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A ‘Grand Bargain’ on the Colorado River

Recently, Dr. Kevin Wheeler gave a highly provocative talk on ways to address the looming renegotiation of the Colorado, and confront future disputes over managing water during times of severe drought between 7 states in the southwest United States and between the United States and Mexico. At the 40th Annual Getches-Wilson Center Summer Conference, Kevin proposed limiting the consumption of the Upper Basin States to a negotiated level well below their aspirational 7.5 million acre feet (maf)/year current apportionment, while concurrently eliminating their potential risk of curtailment when deliveries to downstream states fail to reach 75 maf over 10 years, as would be required under the 1922 Colorado River Compact. By removing the risk of a such a ‘compact call’, opportunities arise to provide more reliable water deliveries to users across the basin, re-design the operation of Lake Powell and Lake Mead to improve environmental flows in the iconic Grand Canyon, and allow the states avoid a very uncertain and prolonged battle in the United States Supreme Court.

With almost twenty years of experience working on transboundary river issues, Kevin has been intimately involved in the disputes along the Colorado River, including the historical negotiations between the United States and Mexico, and recently he focuses on cooperation among the countries of the Eastern Nile River. Kevin completed his DPhil at Oxford and is an Oxford Martin Fellow on a new Transboundary Resource Management Project at the Oxford Martin School. He is associated with the Environmental Change Institute in the University of Oxford and advises for the Futures of the Colorado River Project at Utah State University.

 

New insights into the future of water availability in Southern Africa

New research suggests that extreme future drying over southern Africa is an unlikely scenario, but that regional governments should still prepare for a water-stressed future.

By Callum Munday

In the summer of 2015, southern Africa experienced one of its worst droughts on records. Water supply for major cities, including Cape Town (South Africa) and Gabarone (Botswana), was running low; crops had failed; and electricity generation from hydropower was at a minimum. The spectre of climate change loomed large: was this a sign of things to come?

Yes, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s climate models. Ninety-five percent of these models indicate, at least for the early summer season, that southern African rainfall will decline significantly by 2100. Some models project average rainfall declines of close to 100 mm per season—similar to the rainfall anomaly during the summer 2015 drought. If these extreme projections are to be trusted, adaptation to future climate change will need to be fast and effective.

However, climate models are not perfect. Rainfall simulation is a particularly tricky task with longstanding and well documented errors in southern Africa. A key question for climate scientists is whether these errors in model simulations of present-day climate matter for how they project future change.

In a new study in Journal of Climate (Munday and Washington 2019), we address this issue by examining the mechanisms associated with future southern African rainfall/drying changes during the early summer in models. We found broad consensus between models in how they simulate climate change, with the rainfall declines linked to increases in the stability of the southern African atmosphere.

However, by splitting up models into groups according to how much rainfall decreases in the future, we found that models simulating the largest average rainfall declines (close to the 2015 anomalies) contain substantial errors in how they simulate the present day climate. This insight casts doubt on projections of extreme rainfall decreases and suggests that more moderate drying is the more likely scenario1.

Given the effects on southern African society, the evidence that really extreme drying is unlikely is welcome, but there remains a raft of challenges facing regional governments. Temperatures in southern Africa are expected to rise at twice the rate of the global mean, and droughts—when they do happen—could become more intense and prolonged. Preparing for a more water-stressed future, unfortunately, remains a priority for southern Africa.

1Another study which uses a different methodology (Padrón et al., 2019) also concludes that extreme projections of drying over southern Africa are unlikely.

Callum’s research was funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC). It was carried out as part of the Future Climate for Africa UMFULA project, with financial support from the NERC [Grant ref: NE/M020207/1], and the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID).

 

Drought—no longer uncommon topic in England, 1976 drought now 4x more likely to occur

Henny van Lanen, a guest speaker, mentioned in his opening remarks in Oxford’s 2019 conference on Drought and Water Scarcity, water regulators in northwest Europe are biased towards floods and usually do not think about the effects of drought. And yet, Prof. Len Shaffrey, a specialist in meteorology and climate change also at the conference, announced that now the drought of 1976 is 4 times more likely to occur. There is a growing realisation however of the impacts of not having enough water, with the conference occurring in the wake of the speech by Sir James Bevan, the head of the Environment Agency, in which he warned that England could be in the jaws of death due to water scarcity within twenty-five years—no surprise to this audience of experts.

During a two-day conference, over 140 participants discussed the impacts of drought in the UK and throughout Europe and Turkey and the Americas—particularly in the summer of 2018. Comparing challenges and solutions in the international context gave perspectives regarding research in the UK and ideas for new solutions like the use of satellite data. Many sessions honed on technical details around planning and management, climatology, hydrology, and drought impacts, but also flagged the need for more governance and communication, and to place a greater value on water and its use.

This fourth annual conference was organized by the UK Droughts and Water Scarcity programme, which is  composed of five projects: Historic Droughts, Impetus, MaRIUS, DRY (Drought Risk and You), and ENDOWS. ENDOWS was responsible for a vibrant part of the conference where university students from Falmouth University shared their innovative media campaigns to raise issues of drought and water scarcity with the public. Ideas included racing to finish showering before a three-minute song ends. One afternoon breakout session was dedicated to a series of talks on how research can help communities and risk perception through communication to assist in behavioural changes.

 

Water Security: less talk, more action

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Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University © REACH

Water security is an increasingly urgent and complex challenge facing society, both rich and poor. Over 200 people from 20 countries met to debate using a risk-based framework to respond to the global and local challenges at the Water Security 2015 conference held at Oxford University on 9-11 December.

The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, welcomed Ministers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya who led discussions on the significance and shared challenge of water security for countries in Africa and Asia.

‘Water security is an issue of life or death for Bangladesh’ said Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning. The country’s population, especially the poor, are highly vulnerable to water hazards, including frequent floods, droughts and arsenic-contaminated groundwater.

The World Bank and Oxford University presented new evidence on the global status of water security risks, showing the scale, urgency and cost of the challenge. Findings from the OECD and Global Water Partnership report ‘Securing Water, Sustaining Growth’ provide the economic rationale for investment in infrastructure, institutions and information.

Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University said: ‘investment finance needs to have a sense of where the priorities lie. We have developed a common language to look at the scale of the risk, evaluate the benefits of risk reduction, and make proportionate interventions and investments in water security.’

The conference continued with a focus on water security and poverty in Africa and South Asia, marking the first year of REACH: Improving water security for the poor. The programme is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with a £15 million investment in water research. DFID’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Charlotte Watts, flagged the programme as critical to providing robust evidence needed for designing and implementing water security interventions.

Professor Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser, UK Department for International Development © REACH

Professor Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser, UK Department for International Development © REACH

Gaining government support will be key for REACH to bring about transformational change beyond its focussed ‘Water Security Observatories’ or study sites. Attendance from three State Ministers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya – the countries where REACH works – was an important step in building these science-policy partnerships with senior academic, enterprise and policy collaborators.

Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia, shared his country’s vision: ‘It is my Government’s ambition and commitment that all Ethiopians especially women and children have a future where they can live, learn and grow without the burden of water insecurity both in terms of water quality and quantity.’

Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning, Bangladesh (left); Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia (right) © REACH

Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning, Bangladesh (left); Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia (right) © REACH

The Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Kenya, Mr Eugene Wamalwa, spoke of unprecedented floods taking place in his country. Referring also to recent floods in Cumbria in the UK, he said that water is a global issue that connects us all. He tweeted with enthusiasm about his support for REACH and willingness to work in partnership to find new solutions to water insecurity.

Dr Rob Hope, REACH Director, Oxford Universityl (left); Eugene Wamalwa, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Kenya (right) © REACH

Dr Rob Hope, REACH Director, Oxford Universityl (left); Eugene Wamalwa, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Kenya (right) © REACH

Mr Sanjay Wijesekera, Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF, highlighted the drive towards achieving universal access to water and sanitation, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The need to address inequalities and target the poorest and most vulnerable is a priority across the SDGs, and in UNICEF’s work, he said. UNICEF is a global practitioner partner in the REACH programme with strong collaboration across regions and countries in Africa and Asia.

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF © REACH

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF © REACH

Three Country Diagnostic Reports on Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya were launched at the conference. The reports illustrate significant but complex interactions between water security risks and poverty. Each Country Diagnostic Report outlines Water Security Observatories where REACH will focus its work over the next seven years.

Speakers from a session on ‘engendering water security’ showed how gender is a thread that weaves its way through all water security issues, from disasters, to water supply and sanitation, water management and technologies, and climate change resilience. The different values, needs and uses of water by men and women, and boys and girls, must be considered, to ensure that policies are effective. Eight parallel sessions convened panel discussions by senior policy, academic and enterprise leaders on issues of finance, monitoring, climate, poverty, health, data science, political accountability and groundwater.

In final remarks, REACH Director Dr Rob Hope said: ‘REACH will generate outstanding science to support policy and practice to improve water security for millions of poor people. The focus is on research with purpose and not producing academic papers that will gather dust.’

A call for partnerships and action was crystallised with the launch of the REACH Partnership Funding.

Presentations, audio and video will be available on the conference website soon – www.watersecurity205.org.

See the social media summary of the conference on Storify

Conference photos

Exploring whether water shortages are due to climate change or local factors

Human-induced climate change plays a clear and significant role in some extreme weather events but understanding the other risks at a local level is also important, say research studies just published. Oxford researchers examined serious droughts in Brazil, East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

The Jaguari Reservoir in Brazil. The left side image shows the area on August 3, 2014; the right side image shows the same area on August 16, 2013, before the recent drought began. Credit: NASA.

The Jaguari Reservoir in Brazil. The left side image shows the area on August 3, 2014; the right side image shows the same area on August 16, 2013, before the recent drought began. Credit: NASA.

Oxford researchers found that while there was a clear influence of human-induced climate change being responsible for the failing rains in the Levant region, the fingerprint of human activity was not detected in the other two where causes of water shortages were found to be local factors, such as increased water demand, population growth or methods used for irrigating the crops.

A study of a severe drought in São Paulo, the largest city in South America with a population of about 20 million, found that human-induced climate change was not a major influence. The researchers, led by Dr Friederike Otto of the Environmental Change Institute, examined the drought in terms of lack of rainfall, water availability, and water demand. They found the consequences of the drought – which included temporary water shut-offs, a spike in dengue fever cases, and higher electricity prices – were a result of low water availability combined with the numbers of people involved and damage to the infrastructure system. They also concluded that the lack of rainfall in southeast Brazil in 2014 and 2015 while unusual was not unprecedented, with similar dry periods occurring before, with the most recent being in 2001.

Dr Otto said: ‘It’s clear that a lack of rain and changes in evaporation were not the only players in the Brazilian drought. We therefore looked beyond the weather and found that the increased demand for water caused by a quadrupling of the city’s population since 1960 and rising water use increased risks of water shortages in this area.’

The second Oxford-led study by Dr Toby Marthews focused on the Horn of Africa and showed that droughts are a natural part of the climate in this region; yet, despite this, the population is heavily dependent on rain-fed agricultural methods. This made the population extremely vulnerable when there was no rain – as happened in the 2014 growing season, says the study. It adds though there was no influence of human-induced climate change causing a lack of rain that year, although it had led to higher temperatures and incoming radiation, making the population more vulnerable.

The third study focused on a lack of rainfall in what should have been the raining season in the Levant region in 2014. The researchers found human-induced climate change increased the risk of such a severe and unprecedented drought occurring by around 45%. Co-author Daniel Mitchell, from the Environmental Change Institute, said: ‘We used local station data and the modelling framework provide by the weather@home project to find clear signals for human influence on this uniquely persistent drought. The study suggests those living in the southern Levant region should be considering adaptations and ways of reducing the risks of extreme weather events, particularly if weather is set to become increasingly extreme in the future.’

Researchers from the ECI have led and co-authored five of the published studies that appear in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s annual special report, Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective, which investigates the causes of a wide variety of extreme weather and climate events from around the world. All of the five rely on simulations provided by members of the public in the distributed computing framework weather@home. This project uses the combined power of tens of thousands of home computers to simulate the risks of human influence in extreme weather events.

Dr Otto, who leads the weather@home project, said: ‘The field called “extreme event attribution”, which looks for the fingerprints of human-caused warming in extreme weather events, has made considerable advances over the past decade. The goal of extreme event attribution science is to provide this evidence and we are in a unique position to provide the necessary modelling framework to look into the changing statistics of rare and unprecedented events.’

Read the report

Visit the weather@home website

Is the Western US drought caused by climate change?

Climateprediction.net has launched a new experiment to find out if climate change has made the drought in California, Oregon and Washington more likely.

The Western US drought has ranged from troublesome to severe. Californians have just experienced a fourth winter of drought, following three years that have marked some of the most severe drought conditions in the past century.

Oregon is in its second year of drought thanks to very low snowpack because of warm, mild winters. Washington is in its first year of drought – a result almost exclusively tied to warmer winter temperatures.

This past winter, Governor Jerry Brown issued water restrictions for the first time in the history of the state. In 2014 alone, the drought cost $2.2 billion and caused over 17,000 farm workers to lose their jobs.

In the video above, Abby Halperin, Myles Allen and Friederike Otto at the Environmental Change Institute explain how serious the ongoing drought is, and how this Weather@home experiment will help determine what effect, if any, human-induced climate change has had on the likelihood of the drought.

With the help of volunteers all around the world running simulations on their home computers, the experiment will simulate and compare thousands of possible Western US winter seasons in the world as it might have been without climate change, with possible winter weather in the world as we know it. If the chance of a drought in these two worlds is the same, then climate change cannot be blamed for this particular event. However, if the chance of a drought is greater in the world with climate change, this indicates that climate change increased the risk of drought.

Read more about the Weather@home experiment and how you can get involved

Britain leads global water initiative

In May 2015, Professor Paul Whitehead gave a keynote talk at the launch of Britain’s first national water benchmarking scheme. The event took place at world-renowned Pinewood Studios, giving it “00” status!

paul-whitehead

AquaMark is a multi-million pound grant scheme managed by consultants ADSM and is free to join for all UK participating organisations. The national project will fund a range of services so that sophisticated benchmarks can be derived for over 500 different building classifications, allowing commercial users to reduce water usage by an average of 30%. The project is the first of its kind and is set to put Britain at the forefront of global water benchmarking.

Paul Whitehead, Professor of Water Science at the School of Geography and the Environment, delivered a keynote on ‘Security of water supply: managing for the future and minimising risk’. He explained the implications of climate change for water resources in the UK, and introduced modelling tools for predicting future water shortages and environmental risks.

Oxford University research is helping identify and address water security risks, both in the UK and globally. Professor Whitehead highlighted the MaRIUS project on drought and water scarcity in the UK, the Macronutrients Cycles Programme, and the ESPA Deltas project which explores the impact of future climate change and socio-economic change in the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers in India and Bangladesh.

Patrick McCart, ADSM Founder and Director, commented: ‘Right now there exists a real opportunity for UK organisations, both large and small, to participate in this ground-breaking research project. Britain is set to become the global advisor on sustainable water supplies for commercial users. The recent events experienced in California and São Paulo, have highlighted how essential it is that businesses and organisations are supported with all the necessary tools to combat water scarcity.’

The launch took place in Pinewood studios and was supported by over 100 blue chip and public sector organisations.

The project has received backing from the water industry, regulators OFWAT, The Environment Agency, and leading research experts BRE, BSRIA and the University of Oxford.

For further information about joining the scheme, please visit www.adsm.com/AquaMark

See Paul Whitehead’s presentation ‘Security of water supply: managing for the future and minimising risk’

Desertification: the environment gone pear-shaped?

On 17 June, World Day to Combat Desertification, Dr Troy Sternberg asks some important questions. What is desertification? Is it caused by climate or humans? Are deserts taking over? Can the process be stopped?

The Gobi Desert

The Gobi Desert. Photo by Nanel

The idea of desertification came in the 1970s when scientists noted that parts of the Sahara Desert appeared to be expanding by kilometres per year. News reports and popular imagination extrapolated the numbers and declared that deserts were spreading at alarming rates. Articles began, ‘at this rate, in 10 years (choose your favorite African city) will be covered in sand.’

In 1994 the United Nations created the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to address the issue. Soon the term was applied to China and India, the American Southwest and the Middle East. Desertification had captured the public’s imagination and became the go-to term for ‘something’s happening in the desert.’

In time, science and climate knowledge diverged from popular perceptions of desertification. With interest, investigation and new techniques, like satellite imagery, researchers were able to better understand climate and landscape interaction in arid regions. Two important factors became clear: (1) climate variability, particularly in precipitation, resulted in fluctuations in land cover, and (2) humans had significant impact on desert environments.

The first point, now broadly acknowledged, highlights how climate affects vegetation patterns. With more rain plant cover increases, while in dry or drought years ecological productivity decreases. Thus in wetter years deserts ‘shrink’ whilst ‘expanding’ in drier years.

The second point stresses the huge impact people have on landscapes, especially drylands. Agriculture, livestock grazing, resource extraction, urbanisation and intensive land use all affect desert environments. Once damaged, marginally productive arid landscapes are unlikely to recover.

Soon the idea of desertification grew in complexity. It was not a simple case of ‘deserts taking over’ or just a ‘climate event’. One year’s ‘desertification’ might be replaced by the next year’s ‘greening’.

The UNCCD developed a definition of desertification as ‘land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations and human activities’. The focus identifies a process resulting from many potential causes. Implicit is that desertification reflects a change in state, crossing a threshold in which original productivity is lost.

Much discussion uses the term ‘desertified’, where perhaps degradation would be more appropriate. This allows for changes in precipitation or land use (e.g. farmland left fallow or ending overgrazing) that may improve vegetation and pasture. As with several scientific terms that enter the popular lexicon, there is more nuance and shades of meaning to desertification than its usage suggests.

Two Oxford University researchers, Dave Thomas and Nick Middleton, wrote about this in ‘Desertification: Exploding the Myth’ in 1994, a book that highlighted the use and misuse of the term. Now over twenty years later the word is ever more popular and has become a shorthand way to say the environment has gone pear-shaped. Few writers take the time to look at contributory factors, from drought to conflict and war, poverty, intensive cultivation on unsuitable land and development pressures. Indeed, the term has become so generic that it has little real meaning.

A recent article of mine ‘Contraction of the Gobi 2000-2012’ showed how the size of East Asia’s largest desert has been decreasing due to increased precipitation (Sternberg et al. 2015). However, Chinese researchers were convinced that it was not precipitation but ‘good government anti-desertification policies’ that led to the shrinking of the desert.

In a recent visit to Oxford the UNCCD representative stressed ‘degradation in any environment’ rather than using the word ‘desert’. Where is the funding appeal for a dry or dessicated piece of land? Much better to rebrand desertification as a term for severe degradation. That implies the potential to change, reverse and improve landscapes through human action; a positive message the public can embrace.

On this day take a moment to think about the two billion people, predominantly poor, who live in marginal arid and semi-arid regions, to realise the implications of a term we use lightly.

Dr Troy Sternberg is a geographer researching desert environments and societies, based at the School of Geography and the Environment. His current focus is on how climate hazards impact landscapes and people across Asian drylands.

Related links

Corporate investment in water: a fix for the California drought?

Dr Alex Money, Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, explains the lack of appeal of water for investors, in a feature ‘California Drought: Finding a Fix’ on BBC World Service Business Daily.

california-drought-bbc

California is amidst a historic fourth year of drought. In April their Governor Jerry Brown ordered the state’s first ever mandatory water restrictions, directing cities and communities to reduce water usage by 25%.

Aired on Thursday 28 May 2015, the BBC World Service reports on how citizens and the government are coping with the drought, featuring an interview with the state’s Governor Jerry Brown and comment from Oxford University’s Dr Alex Money.

The programme asks: what is the role of business in tackling the water shortage problem? Why isn’t Silcon Valley – California’s global hub for high-tech innovation and development – leaping to find fixes to the Californian drought?

Dr Money explains that return on investments in water infrastructure is made through water fees paid by companies and individuals at the point of use. The problem is that the infrastructure required to deliver water is typically expensive. High upfront capital expenditure is coupled with a return over a long period of time, making water a risky investment.

While clever technologies such as desalination and membranes for water purification exist, investment is lagging because of the risk-return problem, according to Dr Money.

Asked whether California could learn from Israel’s example where 80% of municipal wastewater is reused for irrigation, he says: “In Israel’s case it reflects quite a long-sighted view that water is a scarce resource. They’ve made some important investments in terms of reclaiming, recycling and reusing water. I think the problem is, in many other places water hasn’t been regarded with the same level of scarcity or value as it has been in Israel.”

Listen on BBC iPlayer (17 minute total, Alex Money from 12:40)

 

Oxford University water research at the 2015 European Geosciences Union General Assembly

There was a great turnout for the School of Geography and the Environment at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, where eight students and staff presented their latest water and climate related research findings.

sdsd

Map of a global topographic index developed by Toby Marthews and colleagues.

The annual EGU General Assembly is the largest European geosciences event and took place this year on 12-17 April in Vienna. The meeting covers all fields of science dealing with planet Earth, including volcanology, the Earth’s internal structure and atmosphere, climate, as well as energy, water and other resources.

Our students and staff were among the 11,000 scientists at the event from 108 countries. Oxford University presence included oral and poster presentations by Associate Professor Simon Dadson, post-doctoral researchers Emily Barbour, Gianbattista Bussi, Benoit Guillod, Rachel James, Toby Marthews and Daniel Mitchell, and doctoral candidate Franziska Gaupp.

Franziska Gaupp presented research on the role of storage capacity in coping with water variability in large river basins. Using a global water balance model, her analysis shows that current storage is able to buffer water variability in most basins. However, hotspots of water insecurity were found in South Asia, Northern China, the West Coast of the United States, Spain, Australia and several basins across Africa.

Emily Barbour’s research examines the complex relationship between water resource management and poverty in the Bangladesh Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta. Her poster shares experience with engaging policymakers and stakeholders to discuss the impacts of climate and socio-economic change on water availability and quality.

The map featured on this page shows a topographic index developed by Toby Marthews and colleagues – a measure of the ‘propensity for soil to become saturated’ – which will be an invaluable resource for use in large-scale hydrological modelling. In a second poster, Toby presented findings from a study which sought to find out if human-induced climate change contributed to the devastating 2014 drought in the Horn of Africa. The modelling results suggest no human influence on the likelihood of low rainfall but clear signals in other drivers of drought.

It’s difficult to study extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, because, by definition, they don’t occur very often. A way to overcome this issue is to use large ensembles of climate model simulations to produce ‘synthetic’ weather events. This was the topic of Benoit Guillod’s talk which he illustrated with an example of synthetic drought events in the UK being generated for the MaRIUS project (Managing the Risks, Impacts and Uncertainties of drought and water Scarcity) in order to better understand and predict droughts. In a second talk Benoit presented results on the impact of soil moisture on rainfall – an important interaction in the climate system.

Taking a more local perspective, Gianbattista Bussi spoke about his research on water quality in the River Thames basin which analyses the dynamics of fine sediments. Another strand of the work models the growth and movement of phytoplankton – microscopic algae which are an important food source for river wildlife, but over-growth can lead to algae bloom, depleted oxygen levels and the death of fish and other species.

It was fantastic to see so many of our researchers in Vienna sharing their insights and knowledge about the Earth’s water and climate systems.

Visit the EGU General Assembly website

Presentation files