Adapting to climate change impacts on water resources in England—An assessment of draft Water Resources Management Plans

Climate change is expected to produce reductions in water availability in England, potentially necessitating adaptive action by the water industry to maintain supplies. As part of Ofwat's fifth Periodic Review (PR09), water companies recently released their draft Water Resources Management Plans, setting out how each company intends to maintain the balance between the supply and demand for water over the next 25 years, following Environment Agency guidelines. This paper reviews these plans to determine company estimates of the impact of climate change on water supply relative to other resource pressures. The approaches adopted for incorporating the impact in the plans and the proposed management solutions are also identified.Climate change impacts for individual resource zones range from no reductions in deployable output to greater than 50% over the planning period. The estimated national aggregated loss of deployable output under a “core” climate scenario is ∼520 Ml/d (3% of deployable output) by 2034/2035, the equivalent of the supply of one entire water company (South West Water). Climate change is the largest single driver of change in water supplies over the planning period. Over half of the climate change impact is concentrated in southern England. In extreme cases, climate change uncertainty is of the same magnitude as the change under the core scenario (up to a loss of ∼475 Ml/d). 44 of the 68 resource zones with available data are estimated to have a climate change impact. In 35 of these climate change has the greatest impact although in 10 zones sustainability reductions have a greater impact. Of the overall change in downward pressure on the supply-demand balance over the planning period, ∼56% is accounted for by increased demand (620 Ml/d) and supply side climate change accounts for ∼37% (407 Ml/d). Climate change impacts have a cumulative impact in concert with other changing supply side reducing components increasing the national pressure on the supply-demand balance. Whilst the magnitude of climate change appears to justify its explicit consideration, it is rare that adaptation options are planned solely in response to climate change but as a suite of options to provide a resilient supply to a range of pressures (including significant demand side pressures). Supply-side measures still tend to be considered by water companies to be more reliable than demand-side measures.     

Mesozoic metallogeny in East China and corresponding geodynamic settings — An introduction to the special issue

The giant East China Mesozoic metallogenic province hosts some of the World’s largest resources of tungsten, tin, molybdenum, antimony and bismuth. Ores of gold, silver, mercury, lead, zinc, copper, uranium and iron are also of major importance. The province and its constituent metallogenic belts or regions (South China; Middle–Lower Yangtze River Valley; East Qinling–Dabie; Interior of North China Craton; Yan-Liao and North-east China) are the products of several pulses of igneous activity and mineralisation between ~240 and ~80 Ma. Each successive stage has produced a distinctive suite of deposits that can be readily related to the geodynamic evolution of the region during the Mesozoic. This geodynamic evolution is linked to a complex series of tectonic events, involving far-field-subduction, plate collisions, crustal thickening, post-collision collapse and rifting.     

A Multi‐Objective,Multi‐Criteria Approach to Improve Situational Awareness in Emergency Evacuation Routing Using Mobile Phone Data

Emergency services personnel face risks and uncertainty as they respond to natural and anthropogenic events. Their primary goal is to minimize the loss of life and property, especially in neighborhoods with high population densities, where response time is of great importance. In recent years, mobile phones have become a primary communication device during emergencies. The portability of cell phones and ease of information storage and dissemination has enabled effective implementation of cell phones by first responders and one of the most viable means of communication with the population. Using cellular location data during evacuation planning and response also provides increased awareness to emergency personnel. This article introduces a multi‐objective, multi‐criteria approach to determining optimum evacuation routes in an urban setting. The first objective is to calculate evacuation routes for individual cell phone locations, minimizing the time it would take for a sample population to evacuate to designated safe zones based on both distance and congestion criteria. The second objective is to maximize coverage of individual cell phone locations, using the criteria of underlying geographic features, distance and congestion. In summary, this article presents a network‐based methodology for providing additional analytic support to emergency services personnel for evacuation planning.     

Mitigating methane emissions from livestock: a global analysis of sectoral policies

Methane emissions from livestock enteric fermentation and manure management represent about 40% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector and are projected to increase substantially in the coming decades, with most of the growth occurring in non-Annex 1 countries. To mitigate livestock methane, incentive policies based on producer-level emissions are generally not feasible because of high administrative costs and producer transaction costs. In contrast, incentive policies based on sectoral emissions are likely administratively feasible, even in developing countries. This study uses an economic model of global agriculture to estimate the effects of two sectoral mitigation policies: a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme based on average national methane emissions per unit of commodity. The analysis shows how the composition and location of livestock production and emissions change in response to the policies. Results illustrate the importance of global mitigation efforts: when policies are limited to Annex 1 countries, increased methane emissions in non-Annex 1 countries offset approximately two-thirds of Annex 1 emissions reductions. While non-Annex 1 countries face substantial disincentives to enacting domestic carbon taxes, developing countries could benefit from participating in a global sectoral emissions trading scheme. We illustrate one scheme in which non-Annex 1 countries collectively earn USD 2.4 billion annually from methane emission permit sales when methane is priced at USD 30/t CO₂-eq.     

Runoff generation in zero-order precambrian shield catchments: The stormflow response of a heterogeneous landscape

Hydrometric and isotopic (oxygen-18) observations were used to delineate the runoff processes operating in several headwater catchments on the Precambrian Shield of Canada. The catchments comprise patches of conifer forest situated on thin soils among areas of lichen-covered granitic bedrock. Horton overland flow occurred from the lichen-bedrock areas in all precipitation events that exceeded 4–6 mm. Runoff from the forest stands occurred mainly as subsurface stormflow, but in some instances saturation overland flow was observed. The occurrence of saturation overland flow was controlled by the topography of the bedrock beneath the forest soils. The area contributing runoff and the pathway by which water was conveyed to the catchment outflow switched from the open lichen-bedrock areas producing overland flow on the rising limb of the storm hydrograph to the forest stands contributing subsurface stormflow on the recession limb of the hydrograph. The areal extent and position of the landscape units in the basin were important to the rate and magnitude of stormflow production. Runoff was generated from the catchments only during and immediately after snowmelt and/or rainfall events. The catchments were dry and/or frozen for about 70% of the year.     

Hydrology of a headwater basin wetland: Groundwater discharge and wetland maintenance

The link between groundwater and surface hydrology in a small headwater drainage basin in the zone of glacial deposition of southern Ontario south of the Precambrian Shield was examined for two years. The basin is situated in a discharge zone of a regional aquifer and contains a small treed spring-fed swamp. The swamp exists because of the groundwater and has little effect on the maintenance of streamflow. Groundwater input to the swamp is an order of magnitude larger than precipitation. Groundwater of local and regional origin passes through the swamp by two routes: surface streamlets, where groundwater that emerges at specific seepage points in the swamp is conveyed over the ground surface with little interaction with the swamp itself, and by diffuse seepage in the swamp and through the bed of the stream. While the diffuse seepage input is the smaller component of groundwater it maintains the swamp's saturation. Groundwater input to the swamp from the specific seepage points and diffuse flow varies little over a year; therefore the saturation of the swamp and baseflow from the basin display little seasonal variation compared to other wetland types. The existence of the valley bottom in the headwater basin alters the seasonal and storm hydrology and is important to biogeochemical transformation of emerging groundwater.     

A granite–gabbro complex from Madagascar: constraints on melting of the lower crust

The Ranomandry Complex is a Neoproterozoic, nested intrusion from central Madagascar composed of a gabbroic core within a coeval peraluminous granite ring intruding pelitic metasediments. Although xenocryst entrainment and magma mixing have both contributed to marginal phases of the granite, the primary melt is characterised by steep LREE/HREE ratios and negligible, or slightly positive, Eu anomalies. Both isotopic and trace element systematics preclude an origin from either partial melting of the metapelitic country rock or from fractional crystallisation of the gabbroic magma. However, trace-element modelling suggests an origin from the dehydration melting of a plagioclase-poor, garnet-bearing metagreywacke at temperatures of 850–900 °C and at lower crustal pressures (>10 kbar). Melting of an enriched subcontinental mantle generated gabbroic magmas that caused advective heating and anatexis at the base of thickened continental crust during their ascent. Transport of the resulting granite magma was facilitated by the pre-existing plumbing system that overcame thermal and mechanical problems associated with both diapirism and self-propagating dykes as mechanisms for long-distance transport of granite magmas. The nested geometry of the intrusions is an indication of a structurally homogeneous lower crust that contains no pre-existing shear zones or fault systems.     

Transpressive duplex and flower structure: Dent Fault System, NW England

Revised mapping along the Dent Fault (northwest England) has improved the resolution of folds and faults formed during Variscan (late Carboniferous) sinistral transpression. A NNE-trending east-down monocline, comprising the Fell End Syncline and Taythes Anticline, was forced in Carboniferous cover above a reactivated precursor to the Dent Fault within the Lower Palaeozoic basement. The Taythes Anticline is periclinal due to interference with earlier Acadian folds. The steep limb of the monocline was eventually cut by the west-dipping Dent Fault. The hangingwall of the Dent Fault was dissected by sub-vertical or east dipping faults, together forming a positive flower structure in cross-section and a contractional duplex in plan view. The footwall to the Dent Fault preserves evidence of mostly dip-slip displacements, whereas strike-slip was preferentially partitioned into the hangingwall faults. This pattern of displacement partitioning may be typical of transpressive structures in general. The faults of the Taythes duplex formed in a restraining overlap zone between the Dent Fault and the Rawthey Fault to the west. The orientations of the duplex faults were a response to kinematic boundary conditions rather than to the regional stress field directly. Kinematic constraints provided by the Dent and neighbouring Variscan faults yield a NNW–SSE regional shortening direction in this part of the Variscan foreland.