WaterWall in Motion
WaterWall in Motion
Working in partnership with the Scottish water community, CREW has developed the WaterWall in Motion – a project that promises to be a fantastic video resource and competition to celebrate Scotland’s relationship with water, and its Hydro Nation ambition. The aim is to celebrate how Scotland is leading the way in water research, innovation, management, business, creativity, health, art and recreation.
The project is open to the public and any organisation, business or individual working to monitor, research, innovate, manage, regulate, conserve or simply enjoy and value Scotland’s water resources. The existing WaterWall, developed at the James Hutton Institute, has been enhanced to accommodate videos and the water community is invited to post links to 2-minute videos on one of eight themes
· Nature-based solutions
· Droughts and floods
· Water quality
· Living with climate change
· Freshwater restoration
· Innovation in the water sector
· Water and wellbeing
· Water inspired creativity
Prizes will be awarded across categories for innovation, creativity, originality; actions for achieving net zero carbon emissions and most impactful (evocative, celebratory or inspirational video).
This project aims to showcase and raise the profile of Scotland as the Hydro Nation at COP26 and satellite events, as well as to provide a point of reference for the water community to aid in the development of new networks and opportunities in the water sector. The WaterWall in Motion project was launched at World Water Day 2021. The competition will run until the 7th January 2022 with a prizing giving event planned at World Water Day in 2022.
Please click on the WaterWall poster pdf below to access information on how to create and upload your video.
We must start to truly value water
Making up 70% of our world, it’s what justifies us as the Blue Planet, spinning in space. Without it there would be no life. It is the lifeblood of industry: 90% of the global economy and 75% of jobs depend on water to some extent. But it is in crisis through our accelerating lifestyles and attendant demands on its use and overuse, and also because of climate change. Indeed, in many ways it is the messenger of climate change - ninety percent of all natural disasters are water related and these increasingly impact on more and more people across the globe. In short, it’s time to change our relationship with water.
In a water-rich country like Scotland we tend to take it for granted. Turn on the tap and it’s there, aim to go for a walk and bucket loads fall from the sky. It’s beloved of taxi drivers nationwide. But that’s not true across the globe. The arrival of rain is cherished and welcomed in some countries and in others the overuse of a once abundant resource is placing increasing constraints on livelihoods and the escape from poverty. The quantity of water has not changed, indeed that has not changed since dinosaurs roamed the world, but that water is finite and under threat. In many situations it is the quality of water and its distribution in time and space that are the problem: too much here; too little there. It’s not a level playing field, and demand for water keeps rising as society’s demands grow and cities develop.
And not all water is equal. We have blue water in our rivers and lakes, green water being drawn up to support plant and crop growth, grey, brown and black water in our waste-streams. We drink tap water, mineral water, sparking water, well-water, distilled water and product manufacturers probably aim to market even more subtle “types of water”. It can come from different sources: raw water from the hills, brackish water, groundwater, rainwater or wastewater. But basically, it is still just H2O.
So why is this important? Simply because we depend for our survival on these different types of water that we put to different uses and all of which have different values. But again; define value. To many it’s the simple pounds, shillings, and pence of the water market. What does it cost to make it fit to drink or use and what does it cost to clean it up afterwards? Water, though, has value that transcends money. It has spiritual or religious significance. It has value for mental wellbeing; the mindfulness of hearing the patter of water on a roof, trickling in a burn or waves lapping on a beach; the moods of rainfall, rainbows and cascades; the feel of it on our skin. What value do we place on those attributes, and how do we assess them against the hard economic costs? That’s the challenge.
Our waste streams, historically the polluter of many of our country’s beautiful rivers are now highly valued for their embedded nutrients, metals and energy, all of which can be recovered and reused. Scottish Water has a new, world-leading target of attaining net-zero by 2040. Our new approaches to protecting cities from floods based on wider ecologically-based measures provide value not only in their primary function, but also because they provide prized ‘blue-green’ recreational spaces, important corridors for wildlife and settings for desirable and usually expensive real estate.
Our relationship with water is changing and must continue to change. Truly valuing water means giving it appropriate recognition, promoting efficiency and balancing short-term need against longer-term sustainability. Thinking about our legacy to others.
This article was written by Prof. Bob Ferrier, Director of CREW and the Hydro Nation International Centre (HNIC) and was originally published in the Scotsman.
Lags in water quality response to diffuse pollution control measures: a review
A systematic review of evidence on lags in water quality response to diffuse pollution control measures implemented in Scotland is reported. The review focused on key pollutants in catchments smaller than 300 km2 in temperate regions. Findings were evaluated based on catchment typologies (e.g. catchment size, precipitation, land use, pollutant residence time, and soil /waterbody type) and data/analyses (e.g. monitoring design and record length). There was no evidence supporting fixed timeframes for a water quality response to measures or catchment typology -based lags. Observed lags varied: 1-25 years for river pollutants and potentially longer than 20 years for groundwater nitrate. Long-term water quality and catchment data are key to quantifying lags. It is recommended to keep monitoring and adjust expectations by planning for longer-term lags.
Natural sources of phenols and mitigation measures to reduce their release into the water environment
This study investigated the current state of knowledge reported in the literature on the sources of natural phenolic compounds; factors that trigger their release into the environment; their risks to water sources and potential mitigation measures to reduce these risks. A potential risk assessment methodology, which assesses the terrestrial sources of phenolic compounds and the potential risk to ground and surface waters was presented.
The main findings and recommendations from this study are:
- Changes in observed DOC concentrations may be used as an indicator of potential changes in the presence of phenolic compounds in surface and groundwaters.
- Restoring peatlands is one of the key factors of locking carbon in the soil and reducing the release of DOC and phenolic compounds to water sources.
- There are very few studies on the presence of phenolic compounds in the environment released from natural sources and their subsequent transfer to watercourses. A recommendation from this work would be to carry out a long-term study of the types of DOC and phenolic compounds in Scottish drinking water catchments. This would provide up to date data to validate the risk assessment developed in this project, and also to better understand the potential drivers of the release of phenolic compounds and their transfer in Scottish drinking water catchments.
Digital Water: Technologies in Monitoring, Surveillance, and Evaluation
CREW Newsletter Nov 2020
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A journey along the River Dee, NE Scotland
CREW manager Dr Rachel Helliwell and Partnership chair Prof Marc Stutter hiked, biked and canoed their way for three days from the Pools of Dee high in the Cairngorms to the sea at Aberdeen harbour. Besides capturing the beauty of the catchment, the film shot by the pair summarises the main pressures on Scotland’s water environment, such as climate, land use and changes in demographics.
“It was a great adventure”, Rachel says. “We wanted to describe the catchment from the source to the mouth – how the river changes along its course, how the various pressures on the river change along that journey.
The film covers a range of issues and provides an update on how academia, public bodies and the water industry are working together as a ‘Hydro Nation’ to overcome these challenges. “In the mountains we discussed climate change and the impact of less snow on river flows and temperatures, then as we cycled through the middle reaches of the catchment we addressed topics such as forestry and land management, and in the lower reaches we discussed the importance of agriculture, increased development in response to population pressures, and flooding,” she explains.
“We really want to get across the different perspective gleaned from travelling along the river at a slow pace and inspire a curiosity in the Dee and its catchment.”
Marc adds: “The river essentially has three zones, which mapped quite neatly onto the three days we spent travelling it, using three different modes of transport. We were keen to show the connections between the top and bottom of the river – and that issues at the bottom of the catchment depend very much on what happens at the top.”
The pair hope that the video will serve as a great teaching tool to showcase the importance of sound catchment management, and hopefully appeal to the public too. The film, titled “Journey along the River Dee, NE Scotland” is available to watch on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1vtLVAPx7o&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop
Evaluating an upland NFM hydrometric network: implications for future monitoring
This project sought to assess the hydrometric network of the River Knaik catchment (37 km2) in Perthshire in terms of fitness for purpose and quality of the data collected to date for evaluating Natural Flood Management (NFM) measures. Rainfall and stream gauges were installed to measure the hydrological response to land use changes brought about by NFM. This evidence was needed to evaluate NFM in the catchment and inform future schemes.
The project found that the locations of the sensors to monitor hydrological change were appropriate given the planned NFM measures (peatland restoration, reduced sheep stocking density and tree planting). However, owing to technical problems and maintenance issues, the data quality was not sufficient to evaluate the effectiveness of measures for mitigating flood peaks.
Based on this assessment, options for redeploying the monitoring network elsewhere, alternative monitoring approaches and improving the current network were outlined. Of wider relevance to the practice of NFM hydrometric monitoring, this assessment highlighted the importance of long-term monitoring for reliable evaluation, the need for long term funding commitment (e.g. supporting staff to download and maintain the equipment) and technical input from a hydrologist. A research summary is provided below.
Tracking SARS-CoV-2 via Municipal Wastewater
Sampling wastewater from a community can be a relatively straightforward way to determine if specific agents are being excreted by that population. As SARSCoV-2, the causative agent of COVID19, can be present in the faeces of infected people, then it may be possible to determine if a community has infected individuals by monitoring the wastewater or other sewage samples for the presence of the virus. The most sensitive method for detection of the virus is to amplify sections of its RNA genome, a practice that is now applied to respiratory tract swabs worldwide to determine whether people are infected. This three-month project had two main objectives: (1) to test methods to concentrate, extract and amplify viral RNA from different wastewater samples to work out whether the virus can be detected; (2) to add a safe ‘control’ virus into wastewater samples to compare the efficiency of methods between different laboratories and to account for losses during processing to help determine exactly how many SARS-CoV-2 viral particles were in the wastewater sample. A key point is that this project was not assessing whether any detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA represented the presence of infectious viral particles. The focus was to develop a detection tool for the virus in communities that could help to identify infected populations. The project compared several published methods for viral extraction from wastewater and then looked at other sewage plant samples such as ‘sludge’ and ‘cake’ as well as some of the outflow water that is released into the environment. The main results were as follows: (1) A safe control virus was compared against SARS-CoV-2 as a way to measure detection efficiency from different types of samples. This control virus behaved in a very similar way to the pandemic virus and is now being supplied to other laboratories as a safe way to test any concentration and extraction methods. We used both this virus and SARS-CoV-2 to measure the efficiency of the methods trialled. (2) SARS-CoV-2 virus was detected in certain wastewater samples collected during the initial wave of the pandemic in Scotland. The different methods tested offer different pros and cons. The two main methods, spin filter columns and PEG precipitation can both work, but both can have high losses of virus. Columns are quite expensive and may be subject to supply problems, whereas precipitation can more easily handle larger volumes, but requires a high-speed spin step needing more specialised equipment. (3) Direct extraction from more solid samples such as ‘sludge’ and ‘cake’ does not require a concentration step and while this was more sensitive, it was only possible to test a small number of samples, so further work is needed to confirm this. (4) No SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in the outflow water during the tests, whilst given that primary sludge is treated (e.g. pasteurized, heat-dried, alkali-lime treated), as per legislative requirements, concentration of viral RNA in the solid phase should pose no further risk to human health. In summary, wastewater and other samples from wastewater plants can be used to determine the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the local population. The sensitivity of this approach needs to be evaluated, but it offers the potential to monitor populations with much lower levels of sample processing than testing of individuals. More work is required to translate levels of viral RNA in wastewater to the level of infection within the community. While more samples need to be evaluated, SARS-CoV-2 virus was not detected in outflow water released from a wastewater plant receiving wastewater containing the virus. Infectivity was not assessed, but the low levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detected are unlikely to represent an additional threat to the health of individuals that work with wastewater taking standard precautions in their work environment.
Slender Naiad (Najas flexilis) is a rare aquatic plant species of European conservation importance.The species is believed to be under increasing threat in its Scottish stronghold. However, the factors that affect the health of N. flexilis populations in Scotland are not fully understood, such as, why does the species disappear, and where and why it fares well in some sites. In addition, more needs to be known about what actions can be taken to ensure that the habitat quality needed to support populations of the plant is either maintained or restored. Thus, this project was commissioned by CREW to review the existing knowledge and available information on the habitat requirements of N. flexilis from Scotland and other countries where the species is native. The aim is also to identify what data are already available, where they are, and how to access them.
The now published report highlights that much of the sensitivity of N. flexilis to the known threats of, eutrophication, competition with other plants and the mild acidification of circumneutral lakes can be related to its physiology as an obligate user of CO2; N. flexilis plants being unable to metabolise bicarbonate for photosynthesis. This physiological restriction puts limits on its distribution, particularly with respect to the pH and alkalinity of the lake, and is the reason that N. flexilis is typically found in circumneutral waters, with C-limitation of growth likely to be present at pH <5.5 and pH>8. This physiological requirement may be the reason for the favourable habitat being associated with machair and with anecdotal evidence of populations in lakes around groundwater springs – which are normally high sources of free CO (Falkowski and Raven, 2007). In terms of acidification, lower pH levels below 6.5 may be detrimental to reproductive performance of N. flexilis, before lower pH levels <5 start impacting growth rates through CO2-limitation. In relation to eutrophication, nutrient enrichment leads to increases in phytoplankton, epiphyte and aquatic plant growth. This has the potential to lead o C-limitation for obligate CO2 users during daytime if pH levels rise above 8. This is likely to be exacerbated by grassland or forestry improvements if liming of the land leads to increased pH of circumneutral lakes (but beneficial in acid lakes). The result of both eutrophication and alkalisation is a strong competitive advantage for aquatic plants that use bicarbonate. This is especially true for plant species that can tolerate and survive the combination of low light and increased ratio of bicarbonate to CO2 such as Elodea spp. Whether or not invasive nonnative species, such as Elodea, have impacted N.flexilis populations indirectly, through reducing CO2 availability, or directly, through competition for deeper, low-light habitat is unknown; a combination of both direct and indirect impacts may be involved. This report is the output of the first phase of the project, and a second report will be published in early 2021, including information on which lochs in Scotland provide the most favourable conditions for Slender Naiad, and possible sites for potential re-introduction in the future.
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