Towards more connection in drought and flood management in the transboundary Limpopo basin.

Unlabelled: Improved drought and flood management in semi-arid transboundary basins requires a better understanding of the connections between dry and wet extremes, surface water and groundwater, upstream and downstream, and local communities and formal governance actors. This study describes a multi-disciplinary and mixed-methods research in the Limpopo River Basin, southern Africa. The methodology included hydrometeorological data analysis to identify drought and flood events, group discussions with 240 local community participants about drought and flood processes, impacts and preparedness, and interviews with 36 (inter)national and regional water managers and policymakers about drought and flood governance, early warning and communication.

Using stable isotopes to inform water resource management in forested and agricultural ecosystems.

Present and future climatic trends are expected to markedly alter water fluxes and stores in the hydrologic cycle. In addition, water demand continues to grow due to increased human use and a growing population. Sustainably managing water resources requires a thorough understanding of water storage and flow in natural, agricultural, and urban ecosystems.

Surface Measure to Depth (SMeTD): a new low-budget system for 3D water temperature measurements for combining with UAV-based thermal infrared imagery.

Characterising spatial patterns in water temperature is important for monitoring aquatic habitats and understanding physical and biogeochemical processes to support environmental management decisions. As freshwater bodies exhibit high spatial and temporal variability, high-resolution 3D temperature data are essential to understand local anomalies. The acquisition of simultaneously high spatial and temporal datasets in the field has so far been limited by costs and/or workload associated with commonly used monitoring systems.

Long-term daily stream temperature record for Scotland reveals spatio-temporal patterns in warming of rivers in the past and further warming in the future.

Stream temperature is directly and indirectly affected by climate change. To be able to project future changes in stream temperature, historic trends and factors influencing these trends need to be understood. There is a demand for daily data to analyse historical trends and future changes in stream temperature.

Assessing land use influences on isotopic variability and stream water ages in urbanising rural catchments.

Stable water isotopes are invaluable in helping understand catchment functioning and are widely used in experimental catchments, with higher frequency data becoming increasingly common. Such datasets incur substantial logistical costs, reducing their feasibility for use by decision makers needing to understand multi-catchment, landscape-scale functioning over a relatively short period to assess the impact of proposed land use change. Instead, reconnaissance style surveys (high spatial resolution across the landscape at a lower temporal frequency, over a relatively short period) offer an alternative, complementary approach.

Integration of juvenile habitat quality and river connectivity models to understand and prioritise the management of barriers for Atlantic salmon populations across spatial scales.

Diadromous fish populations are strongly affected by in-stream barriers that cause river network fragmentation, constraining productivity or preventing completion of their lifecycle. Removal or reduction of barrier impacts is a restoration measure associated with unambiguous benefits. Management of barriers is therefore often prioritised above other restoration actions.

Spatial and temporal patterns of soil water storage and vegetation water use in humid northern catchments.

Using stable isotope data from soil and vegetation xylem samples across a range of landscape positions, this study provides preliminary insights into spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of soil-plant water interactions in a humid, low-energy northern environment. Our analysis showed that evaporative fractionation affected the isotopic signatures in soil water at shallow depths but was less marked than previously observed in other environments. By comparing the temporal dynamics of stable isotopes in soil water mainly held at suctions around and below field capacity, we found that these waters are not clearly separated.