Prof David Gowing

This project aims to develop a demonstration site at which a floodplain meadow is used to trap phosphorus-rich sediments from rivers during flood events. Previous research by the OU indicates the amount of phosphorus removed from a river system can be in the order of 5 kg per hectare per year. The creation and management of new meadows in a floodplain could therefore be used to offset nutrient release from development sites. The demonstration site would be located on the river Yeo, near the village of Mudford in Somerset. It is 8 ha in extent and could potentially trap 40 kg of phosphorus per year. If that removal could be adequately demonstrated to the statutory authorities, then the scheme would release “nutrient credits” that could be used to balance the discharge of phosphorus from a potential residential development further upstream in the same catchment. The Abbey Manor Group are the developers involved in the development site and would therefore benefit in terms of planning approval being given by the Local Authority if the statutory authorities were satisfied that “nutrient neutrality” could be achieved. If the project is successful in terms of a carefully monitored phosphorus budget for the site demonstrating that the new meadow is removing a substantial amount of phosphorus from the river system, then equivalent projects could be rolled out nationally to protect other areas of high nature-conservation interest.

Engage a contiguous stretch of landowners on the River Windrush floodzone; Gather existing and collect missing data to inform habitat restoration; Publish a 20 year plan to restore, enlarge and connect floodplain meadows on the River Windrush .

Understanding the impacts of climate change on sensitive and high-conservation value ecosystems is essential for their successful management and provision of ecosystem services. We have recently established a large field-based experimental facility to investigate the impacts of changing hydrological regimes on a calcareous grassland, ecosystems of high conservation value in the UK. The experimental set-up, at the Upper Seeds experimental site, Wytham, Oxford, involves four 5 m x 5 m treatment plots within five 30 m x 20 m blocks to investigate the impacts of both decreased and increased rainfall on the ecosystem. To fully leverage the potential of this platform requires a comprehensive understanding of the microclimate conditions within the treatment plots and the effects of the imposed treatments. This project will instrument the platform with sensors for environmental monitoring. Sensors will be used to monitor soil-water content and temperature, as well as radiation, air temperature and humidity beneath the shelters. Support has been secured from the ECT via Oxford University, and is match funding of internal EEES School support.

CENTA is a geographically and scientifically coherent consortium offering a wide range of excellent NERC science embedded in a vibrant multidisciplinary environment. The Universities (Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Open and Warwick) and Institutes (British Geological Survey and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) have a strong track record of producing PhD graduates fit for further research or other relevant employment. The Open University STEM Faculty has match-funded 3 studentships in the 2017 intake.

This project aims to understand how plant communities come together around seasonal pools, where the soil varies between being very wet and very dry within the same year. The communities growing here are often of great conservation importance in their own right (e.g. the turloughs of Ireland,) but they also offer an opportunity to investigate the fundamental processes of how plants compete with one another for resources in a constantly changing environment.

Understanding the impacts of climate change on sensitive and high-conservation value ecosystems is key for their successful management and provision of ecosystem services. This project will establish a large field-based experimental facility to investigate the impacts of changing hydrological regimes on a calcareous grassland. The experimental set-up involves the construction of up to 16 large rain-shelters, combined with irrigation systems, to apply both drought and wetting treatments to a grassland ecosystem at the Upper Seeds experimental site, Wytham, Oxford. Planned as a platform for long-term ecological experiments, it will host over time a number of research projects from different institutions, with a PhD project from the OU and a DroughtNet-linked project from Oxford due to start field work in spring 2016. This bid is to finalise the construction of the shelters, following prototype trials at the OU. Funds have already been secured for shelter construction from the Patsy Wood Trust through the ECT; decisions on the initial number and time-frame for remaining shelter construction are required for this stage. This project is the continuation of an earlier project initiated by Jonathan Silvertown under budget code HGSE 4240 C4509.

Trees provide a wide range of ecosystem services including provision of wood and timber, regulation of water quality and quantity, carbon sequestration and storage, and cooling local air temperatures, mitigating air pollution, supporting biodiversity, as well as their cultural and public and amenity values. They are a vital component of green infrastructure. Services provided by forest ecosystems are well documented, and a number of tools - including the OU's citizen science based tree mapping Treezilla (www.treezilla.org and i-Tree (www.itreetools.org ) - have been developed to help assess the value of trees in urban environments to support the advocacy of trees in towns and cities, as well as to encourage budgetary support in the maintenance and expansion of urban forests. This project aims to develop these systems with a focus on Treezilla to provide better UK-based data. Our goal is to deliver a platform for valuing trees usable by ordinary citizens, environmental and planning professionals which leads to a broader understanding of the value of green infrastructure to society and which promotes investment and support for green infrastructure amongst individual citizens and organisations.

The project is to collect and analyse water level and water quality data from Portholme SSSI and the Ouse Washes SSSI. This will contribute to the review of the diffuse water pollution plan for Portholme and the Ouse Washes as required by a Consent Order as a result of a Judicial Review. There are two parts to the project, one part is data analysis and modelling for Portholme, the second part is collection and analysis of flood sediment for both sites. Future related work may include investigations, monitoring or actions to reduce diffuse pollution.

Modelling at Clfton Ings

The Floodplain Meadow Partnership has been running since 2006. It brings together seven organisations concerned with the conservation of this threatened habitat, for which it set out a 10-year vision in 2007 to improve its managment, restoration and public appreciation. The project has been part-funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Trust for the past 6 years. Phase III seeks funding for the co-ordinator post during 2014-2017. Other funding is in place from partners such as Natural England and Environment Agency to cover project expenses and the Open University's contribution has been to provide a limited number of days input from Academic staff to lead and support the project. Phase III of the project will seek to extend the public-engagment and citizen-science aspects of the work in line with Science Faculty priorities.

Species-rich floodplain meadows are an important habitat in Britain valued for their diversity and rare and unique species.  However, floodplains have an important role providing multiple ecosystem services many of which will become increasingly important with climate change.  It is vital to understand the relationship between these different ecosystem services, to determine whether conflicts or complementarities exist and to define the management needed to maximize ecosystem services.  This study will investigate the role floodplains have in delivering two ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and soil-carbon storage.  The focus of the study will be the relative importance of plant-community composition, plant functional traits and hydrology in determining carbon storage in the soils of floodplain meadows. This will be investigated through a series of observational field studies and a manipulative mesocosm experiment. Understanding the relationship between plant-community composition and soil-carbon would allow the use of plants as indicators of ecosystem service value.

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The diversity of meadows is a function of their nutrient supply. It is known that meadow productivity is limited by nitrogen avaialbility, but community coposition reflects phosphorus availability. This study seeks to see how the cycling of these two nutrients may be connected and thus influence meadow diversity.

The diversity of meadows is a function of their nutrient supply. It is known that meadow productivity is limited by nitrogen avaialbility, but community coposition reflects phosphorus availability. This study seeks to see how the cycling of these two nutrients may be connected and thus influence meadow diversity.

Following a series of wet years (2007-2009), many floodplain meadows in UK have been invaded by large species of sedge, reducing their biodiversity. The project seeks to trial non-chemical control methods, focussing on date and frequency of cutting.

Review and summarize information from the European literature and other primary and secondary data sources to identify the habitat conditions required for the existence of fens, ‘purple moor-grass and rush pastures’. Specifically the review will examine: I. the physio-chemical conditions, including topography, soils and hydrology under which existing fen, purple moor-grass and/or rush pasture habitats occur or may be restored, II. past and present land management practices of existing and restored habitats, III. restoration/re-creation methods including details of initial targeting and subsequent management techniques (e.g. seed introduction, soil/hydrological management and vegetation management). Based on these results, a range of restoration sites will be selected and their state/condition characterised in comparison with existing reference site conditions. An expert guidance and decision support system for targeting the restoration and re-creation of these habitats will be developed for Natural England and Countryside Council for Wales’s advisers

Recent research has aimed to describe the hydrological niches of individual species or communities to aid their conservation management (e.g. Stroh et al., 2012). The assumptions made in these studies, particularly the relative importance of water regime in the growing versus the non-growing season and the role of management (cutting, grazing) in determining the hydrological niche, need to be examined in other environments. To test these assumptions adequately, it is necessary to study a system with a contrasting climate and a contrasting management regime. The floodplain grasslands of Western Siberia provide the ideal opportunity for such a test. Whilst having some botanical similarity to the floodplain meadows of Western Europe, they have a markedly contrasting growing season (May-September compared to March-October in UK) and almost no management (occasional burning in spring as compared to annual mowing and grazing in the UK.). Data describing the hydrological niches of species in Siberia will either act to confirm that the current approach to quantifying niches is robust and suitable for use across a range of climatic zones and a variety of vegetation-management regimes; or they will reveal weaknesses in the assumptions that can be used to refine the current approach.

Improved understanding of the functioning of hydrological systems and dependent ecology is essential for optimal environmental management (Wheater and Peach, 2004). Floodplains in particular are important due to the ecosystem services they provide. However, floodplain ecosystems can be very sensitive to changes in hydrological regime. The proposed project, FUSE, aims to advance the knowledge on the interaction between the hydrological regime and the functioning of plant communities in floodplain meadows, at a variety of scales. A better understanding of these vulnerable ecosystems will allow improved environmental management, under current and future conditions. This aim will be achieved by sophisticated high-resolution model-data fusion (ref), involving: underground wireless measurement technologies; high-resolution hierarchical observational data; as well as state-of-the-art modelling tools. The proposed research addresses both the NERC Technologies Theme, through the realisation of the potential of sensor networks, and the Biodiversity Theme, by developing new tools and techniques to describe biodiversity and its function.

To help us understand how vegetation may respond to climate change, this project takes a plant community that occurs in all climate zones from the west coast of Ireland to central Siberia, namely the floodplain meadow community.  We aim to bring together researchers interested in this community from all parts of its range, but particularly from European Russia where many groups have been recording changes within this vegetation for decades. A central question is how responsive is the productivity to variations in temperature and rainfall and whether the species richness of the community reduces the variability by conferring resilience.