water@leeds Report

Melting glaciers could speed up carbon emissions into the atmosphere 

Dr Sarah Fell, Professor Jonathan Carrivick, Professor Lee Brown, School of Geography 

An international research team led by water@leeds has for the first time linked glacier-fed mountain rivers with higher rates of plant material decomposition, a major process in the global carbon cycle.  

Global warming is driving the accelerated loss of glaciers worldwide. This is causing the rivers which drain many glaciers to experience an increase in water temperature and a decrease in the variability of their flow and channel bed movement. These conditions are more favourable for the establishment and growth of aquatic fungi which are the principal decomposers of organic matter in alpine rivers. This increase in algal abundance and subsequent accelerated breakdown of complex carbon molecules in mountain rivers could speed up the release of carbon emissions to the atmosphere and drive further global warming – a newly identified climate feedback. 

An international team of 10 scientists led by water@leeds sampled 57 rivers in six mountain ranges across four continents, in Austria, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United States. They submerged strips of artist’s canvas in each river to measure the decomposition of cellulose – the key constituent of riparian shrubs and grasses which naturally enter alpine rivers. Following river incubation the tensile strength loss of the canvas strips relative to non-submerged controls was used as a proxy for decomposition, with greater tensile strength loss indicating higher levels of fungal breakdown. The fungal community and presence of a fungal cellulose degrading gene (cbhI) was identified on canvas retrieved from each river. The team found a globally consistent response, with reduced glacier cover driving greater abundances of aquatic fungi and their cbhI gene, which in turn accelerated the decomposition of cellulose. This suggests there may be a universal rule underpinning the response of these river ecosystems to climate change, potentially informing predictions of how they will change as unprecedent glacier retreat continues in many mountain regions throughout the 21st century. 

Related Paper: Fell, S.C., Carrivick, J.L., Cauvy-Fraunié, S. et al. Fungal decomposition of river organic matter accelerated by decreasing glacier cover.

Climate change and watershed process interactions: Large-scale Anthropogenic changes to freshwater and nearshore coastal biogeochemical cycles.

Dr Taylor Maavara, School of Geography

Rivers are the great connectors of the freshwater cycle. They provide essential services valued at >$4 trillion annually, including water supply, transportation, food security and waste assimilation, and they harbour >10% of known biodiversity for <1% Earth’s surface.

Essential nutrient elements such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and carbon (C) are transported and transformed in river systems along the land-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC), forming the basis for freshwater and marine food webs.

My research focuses on answering key research questions at the local through global scale, resolved for lakes, rivers, reservoirs and estuaries: (1) How important are inland waters as sources of greenhouses gases to the atmosphere? (2) How have these gaseous emissions changed with climate change in combination with human alteration to river systems? (3) How are climate change-driven perturbations, in combination with human-driven alterations to river systems, altering the absolute and relative fluxes of nutrients along the land-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC)? (4) What could be achieved practically with environmental land management strategies that explicitly consider linkages between multiple stressors? My research couples advances in spatially explicit computer simulations of river catchments, new global-scale hydrological datasets, AI techniques, along with collection of local field data, to quantify the effects of interacting multiple stressors of climate change and direct human alterations (land use, damming) on global freshwater nutrient cycles.

Recent related paper: Maavara, T., Brinkerhoff, C., Hosen, J., Aho, K., Logozzo, L., Saiers, J., Stubbins, A. and Raymond, P. (2023), Watershed DOC uptake occurs mostly in lakes in the summer and in rivers in the winter.

Introduction from Associate Director for Partnerships

Professor Julia Martin Ortega

Our vision for Mission 2 is a broad further enthused, diverse and empowered community of members with long-term secured funding that allows them to thrive in global and local partnerships in world-changing research.

We currently support an annual average of £10 million per year of research value, which we aim to increase through our grant development support.  

Over the last 18 months, we have further developed water@leeds Philanthropic Engagement Strategy, which aims to diversifying our research income through philanthropic and non-traditional funding sources. For this, we work alongside the University’s Advancement Team, who engage with the University’s alumni community trust, and foundations globally. By encouraging and supporting our membership to engage with philanthropic opportunities, it is our hope that we will increase the resilience of our long-term funding and to increase our opportunities for impact.  An example of of a successful philanthropic application has been the award of close to half a million pounds from the Lloyds Register Foundation to develop weather-related disaster communication research.

We have also consolidated our programme for supporting the transition to senior research level of our early career researcher. This ERC grant development typically supports researchers with some post-doctoral experience into acquiring their own research funds (e.g. through fellowships) for the development of independent research.  

Finally, the past 18 months have seen the Water Woman Award expand into a broader Initiative. Started in 2021, the Water Woman Award has celebrated and promoted the excellent work of our women members, across all career levels, disciplines and roles, and in 2022 was awarded a first prize in the University’s Research Culture Awards. Moving forward, we are working on growing Water Woman into a broader, more inclusive, culture changing and international initiative.  

Moving Mountains: The Legacies of Landslides    

Dr Rebecca Jarman, School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies   

Mountains are conceived as concrete and stable entities, and yet they move, like the glaciers, lakes, and rivers that sustain them. In certain expressions, such as sudden and voluminous landslides, their movements can unleash untold destruction.    

Moving Mountains is an interdisciplinary project, supported by an AHRC Fellowship, that evaluates how communities across the world respond to catastrophic debris flows. Combining methodologies from the arts and concepts from the earth sciences, it scrutinizes the roles of collective memory and the geological imaginary in reconfiguring identities and reconstructing places over the course of several generations.    

Working in partnership with landslide survivors, community leaders, creative practitioners, non-governmental organizations, local authorities, and urban developers, the research has taken case studies from the UK, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. Across these settings, ‘Moving Mountains’ compares the impacts of debris flows since 1968 that have been caused by multiple factors that span earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, negligent industrial practices, and a warming climate.    

 Outputs of the project include a website, Moving Mountains; a podcast, Sobre vivientes, and the reproduction of a play, Wandering and Sleeplessness, made with survivors of the 1970 Peruvian earthquake; the digitisation and translation of the Armando Armero files, a Colombian NGO designed to locate victims of the 1985 Armero disaster; three academic articles and two book chapters in production.   

 Over the course of three years, ‘Moving Mountains’ will focus on a sustained comparison between the disasters in Aberfan (UK) and Yungay (Peru). More information on Moving Mountains can be found on Rebecca Jarman’s website. Previous iterations of the research have been sponsored by the AHRC, the Newton Fund, the British Council, and the University of Leeds.    

UKRI GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub

Dr Miller Alonso Camargo Valero, School of Civil Engineering

The Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub will enable sustainable water security through developing and demonstrating a systems approach that better understands water systems, values all aspects of water and strengthens water governance to help meeting UN’s Sustainable Development Goal No. 6 – Clean water and Sanitation. The Water Hub started in February 2019 and will run until September 2024.  

water@leeds is a key partner with UK-based universities Newcastle and Oxford, and four overseas collaboratories from Colombia, Ethiopia, India and Malaysia. The following are some of the activities of the last year:

We contributed to the ARUP-water@leeds knowledge exchange programme delivering the 'Water security and sustainable development' course to civil servants and government officials from Peru, as part of their Reconstruction Programme set to rebuilt critical infrastructure after the Costal Niño affecting Peru in 2017.  

Leading research on the use of photosynthetic organisms including microalgae and duckweed has led to the organisation of the 13th IWA Conference on Wastewater Pond and Algal Technologies (July 2022, Melbourne), with members of our team leading the Scientific and Programme Committees.   

We have developed a conceptual framework led by Dr Carolina Montoya Pachango, in order to conduct MUltidimensional rISK Assessment (MUISKA) in river basins based on systems thinking, hydrocomplexity, risk science, and stakeholder participation. In this video, inhabitants of the municipality of Cajibío, Colombia describe their struggles with water insecurity in the region and Water Hub researchers explain the MUISKA approach to analysing multiple risks based on participatory research.

The team has investigated the usefulness of global datasets for assessing national flood risk in the five Water Hub countries. This work uncovered significant disagreement between national flood risk estimates, suggesting not all global datasets are up to the task and further work on assessing the suitability of select global datasets at the sub-national scale is needed.  

water@leeds - Shandong University Partnership 

Professor Martin Tillotson

water@leeds recently entered into a cooperation agreement with Shandong University (Weihai Campus) in north east China. This new partnership with the Institute of Blue and Green Development will help promote scientific research and student exchange between our two institutions, specifically focussing on water resource management and engineering. It is well known that climate change is having a significant impact in global water availability, and this problem is particularly acute in China which is heavily reliant on glacial meltwater and aquifer recharge for much of its freshwater supply.

With glacial retreat and extensive groundwater pollution restricting water availability there is a looming water crisis, particularly in the more arid and heavily populated north eastern areas of the country. The focus of the partnership is on student mobility, with up to 5 researchers a year coming to Leeds from Shandong to study for a PhD, and further facilitating two-way PhD student visits of up to 12 months. The arrangement will also facilitate staff exchange visits as well as participation in relevant events and workshops.

Introduction from Associate Director for Impact

Professor Paul Kay, School of Geography

water@leeds aims to generate world-leading research which has major impacts on society, the environment and the economy and we have a long history of impact-driven work with a wide-range of stakeholders, richly demonstrated by ongoing projects.

The Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) remains our flagship impact project and is developing into a hub for stakeholders’ research and consultancy needs.  Going forward, we will be using our recent 100 research questions paper as a focal point for future collaborations and to make sure we are addressing the most pressing water management issues. Another focus will be the development of a permanent environmental monitoring network throughout the River Aire catchment and we are working with key organisations such as the Aire Rivers Trust.

We will also be aiming to help water@leeds members gain strategic positions where they are likely to be able to impact the outside world, including membership of expert committees and secondments to government and industry. We will keep generating research translation funding and encourage water@leeds members to produce strong Research Excellence Framework impact case studies.

Our excellent support structure continues to help us to work with outside organisations to address research needs that will deliver real impact. 

Living Museum of Umm Qais: Sustainable preservation, analysis and virtual reconstruction in Northern Jordan

Professor Gehan Selim, School of Civil Engineering 

Umm Qais is located c. 120km north of Amman in the north west corner of Jordan and sits on several hills at the eastern tip of a large fan shaped basalt plateau divided from the Golan heights to the north by the river carved valley of the Yarmouk River.

Its water supply had the longest aqueduct tunnels in the ancient world and the city was host to poets, philosophers and emperors and later was an important focus of pilgrimage for early Christians. 

Umm Qais and the remains of ancient Gadara were registered on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2001 and the ancient city of Gadara is a key tourist destination in the region for both domestic and international visitors which adds significant income to the local economy. The site is now at risk of physical deterioration and loss of local knowledge and expertise in Heritage protection. 

The Living Museum Umm Qais is an international collaboration led by the “Architecture and Urbanism” research group at University of Leeds, and is part of an effort to rebuild the connections between the local community and both the remains of the Ottoman village and the archaeological remains of the ancient city that it was built on. The aim is to revitalise the community’s sense of place and interest in their heritage and support sustainable heritage approaches that benefit the local economy and ensure protection for all aspects of Umm Qais’s past. 

The project brings together an international cross-discipline team of experts, young people and volunteers from Archaeology, Architecture, Cultural Heritage projection and management, Digital arts, computer science, Governance and Education. 

We are utilising this breadth of experience and local knowledge to engage local young people and early career heritage professionals, building capacity in the latest 3D digital approaches for cultural heritage within the within the local community, local universities and local enterprise.

Umm Qais Heritage project provides a model for how successful partnerships with marginalised local communities can generate innovative initiatives, build capacity and improve a previously limited set of skills, providing the communities with creative opportunities through local micro-enterprise to overcome the ongoing challenges of poverty.  

The Climate Change and Sanitation: Assessing Resilience and Emissions project 

Dr Cynthia Okoro Shekwaga, School of Civil Engineering

There is growing evidence of significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from onsite sanitation systems (OSS) like pit latrines and septic tanks.

The conventional method of estimating GHG emissions using the United Nations International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) protocol gives a gross misrepresentation of the actual emissions from OSS especially for low and middle-income countries (LMIC).

While the IPCC protocol was established using ideal scenarios from the developed countries, large variations in OSS in low LMIC ranging from the physical design, population to utilization ratio, and organic content and degradation rate of the organic matter are potential sources of error when deploying the IPCC protocol, leading to inaccurate estimations of GHG emissions from OSS in LMIC.  

The Climate Change and Sanitation: Assessing Resilience and Emissions project (SCARE), is a £1.15 million project funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop low-cost adaptable technologies for quantifying GHGs from OSS in LMIC. The SCARE consortia comprise a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by the University of Bristol, in collaboration with: the University of Leeds; University of Technology, Sydney; Kathmandu University, Nepal; Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology; Haramaya University, Ethiopia; Kuambogo University, Uganda; and the Global Green Growth Institute.   

Experimental protocols have been developed at the University of Leeds, which are currently being replicated in the partner countries – Ethiopia, Senegal, Uganda and Nepal, at both laboratory and field capacities to enable direct quantification of GHG from OSS as an alternative to the IPCC protocol.

Book Publication: Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry: A Foundation for the Future  

Professor Mark Trigg, School of Civil Engineering 

The Congo is the world's second largest river basin and home to 120 million people. Understanding the cycling of water, sediments, and nutrients is important as the region faces climatic and anthropogenic change.  

A new book, Congo Basin Hydrology, Climate, and Biogeochemistry: A Foundation for the Future  explores variations in and influences on rainfall, hydrology and hydraulics, and sediment and carbon dynamics. The book contains 28 chapters with contributions from 106 co-authors.   

Seven chapters include contributions from water@leeds members and DRC partners, CREEBaC. These contributions detail unique new river data collected over the last 6 years of fieldwork on over 2000 km of the Congo River. They also document lessons learnt through partnership experiences from our two Royal Society funded projects: The Congo River users Hydrology and Morphology (CRuHM) project and the Congo River Island Stability Prospects (CRISP) project.   

This book is a foundation for new scientific discoveries, new collaborations, and resources management.     

Introduction from Associate Director for Next Generation 2022-23

Dr Adam Booth, School of Earth and Environment

What does the next generation of water researcher look like?  For me, it's someone who has technical skills in a specific area of expertise, but engages widely across disciplines to boost the societal and scientific impact of their work. Drawing on researchers across all sectors of university activity, water@leeds is ideally placed to nurture this cross-disciplinary awareness. 

My vision for the Next Generation mission is to provide an environment that empowers early-career researchers to explore the wider world of water, with a diverse package of networking, funding and internship opportunities. I’ve been really encouraged to see the range of PhD researchers that apply to our SPRING (Supporting Postgraduate Researchers to Inspire the Next Generation) award.

Furthermore, I hope that water@leeds alumni would be keen to share the benefit of their experience with current members, leading to a self-perpetuating research community of researchers that spans career stages. A great example of this is how one of our engineering graduates helped us to secure MSc projects for students in the School of Biology, exploring biodiversity around renewable energy infrastructure. If you could provide opportunities for our next generation community, or simply a testimonial about a springboard that water@leeds provided, we would be delighted to hear from you!

Thank you

This report was coordinated and designed by the water@leeds Management Team:

Dr Gabriela Lopez-Gonzalez Co-ordinator, Ann Marie Boyle water@leeds Administrator, and Susannah Hopson water@leeds Research Innovation Development Officer.

We would like to thank all water@leeds members for their contributions of articles and photographs.