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Environmental Change
Global Environmental Change
Research into Environmental change is concentrated in the renowned Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC), which has guided international research agendas on surface- and ground-water quality, biodiversity, and climate change. ECRC has fourteen core members, twelve associated post-doctoral researchers, five eminent visiting professors and ten graduate students. It attracts research funding from NERC, EPSRC, EU, and Leverhulme. Its memebers currently co-ordinate a €20M EU Integrated Project called “The impact of climate change on freshwater ecosystems” or EUROLIMPACS, the NERC RAPID project called ISOMAP-UK and contribute to the NERC QUEST Programme. ECRC work falls into thirteen current research themes, which are grouped into the following broad areas.
1. Surface-water acidification: In recent years, ECRC members have identified the onset of recovery of UK acidified surface waters and the processes governing the time-scale of that recovery, and have developed critical load models for acid waters. Other work has refined understanding of nitrogen cycling in upland catchments, developed models to explain recent increases in dissolved organic carbon in upland waters, improved understanding of toxic pollutants in mountain lake districts worldwide and developed palaeolimnological techniques to define upland lake reference conditions.
2. Eutrophication, pollution and conservation of non-marine waters: Work under this theme has focussed on shallow lakes. Recent investigations have identified the role of toxic pollutants in confounding ecological recovery of shallow lakes. More widely, ECRC research has improved our understanding of processes controlling changes in shallow lake ecology and developed understanding of changes in aquatic biodiversity. Plant macrofossil analysis has been used to enhance understanding of plant loss in shallow lakes and the first UK palaeolimnological inference models for fossil cladoceran assemblages have been developed. Beyond the lacustrine environment, the development of novel tracers has enhanced understanding of pollutant dispersal in shallow groundwaters and in rivers.
Palaeoclimate: ECRC is a major centre for climate change research. Work has focussed on timescales from orbital to interannual and on both marine and terrestrial environments. Palaeoceanographic work has enhanced our understanding of ocean dynamics in the N. Pacific and Atlantic and produced the first Neogene ocean-surface temperature reconstructions using foraminifera Mg/Ca ratios. On the continents, investigations in N. Eurasia and W. Europe have demonstrated links between glacial-interglacial cycles and terrestrial responses and led to the development of revolutionary new hypotheses for Plio-Pleistocene climate and human evolution in East Africa. For the last glacial and Holocene, data – model comparisons have been used to investigate Amazon vegetation dynamics and abrupt climatic events in Europe. Investigations in China, Eurasia, the Arctic, Antarctica, Africa and Europe have enhanced understanding of Northern Hemisphere warm-stage climate variability and human responses.
3. Methodological advances remain a central focus of ECRC work. ECRC is a leading centre for research on diatoms and ongoing work continues the development of diatom-based palaeoeonvironmental proxies, including the application of diatom-silica isotope analysis. Other analytical developments include new methods for measuring fluids in minerals and the pioneering use of Ssperoidal carbonaceous particle (SCP) analysis for dating of recent sediments. The integration of palaeoenvironmental, observational and model data is being undertaken to development of diatom-silica oxygen-isotope analysis. The development of numerical techniques and their application to multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental datasets is a further focus of ECRC work, along with the development of lake databases and ecological classification tools and the integration of palaeoenvironmental, observational and model data.
Click here for a list of the current research grants.
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