring our knowledge together into unified prediction and simulation tools and avoid looking at different types of flooding in isolation.”

Thirst for knowledge Groundwater flooding is a complex issue and this complexity has many dimensions. Partly it depends on the interrelation between different forms of flooding, partly on the way groundwater interacts with tunnels, sewers and other subsurface infrastructure and partly on changes in the amount of groundwater taken for industrial use or public water supply.

Ultimately, the challenge for the UK is to identify threats and make sure society becomes more resilient to them, while still protecting the environment. That means both acquiring more knowledge about groundwater flooding and then making it available to those who need it.

“There’s a growing thirst for information. People who are buying properties want to know more about risk levels, likely sources of problems and how they can flood-proof basements, for instance. The national maps we have produced of groundwater flood potential are one way we help meet that demand.

“People want certainty, even though it’s simply impossible to be definite when it comes to flooding predictions. But the more we can take our understanding down to very local scale, the better we’ll be able to inform targeted interventions that help protect lives and livelihoods.”

David Macdonald at home in Oxford, experiencing groundwater flooding at first hand.

Flooding in Hampshire, February 2014.

Around 200,000 homes could be susceptible to groundwater flooding in England alone.

istockphoto

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Keeping back the floods

Q&A: A Winter’s TaleThe winter of 2013-14 saw the UK battered by its stormiest spell of weather for two decades, unleashing devastating floods in the South West, the Thames Valley and other parts of the country. Professor Rob Ward, Director of Science: Groundwater at the British Geological Survey (BGS), found himself at the epicentre of the response to the emergency.

What made that particular winter so problematic from a flooding perspective?

The winter of 2013-14 was extremely wet as a result of the remorseless chain of Atlantic weather systems that struck us from mid-December 2013. With rainfall in December at 154 per cent of the average for the month, groundwater levels, which had only just recovered to normal levels from a drought in 2012, started to rise rapidly. Then we had the wettest January on record for southern England. As a result, groundwater levels kept rising to reach historic highs in late February as soils and rocks became saturated. Springs that had been dormant throughout living memory burst back to life. Water began to collect in fields, streets and basements. The overall picture was just as serious, with coastal, river and rain-related surface water flooding along with groundwater flooding causing severe disruption to transport networks, power supplies and thousands of lives.

When did you realise we were in the grip of a genuine emergency?

At BGS, we maintain an independent overview of groundwater conditions across the UK and make the relevant information publicly available. We use sophisticated computer models to monitor groundwater resources and associated flood threats. Around Christmas 2013 – when the flooding problems affecting the Somerset Levels were starting to hit the headlines – it became clear that groundwater levels were increasing significantly and could potentially deepen the crisis in many parts of the country if the rain didn’t relent.

You were invited to Downing Street to provide urgent input to the response effort. What happened exactly?

I was driving home one evening at the beginning of February when the office of Sir Mark Walport, the government Chief Scientific Adviser, called to invite me to attend an emergency meeting at 10 Downing Street. It would bring together the Met Office, the Environment Agency and Defra, plus academics and engineering specialists including US experts who’d dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

At the meeting, a key focus was on the floods in the Somerset Levels and the potential effectiveness of options such as digging trenches to encourage

infiltration into the ground.

Southern England was about to experience a sustained period of rainfall. I highlighted the likelihood that this would lead to groundwater flooding, which did indeed occur in several parts of the country and lasted right through to May. As well as homes and communities, it posed a severe threat to infrastructure such as water treatment works and power stations which house a lot of equipment below ground.

What was the outcome of the meeting?

A Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) was established to support briefings at the Cabinet Office and we provided updates and forecasts that could aid decisions on where the emergency services should target their resources. At BGS, it was a real team effort to rapidly analyse data and prepare recommendations I could take to those meetings. Deadlines were tight and our work also had to cover the appearance of sinkholes and the potential for landslides to threaten roads and railways.

What were some of the key takeaways from the whole process?

One conclusion from SAGE was that pumping out basements flooded by groundwater may not be the best use of first responders’ time and resources, as they’d often be called back a few hours later when the water had returned. A better strategy could be to leave the basement flooded. The damage would already have been done and the basement would act as a water store, reducing the strain on the drains if the water were pumped elsewhere.

Major groundwater flooding events aren’t very common in the UK. That winter enabled BGS to sharpen our understanding of triggers and impacts and improve our ability to forecast them.

It may not be possible to prevent groundwater flooding but that dreadful, dramatic, unforgettable winter definitely helped put the UK on a stronger footing to respond to similar emergencies in future.

www.bgs.ac.uk

@BGSGroundwater

David Macdonalddmjm@bgs.ac.uk

Professor Rob Wardrswa@bgs.ac.uk

Num

ber 10, Flickr

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Flash Flood!Environmental science in virtual reality

If you came to last October’s Into the blue science showcase in Manchester you may have seen

me and my colleagues brandishing headsets and offering to immerse

you in a dangerous virtual river valley with our game Flash Flood!

Watch as the rain gets heavier and the water begins to rise, before a flash flood

bulldozes its way down the valley, destroying everything in its path.

Then see the damage it’s left in its tracks: damage the valley will take decades to recover from.

This is Thinhope Burn, Northumberland, which flooded on 17 July 2007. This small valley was struck by the type of thunderstorm we get on hot

summer days and although it only affected a small area for a few hours, it was enough to cause the sides of the valley to slide into the river. Mud,

stones, rocks and plants collected with the flood water and thundered down the valley like a wall of water – moving rocks and uprooting trees in what we call a flood bore.

The NERC Flooding from Intense Rainfall (FFIR) programme commissioned the game to help us share our research. FFIR has brought together scientists from universities across the UK, working with partners like the MetOffice and the Environment Agency, to improve our ability to forecast the type of storm event shown in Flash Flood! We know the conditions they form in tend to be localised and can last for as little as a few minutes. However, their small

area and their short lifespan make it nearly impossible to forecast exactly where and when they might happen.

I started SeriousGeoGames in 2014 to design games specifically for events like Into the blue. Once you have someone sitting down in

the headset, waving their head around, you quickly draw a crowd. Over a thousand people tried the game at Into the blue and we were chuffed to come third in a vote of the public’s favourite exhibit. It’s very rewarding to see just how much people enjoy

it, young and old.

Each of our games has a serious side. Each is built using data and tools drawn from our research using measurements from a real valley and is based on real floods. We hope people will engage with the flood risk

in their own areas, and use this information to be better prepared.

Dr Chris Skinner started SeriousGeoGames to use gaming to communicate research from the NERC Flooding from Intense Rainfall programme.

Find out more at www.seriousgeogames.wordpress.com and on Twitter @seriousgeogames.

Keeping back the floods

PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17 15

Screenshot from Flash Flood! SeriousGeoGames

Scientists have developed a new game that lets you experience a flash flood. istockphoto

16 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

Are strong currents the only risk to beachgoers posed by storms?

Have we opened the floodgates on antimicrobial resistance?

During heavy rains, ‘combined sewage overflows’ are sometimes used to prevent our homes from flooding by diverting excess sewage into rivers and the sea. That means untreated sewage can end up in the waters around the coast and it’s why the usual advice is: ‘Don’t swim in the sea after heavy rainfall.’ Dr William Gaze at the University of Exeter explains how these overflows could cause us to come into contact with drug-resistant bacteria in the environment.

Keeping back the floods

C hief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies described antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as one of the greatest threats to mankind,

comparing it to climate change. Whilst those issues may not appear to be linked, climate change is expected to cause increased flooding which may in turn lead to more AMR bacteria in the environment.

AMR bacteria are often found in sewage because many live in our guts. They don’t usually make us ill if they stay in the gut – problems tend to arise if they enter our bloodstream or urinary tract. For example, drug-resistant E. coli cause around 5,000 deaths from blood-borne infections in the UK each year but unlike MRSA which we tend to catch in hospitals, E. coli infections often happen in the community.

In a recent project, Dr Anne Leonard, a member of my research group, looked at how often people were exposed to E. coli resistant to the frontline antibiotic, cefotaxime. She estimated that, in total, recreational coastal water use meant people were exposed to it over six million times each year in England and Wales.

Drug-resistant bacteria can share the genes that protect them from antibiotics with other bacteria meaning that resistance can spread within a bacterial population very quickly. As well as AMR bacteria themselves, could residues of antibiotics that enter the environment from farmland and sewage be driving more bacteria to become

PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17 17

What is AMR?Sometimes, when microbes like

bacteria and viruses are exposed

to antimicrobials like antibiotics

and cleaning products they change

so that the antimicrobials can no

longer kill them. These microbes

that develop antimicrobial resistance

are sometimes called ‘superbugs’. In

2016, the Review on Antimicrobial

Resistance warned that, if left

unchecked, antimicrobial resistance

could cause 10 million deaths a year

around the globe by 2050.

resistant so they can protect themselves? I’m working on projects with BBSRC and AstraZeneca, and on a NERC-led grant co-ordinated by Dr Andrew Singer from the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, to look at this.

In 2014, Professor Elizabeth Wellington, University of Warwick, and I led research that showed some drug-resistant bacteria are much more common downstream of a sewage works than upstream. In a project funded by NERC, the three of us are now trying to find out what’s causing the increased levels of AMR we see within a river catchment.

At the moment it looks like multiple factors could be driving increased levels of resistance but they may have very different solutions. We want to know if we should be focusing on any of them in particular over the others.

To find out more, Andrew is leading experiments in rivers using systems called flumes. The flumes make a ‘river within the river’, giving us a controlled area we can test but that is still as close to the natural environment as possible. In different channels of the flume we can change variables such as how much sewage enters the system or what antibiotics flow through.

Currently, we just don't have the wide body of research we’d need to fully inform how policy should tackle antimicrobial resistance in the environment. We’ve had some interesting results and the presence of drug-resistant bacteria is likely to be extremely important. Although we can't yet prove that more antibiotic resistance in the environment will mean more drug-resistant infections, I think we’re at the point where it looks likely that resistant bacteria in the environment are

a part of the problem so we must start working with all stakeholders if we are to slow or reverse it.

We need more studies to be conducted before we can understand the number of AMR infections resulting from environmental exposure and how evolution of AMR in the environment contributes to resistance we see in the clinic. However, extreme rainfall and flooding are likely to increase human exposure to AMR bacteria in the environment.

NERC funded Dr Gaze, Dr Singer and Professor Wellington under the 'Environmental Microbiology and Human Health' programme and the 'Antimicrobial resistance in the real world' call which NERC is leading as part of a antimicrobial resistance initiative across the research councils – see www.mrc.ac.uk/amrcrosscouncil. Projects funded through the scheme are working to make sure we understand antimicrobial resistance completely so we can tackle it effectively.

www.nerc.ac.uk/research/funded/programmes/amr/

Keeping back the floods

Excess sewage gets diverted into rivers and the sea to prevent flooding from heavy rains. istockphoto

18 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

Keeping back the floods

On the edge: Suffolk homes by the shoreline. Dr Helene Burningham, UCL

A view on the coastFrequently linked to an increased threat from flooding, coastal erosion was widespread in the 20th century. Professor Robert Nicholls of the University of Southampton and Professor Jon French of University College London explain how the iCOASST project is helping to reveal what the next hundred years could hold.

F amous for its red-and-white striped lighthouse, Happisburgh sits on the Norfolk coast, a stone’s throw from the North Sea. But that

wasn’t always the case. Only relentless erosion over centuries gave the village its coastal character – leaving the community anxiously wondering what fate may await it. This is equally true of other places around the UK, with coastal erosion expected to accelerate and become even more pervasive due to climate change and rising sea levels.

Erosion is a very real, very immediate hazard for people and property in many coastal areas. As well as causing the coastline to retreat, it means it’s more likely that natural and manmade defences will fail during storms, increasing the risk of flooding as the sea makes inroads. The risk of tidal flooding – where high tides are exacerbated by storms – is widespread along open coasts. It’s especially an issue in estuaries, which rely partly on interactions between tide, surge and the shape of the land (its morphology) to control extreme surges.

Currently, we can predict erosion and flooding during specific extreme storms with some skill, but as we look further into the future this capacity diminishes. This stems largely from our inability to predict changes in the shape of coasts and estuaries over decades to centuries. It was precisely this knowledge gap that integrating COAstal Sediment SysTems (iCOASST) set out to fill.

Happisburgh was once some distance from the sea, parted from the coast by the parish of Whimpwell, long since eroded away. istockphoto

PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17 19

Keeping back the floods

Shapes to comeThe iCOASST consortium is pinpointing the best way of predicting changes to our coasts. This is quite a challenge, not least because erosion of a beach or other natural feature is influenced by its interaction with the features next to it like cliffs, saltmarshes and tidal deltas, while human interventions provide another complicating factor.

Ultimately, iCOASST’s aim is to inform long-term decision making in fields such as shoreline management to help protect and reassure coastal communities. Through a suite of co-ordinated iCOASST projects and components, we’ll gain an unprecedentedly comprehensive understanding of coastal evolution. One of our ultimate goals is to be able to explore the full effects of climate and sea-level change, and the wide range of coastal management options, with large simulations.

A case of two coastlinesWe have tested the iCOASST approach with a pair of real-life case studies at Liverpool Bay and the Suffolk coast. By involving ongoing and close engagement with stakeholders in both locations, we’ve been able to evaluate not only the realism of our results but also their relevance and usefulness.

Two key ingredients underpinned the case studies: data and engagement. We have benefited hugely from the coastal monitoring data in the public domain that’s increasingly becoming available – for example through the Channel Coastal Observatory. All interested stakeholders – including the general public, environmental groups and local authorities – were able to bring valuable knowledge to strengthen iCOASST. Using this input to help structure a problem and formulate an agreed approach proved vastly superior to ‘consulting’

stakeholders on findings generated by a process devised solely by ‘experts’.

In Suffolk, workshops with stakeholders captured valuable local knowledge that made us re-assess the way that beach sediments are carried along the shore. This actually challenged our previous assumption that sand and gravel were transported southwards more or less continuously. That prompted further analysis that revealed numerous instances of sediment reversing direction. That knowledge is crucial to our ability to forecast the shape of the local coastline in coming decades. And being able to do that is essential for us to be able to devise strategies that can protect coastal communities, businesses and infrastructure.

Initial results from the Liverpool Bay case study underlined the importance of how sediment moves between the open coast and the Ribble Estuary. The simulation found that plans to realign parts of the Ribble coastline to their original shape before the area was reclaimed from the sea could actually cause serious erosion problems if conducted rapidly and on a large scale.

With iCOASST we’re equipping the UK to respond to the challenge of coastal erosion through new methods, new models, new insights into what the UK coastline could look like in future and the processes that will shape it. That way we’ll be able to respond practically and with much more confidence over the next hundred years and beyond.

The iCOASST consortium of UK universities, research laboratories and engineering consultants is funded by NERC and partnered by the Environment Agency. For more on iCOASST, its partners and its results, visit: www.channelcoast.org/iCOASST/introduction/

Public workshops captured valuable local knowledge that made researchers re-assess.

istockphoto

20 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

istockphoto

On the road to resilience in EthiopiaIt’s time to rethink roads. In the vital fields of flood prevention and water supply, they offer incredible potential to enhance and enrich the lives of some of the world’s poorest people. Dr Frank van Steenbergen is helping to drive this remarkable revolution.

Development

Heading north from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, you need to travel over 400 miles along Highway 1 to reach Tigray province.

Home to some wondrous natural beauty and an intense, often troubled history, poverty is a constant factor here. Over 80 per cent of the population are farmers, cultivating crops and rearing livestock in some of the toughest, most thankless conditions anywhere on Earth, with water a precious resource and climate change set to present severe challenges in the years and decades ahead.

Like much of Sub-Saharan Africa, roads are a lifeline in Tigray – arteries of hope and potential prosperity that provide better access to jobs, markets and healthcare and education services. Indeed, across Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, the building of roads represents one of the biggest public investments and a staggering 5.5 million km have been constructed to date. The paradox is, for

all the many benefits they bring, collateral damage caused by the process can do serious harm to local communities.

“Roads are massive interventions in the local water environment,” says Frank. “They can interfere with the movement and flow of water, aggravating the effects of droughts, while uncontrolled run-off from roads during heavy rain can cause dangerous flash floods that exacerbate soil erosion and sedimentation. It’s estimated that there are up to 25 such trouble spots for every 10km stretch of road in Tigray.”

But what if roads were part of the solution rather than the problem? That’s the goal of the consortium’s programme.

“In Tigray and the neighbouring province of Amhara, we’ve already proved that, at very low or even no net cost, roads can be designed to help control and harvest water,” says Frank. “Rather than reducing resilience, they can reinforce it and help communities cope with erratic and seasonal rainfall.”

Thinking simpleWorking closely with regional government, universities and other organisations as well as local communities themselves, the initiative has focused on delivering flexible ways of turning roads into

PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17 21

water management devices. Overwhelmingly, this has centred on low-tech but highly effective measures to control water and contain it or carry it away – for example, digging ditches, building culverts (tunnels under roads) or using, as reservoirs, so-called ‘borrow’ pits dug nearby to provide rock, earth and stone needed during road construction. Through such methods, water can be channelled to irrigate crops, stored for later use, or allowed to soak into the soil to boost crucial groundwater reserves. Around 1.1m Ethiopians have already benefited, with a 20 per cent rise in income levels recorded in roadside communities.

“Faced with complex challenges such as flood protection and water provision, it can be tempting to look for complicated solutions,” Frank says. “But sometimes the answer is to think simple and harness or adapt something that’s already right in front of your eyes. We estimate that, for every 10km of road in Tigray, typically 4 million m3 of water is harvestable in a year. Initially, road experts were sceptical about our ability to tame and tap into this life-changing resource. Now, seeing the results, they’re our biggest fans!”

The economics are compelling too. Integrating such water management measures adds less than five per cent to standard road-construction costs and is substantially cheaper than building roads to withstand climate-related impacts. This low-cost, big-impact approach – suitable for retrofit as well as for incorporation into new roads – also saves money by making roads less vulnerable to flood- and weather-related damage and disruption. Water causes around 35 per cent of all damage to paved roads in Ethiopia and, with maintenance a perennial drain on budgets, any savings in this respect are extremely welcome.

“Our philosophy is to work with the grain of nature, rather than try and resist it. Integrated thinking on road building and water management really works: for instance, it helped Ethiopia withstand the 2015 drought – one of the worst ever experienced – and the effects of that year’s El Niño.”

Horizons widen 2015 also saw MetaMeta and Mekelle University win a Global Road Achievement Award from the International Road Federation for their work in Tigray. Indeed, success has provided the platform to take the road revolution further afield. As well as targeting the whole of Ethiopia, through guidelines distilling the knowhow and experience developed in the north of the country, roll-out has now also reached Kenya and Uganda.

But the impact isn’t confined to Africa. Bangladesh is beginning to benefit too. With its frequently flooding rivers and vulnerability to rising sea

levels, this is a country that presents very different challenges. Nearly 20 per cent of Bangladesh floods every year, so flood management – especially in rural areas – is at an absolute premium.

The country has thousands of miles of raised embankments, designed to act as barriers to water and (because they often represent the highest points in a locality) used as places of refuge during and after flood events. With roads running along 60 per cent of these earthworks, the consortium is focusing on how such roads can be engineered to strengthen the embankments they form part of, helping to guard against landslips, for example, and maximising the control, protection and sanctuary the embankments afford.

“Water harvesting in dry areas, flood management in wet areas – roads are a versatile tool for blocking water, concentrating it or helping it flow,” Frank concludes. “Our strategic plan is for at least 50 per cent of roads in half of the countries in Africa and a quarter of the countries in Asia to be water-buffered by 2025. We’re hard at work creating the momentum to achieve it – and then to head even further along that road in future.”

The Roads for Water initiative started with a grant from the NERC programme Unlocking the Potential for Groundwater for the Poor (UPGro) supported by NERC, ESRC and DfID and is led by Frank at the Netherlands-based social enterprise MetaMeta together with Tigray’s Mekelle University. The project is now supported by the Global Resilience Partnership.

To see the project progress, follow @grp_resilience and @roadsforwater on Twitter. Contact Frank at fvansteenbergen@metameta.nl.

Development

Leading water from a road culvert to recharge trenches in Ethiopia. www.roadsforwater.org

22 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

Coralline algae in the hand. Susannah Anderson, Flickr If you’ve ever been to any seaside you will have

probably stepped on coralline algae’s pink crunchy coatings on rocks exposed as the tide recedes.

Dr Nick Kamenos of the University of Glasgow and his co-workers from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland have been studying coralline algae, some of which form tangled beds known as maerl, for years.

Most of us wouldn’t give them a second thought but the more Kamenos’ team looks, the more they realise that these simple algae are globally important. They build habitats, produce gases that affect our weather and absorb carbon that would otherwise increase global warming.

Fossil recordKamenos calls them ‘the trees of the sea’ because corallines grow slowly, and like trees they form annual rings which record their growth. Cutting them open gives a unique record of sea temperatures and chemistry stretching back long before instrument records began.

This record in their skeletons lets scientists investigate our changing environment thousands of years into the past. And they play a key role in the marine ecosystem by protecting many young organisms.

“Not only do these records cover a longer time span – as much as 600 or 1000 years – they also

Trees of the sea sharetheir secrets

Coralline algae are found on nearly every shore in the world and could be holding important clues to climate change. Kelvin Boot explores.

Sampling gasses being released by a maerl bed. Nick Kamenos

Ecosystems

PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17 23

offer a level of precision which is unprecedented in climate studies,” Kamenos says. “Although other natural climate records might go back over longer time scales the bi-weekly precision is not there. Plus, because the algae can form extensive beds which can survive in the fossil record, by overlapping and using fossil specimens they can take us back in time up to 20,000-30,000 years at a level of detail unobtainable elsewhere”, he adds.

The record is precise enough to give a temperature reading every two weeks showing how over the centuries our summers have been warming at faster rate than our winters. The coralline algae also provides a number of other useful measures in mapping climate change such as data about times in the past when the ocean has been more acidic and about how much cloud cover there has been at different times.

The records from the algae offer a level of precision unprecedented in climate studies.

Carbon captureAs their name suggests, coralline algae look like corals that form reefs – but there the resemblance ends. Unlike corals, coralline algae are plants – seaweeds that need light for photosynthesis and lock away atmospheric carbon in the process. They are common around the globe, so they could be burying huge amounts of carbon – millions of tonnes a year, according to one study that Kamenos took part in. This natural carbon capture technology would make them as vital for the climate as seagrasses, mangroves or salt marshes.

A simple experiment shows that when queen scallops are given the choice between live and dead mearl the juveniles nearly all move to the live maerl. Nick Kamenos

Cloud controlAs well as absorbing carbon dioxide, they also emit another gas – dimethylsulphide (DMS), which is crucial in cloud formation, influencing weather and helping regulate the climate. It’s made by living things, and contributes almost half the sulphur in the atmosphere. More than 90 per cent of this comes from the sea, with plankton, seaweed and corals thought to be the main contributors – but it now seems that red coralline algae are also a major source.

Safe havensWe now know some coastal habitats are immensely important as nurseries where juveniles of many groups and species can shelter. “The pristine living maerl beds provide the perfect, loose but intricate, texture required of an effective nursery area for many organisms including sea urchins and the common starfish, as well as commercially-important species like the queen scallop and some fish,” says Kamenos.

Often these animals seem to prefer the tangled maerl to other types of seabed. The team’s even found that the maerl doesn’t just give young scallops a secure place to hide – it also appears to provide them with a sense of calm. They monitored the heart rate of the shellfish around live and dead maerl, as well as on more open sandy habitat. It dropped when they were close to sanctuary in the maerl, though this only seemed to happen when predators were present. The chemical signal of the predator, which would normally lead to increased heart rate, a sign of stress, seems to become secondary to the maerl’s ‘feel-good factor’.

Precious resourceAlthough coralline algae are increasingly recognised as globally important, Kamenos points out that we need to do more to protect them. “Maerl is fragile and easily damaged by a variety of human activities such as fishing. Protecting its future is essential because of the services it provides to the ecosystem, our environment and even to commercial fishery yields,” he says. “They are on a par with seagrass beds, mangroves and kelp forests, and like those better known habitats we need to look after them for our sake as well as for the wider marine environment.”

Ecosystems

Find out more about Nick’s work at www.gla.ac.uk. Kelvin Boot is a science communicator working with the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland which funded this work alongside NERC and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Further reading at doi:10.5194/bgd-12-7845-2015 and doi: 10.1002/2015GB005274.

Revealing the UK’s hidden depthsUnderneath the Earth’s surface lies a wealth of resources. But will the way we currently use them give us problems in the future? Dr Ciaran Beggan, Dr Andrew Barkwith and Dr Caroline Graham at the NERC British Geological Survey (BGS) explain why we need a clearer picture.

P eople have been using the subsurface for millennia. We’ve quarried stone to build homes, dug cellars to store goods, drilled for

oil, mined for minerals, buried rubbish… the list goes on. And often we don’t know how it was used by people before us or what it’s actually made of.

These buried secrets can cause nightmares for planners. Builders working on the Edinburgh tram route were slowed down by forgotten, unmapped Victorian water pipes and sewers, the remains of a leper colony and hundreds of 15th century skeletons. In fact it’s been estimated that half of the overruns on civil engineering projects are caused by unforeseen ground conditions.

Mapping itWe need to know more about previous human activity underground as well as the ground's physical, mechanical and chemical properties. More than that, we need all that information to be in one place. That’s not just to aid construction projects but also so that we don’t compromise our future. For example, cities dealing with increasing populations are digging down to create space while our reliance on groundwater supplies in the UK is up by 50 per cent compared with 60 years ago. These needs are in competition as our underground infrastructure blocks our access to groundwater.

Because each use of the subsurface has a knock on effect for the future, to manage it properly we need think about what pressures we might face next. In the Futures Team at BGS, we’re trying to

understand and avoid problems different buried infrastructure might cause and emphasise how it can best work in harmony.

Until recently, we’ve only had pockets of information about certain areas of the country, gathered from various projects and held in different places. So at BGS we’re bringing it all together. Using that data, collected over many decades, we’re building a 3D map, called UK3D, showing 5 km of the UK’s underground layers.

UK3D will help us get better at forecasting the effects of events like groundwater movement during floods and of the wider implications of future projects. For example we’ll be able to ask questions like: ‘if I build a tunnel at X, will I affect the water table at Y?’ We’re also working to make it easy to use for non-geologists like policymakers.

Earth observatories: real-time dataA new NERC project with BGS will help us get highly-detailed, real-time data on the immediate effects of human activity underground by using a range of monitoring devices in more than one hundred boreholes. By independently monitoring and observing drilling, extraction and underground storage, the project will tell us about using subsurface resources safely and sustainably.

Since 1958 it’s been mandatory for records of cores deeper than 30 metres to be archived at BGS but they aren’t always detailed: older records might have noted which layers held coal but not collected any data on the layers above it.

Geology

UK3D shows a network of cross sections through the earth's crust. Download it for free from BGS.ac.uk and open it in Google Earth to rotate, tilt and zoom into the UK’s geological layers.GB3D

Dr Ciaran Beggan, Dr Andrew Barkwith and Dr Caroline Graham are based at the British Geological Survey. Find out more about their work at www.bgs.ac.uk/sciencefutures/ and about the new project at www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/available/capital/esios/

24 PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17

PLANET EARTH Winter 2016-17 25

Keeping back the floods

Flooding by numbersNERC flooding science saves lives, homes and businesses

How long NERC-funded scientists have been researching UK sea levels, tides, storm surges and river flows

NERC invests each year in flooding research

Homes flooded in summer 2007 in the UK

Homes flooded in winter 2013/14 – even though the floods were more severe than 2007, 50,000 were protected thanks to better forecasting systems

The amount saved in insurance payouts for winter 2013/14 compared with summer 2007

5DAYS

WARNINGWe can now predict floods

further in advance

Up toEarlier warnings protect farmland and infrastructure, benefitting the UK by millions every year

NERC tide and storm-surge information used by the Thames Barrier protects people on the London floodplain, along with £200bn of property The Thames Barrier was closed

an unprecedented number of times between 6 December 2013 and 12 February 2014

Saved each day in lost working thanks to the Thames Barrier

Next issue

BiodiversityIs climate change pushing some species towards a tipping point?Why worry about an invasive species?Does protecting or promoting biodiversity threaten economic growth?

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Editors: Sylvie Kruiniger and Mary Goodchild editors@nerc.ac.uk

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