Temporal hydrochemical dynamics of the River Wensum, UK: Observations from long-term high-resolution monitoring (2011–2018)

Cooper, Richard J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4518-5761, Hiscock, Kevin M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4505-1496, Lovett, Andrew A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0554-9273, Dugdale, Stephen J., Sünnenberg, Gisela and Vrain, Emilie (2020) Temporal hydrochemical dynamics of the River Wensum, UK: Observations from long-term high-resolution monitoring (2011–2018). Science of the Total Environment, 724. ISSN 0048-9697

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Abstract

In 2010, the UK government established the Demonstration Test Catchment (DTC) initiative to evaluate the extent to which on-farm mitigation measures can cost-effectively reduce the impacts of agricultural water pollution on river ecology whilst maintaining food production capacity. A central component of the DTC platform was the establishment of a comprehensive network of automated, web-based sensor technologies to generate high-temporal resolution (30 min) empirical datasets of surface water, groundwater and meteorological parameters over a long period (2011–2018). Utilising 8.9 million water quality measurements generated for the River Wensum, this paper demonstrates how long-term, high-resolution monitoring of hydrochemistry can improve our understanding of the complex temporal dynamics of riverine processes from 30 min to annual timescales. This paper explores the impact of groundwater-surface water interactions on instream pollutant concentrations (principally nitrogen, phosphorus and turbidity) and reveals how varying hydrochemical associations under contrasting flow regimes can elicit important information on the dominant pollution pathways. Furthermore, this paper examines the relationships between agricultural pollutants and precipitation events of varying magnitude, whilst demonstrating how high-resolution data can be utilised to develop conceptual models of hydrochemical processes for contrasting winter and summer seasons. Finally, this paper considers how high-resolution hydrochemical data can be used to increase land manager awareness of environmentally damaging farming operations and encourage the adoption of more water sensitive land management practices.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	demonstration test catchment,high-frequency,nitrate,phosphorus,telemetry,water quality,environmental engineering,environmental chemistry,waste management and disposal,pollution,sdg 2 - zero hunger ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2305
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Water Security Research Centre Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Geosciences Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?... https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	08 Apr 2020 00:45
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2024 22:32
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/74727
DOI:	10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138253

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