Category: Uncategorized

Giamba Bussi and colleagues have used INCA model to develop a decision support system to assess water quality impacts in urban rivers. Poor water quality is a widespread issue in urban rivers and streams throughout the world. Localised pollution can have impacts on local communities, from health issues to environmental degradation and restricted recreational use of water. The Salmons and Pymmes Brooks, located in London UK, have significant pollution impacts from misconnected sewers, urban runoff and atmospheric pollution. The first step towards finding sustainable and effective solutions to these issues is to identify sources and paths of pollutants and to understand their cycle through catchments and rivers. The team applied INCA to the two urban catchments with the aim of providing local communities and community action groups such as Thames21 with a tool they can use to assess the water quality issue. They evaluated a set of mitigation strategies including constructed wetland across the catchment to assess pollution control. Constructed wetlands can make a significant difference reducing sediment transport and improving nutrient control for nitrogen and phosphorus. This study showed that a substantial reduction in nitrate, ammonium and phosphorus concentrations can be achieved if a proper catchment-scale wetland implementation strategy is put in place. Furthermore, nutrient reduction efficiency of the wetlands should not be affected by climate change.

Giamba Bussi and colleagues have published a new study of the effects that dams and climate change are having on sediment transport in the Mekong Delta. Credible predictions of sediment dynamics are essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The livelihoods of millions of people living in the world’s deltas are deeply interconnected with the sediment dynamics of these deltas. Sustainable inputs of fluvial sediments from upstream rivers are critical for ensuring the fertility of delta soils and for promoting sediment deposition that can offset rising sea levels. Yet, in many large river catchments this supply of sediment is being threatened by the planned construction of large dams. In this study, Dr. Bussi and colleagues apply the INCA hydrological and sediment model to the Mekong River catchment in South East Asia. Their aim was to assess the impact of several large dams (both existing and planned) on suspended sediment fluxes in the river. After calibrating to present day conditions, they forced the INCA model with future climate scenarios to assess the interplay of changing climate and sediment trapping caused by dam construction. Their results suggest that historical sediment flux declines have mostly been caused by dam construction and that sediment trapping will increase in the future if new, planed dams are constructed. If all dams that are currently planned for the next two decades are built, the model predicts a decline of suspended sediment flux of 50% (47–53% 90% confidence interval) compared to current levels (99 Mt/year at the delta apex), with potentially damaging consequences for local livelihoods and ecosystems.