Drought — how resilient are we?
13th - 14th June 2012
Although recent rainfall has resulted in some improvement in river flows and reservoir levels, the previous 18 months of below average rainfall means groundwater levels remain amongst the lowest on record and the water resource situation in parts of the UK continues to look precarious. Parts of the UK remain officially in drought and water companies are applying for drought orders and encouraging consumers to conserve water.
With climate change modelling suggesting that there may be an increase in the frequency and severity of droughts in the future is this a sign of things to come and a reminder of how vulnerable our water resources are? It is timely then that the NERC Water Security Knowledge Exchange Programme (WSKEP), led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has identified drought resilience as a key priority subject.
The UK Groundwater Forum’s annual conference was held in conjunction with the NERC WSKEP and will be followed by a workshop on ‘Improving drought prediction, communication and impact assessment’.
Conference:
Drought — how resilient are we? (Wed 13th June)
Abstracts
Attendee List
Groundwater drought: risks and opportunities (pdf 0.5MB)
Trevor Bishop, Head of Water Resources, Environment Agency
What drought means for a water company (pdf 1.1MB)
Richard Bienfait, Managing Director, Veolia Water Central
The challenge of drought to the farming community (pdf 1.6MB)
James Dodds, UK Irrigation Association
How can we make our environment more resilient to drought? (pdf 3MB)
Phil Burston, RSPB
Spatio-temporal relationships between the surface and groundwater manifestations of drought (pdf 2.1MB)
Terry Marsh, Leader of National Hydrological Monitoring Programme, Centre for ecology and hydrology
Empirical evidence for hydrogeological controls on variations in the spatial and temporal extent of groundwater droughts in the UK (pdf 0.5MB)
John Bloomfield, Leader of Groundwater Systems, Analysis and Management, British Geological Survey
Drought and the environment - impacts and analyses (pdf 1.3MB)
Anna Wetherell, Natural England
Climate change in water resource planning (pdf 2MB)
Steven Wade, Group Manager, Water Management, HR Wallingford
Overview of current drought research and its relevance to the challenges we face (pdf 3.5MB)
Kevin Hiscock, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Conference sponsors:
WSKEP Workshop:
Improving drought prediction, communication and impact assessment (Thurs 14th June)
Attendee List
Participant Pack
The WSKEP workshop focused on identifying: how past and current NERC research and scientific outputs can support improved drought prediction, communication and impact assessment; what research is still needed to meet the future challenges faced by decision makers and those that may be affected by drought and; the priority actions we need to take to improve our resilience to drought.
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