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SCHOOL OFENVIRONMENTALSCIENCES

conference

School of Environmental SciencesPostgraduate Research Conference

May 13th-14th 2019

Postgraduate Conference 2019

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ContentsWelcome 4

Oral Presentation Timetable 5

13th May Oral Presentation Sessions 6

Coasts and estuaries 6

Quantitative investigations into human behaviour 6

Environmental Planning and Assessment 7

Planning and urban governance 7

The Rock Record 8

Fluid Flow: Above Ground 8

Geological Studies using Big Data 9

Multi-disciplinary study of Ocean and ecosystem 9

14th May Oral Presentation Sessions 10

Dynamics and ecology of wet and dry ecosystems 10

Urban Big Data and innovative methodologies 10

The impact of weather on land and sea 11

Impact of a changing climate on the ocean and ecosystem 11

Contemporary issues in Human geography 12

Lakes and seas: physics and sedimentology 12

Fluid Flow: Below Ground 13

Hazards & Natural Disasters 13

Abstracts 14

conference

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Welcome

Welcome

I am delighted to welcome you to the School of Environmental Sciences PGR conference 2019! Thank you to the PGR Conference Organising Committee for arranging over 95 talks into sessions over two days. The breadth of the subject areas reflects and celebrates the multi-disciplinarity within SoES. The PGR community is the ‘engine room’ of research in the School. Please come and support our PGR community. All staff and students are very welcome.

Lunch will be provided in the Student Guild. Please collect your voucher from the registration desk in the Foresight Centre. A social event will take place after the conference on Tuesday 14th May at 5.30pm in the Herdman Map Library. Please join us for pizza and refreshments.

Claire Mahaffey

School Director of PGR Studiess

Registration open from 9am near entrance

to Chapel

Coffee will be served from 9am in the

Chapel corridor

Welcome from Head of Department and

Director of PGR at 9.15am on Monday 13th May

in The Chapel

Talks will finish at approx 4.30pm

Postgraduate Research Conference Organising Committee

Patrick BallantyneSteven BeynonMalachy Buck Leo Mahieu Laura Scott

PGR Committee Prof Claire MahaffeyDr Dani Arribas-Bel Jayne AviesDr Sarah Clement Dr Neil MacdonaldDr Betty MarianiDr Fabienne Marret-DaviesDr Sam PatrickDr Mark RileyDr Pascal SalaunDr Olivier Sykes

Professional Services Support

Student Experience Jayne AviesAimee Lloyd

Management Services Lindsay DaviesMarketing and Communications

Jamie HughesAdam McShaneSuzanne Yee

Location: Foresight Centre

Registration: Through the Chapel entrance


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Tuesday 14th May

Thornton room The Chapel

9-9.30am Coffee

9.30amDynamics and

ecology of wet and dry ecosystems

The impact of weather on land

and sea

10.30-10.50am

Coffee Break

10.50am

Urban Big Data studies

and innovative methodologies

Impact of a changing climate on the ocean

and ecosystem

12noon - 1.30pm

Lunch in Student Guild

1.30pmContemporary issues in Human geography

Fluid Flow: Below Ground

2.50-3.15pm

Coffee Break

3.15pmLakes and seas:

physics and sedimentology

Hazards & Natural Disasters

4.30pm End of day 2

Monday 13th May

Thornton room The Chapel

9am Coffee

9.15amWelcome and Introduction

9.30am Coasts and estuariesEnvironmental Planning and Assessment

10.30-10.50am

Coffee Break

10.50amQuantitative

investigations into human behaviour

Planning and urban governance

12noon - 1.30pm

Lunch in Student Guild

1.30pm The Rock RecordGeological Studies

using Big Data

2.50-3.15pm

Coffee Break

3.15pmFluid Flow: Above

Ground

Multi-disciplinary study of Ocean and

ecosystem

4.30pm End of day 1

Tuesday 14th MaySOCIAL EVENT IN HERDMAN MAP LIBRARY

5.30pm onwards After Conference Refreshments and Pizza

Oral Presentation TimetableForesight Centre - Thornton Room and The Chapel

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Oral Presentation Sessions

9.30 Thornton Room

Coasts and estuaries: Convenor - Leo Mahieu 1h03

15minDahiru

MuhammedSedimentary facies analysis based on multi-element XRF analyses

Earth Sciences

15min Naboth Simon Relationship between Grain Size Distribution and Sedimentary Environments in Modern Estuarine

Earth Sciences

15minHannah

Lehnhart-BarnettPeat moorland rewilding; enhancing carbon sequestration and slowing down flows

Physical Geography

15minMatthew

McParland Modelling the Sediment Dynamics of Large Woody Debris Dams

Physical Geography

3 minJames

DuckworthRed-Throated Diver Energetics Project

Ecology and Marine

Biology

13th May Oral Presentation Sessions

10.50 Thornton Room

Quantitative investigations into human behaviour: Convenor - Sarah Garlick

1h36

15min Susie Philp Sensing dynamic retail environmentsHuman

Geography

15min Alec DaviesUsing loyalty card records and machine learning to understand how self-medication behaviours vary seasonally

Human Geography

15min Yungzhe LiuUnderstanding the dynamics and context of New York transportation hubs

Human Geography

15min Meixu ChenQuantifying the dynamic characteristics of urban areas of interest through deep learning

Human Geography

15min Sarah GarlickGeographic Inequalities in ethnic minority and imigrant labour market experiences in England and Wales

Human Geography

15 min Ellen TalbotUsing Energy Performance Certificates to critically evaluate the new fuel poverty definition

Human Geography

3minOlivia

HorsefieldSpatial and temporal distributions of alchohol-related crime around off-licensed venues in Liverpool

Human Geography

3minPatrick

BallantyneGlobal retail centres and their composition

Human Geography


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9.30 The Chapel

Environmental Planning and Assessment: Convenor - Malachy Buck 0h51

15minMashal Hamed

AlammarRole of Urban Green Infrastructure for Enhancing Urban Liveability

Planning

15min Dipita Hossain Environmental impacts of textiles in Bangladesh Planning

15minFatemeh Khoshravi

The potential for Environmental impact assessment of Iran's water management

Planning

3min Malachy BuckExploring the Use of Planning Obligations in funding environmental measures.

Planning

3min Sophie PrestonExamining social learning in collaborative governance processes for nature-based solutions

Planning

10.50 The Chapel

Planning and urban governance: Convenor - Malachy Buck 0h48

15minKhaled

AlhomodiThe ability of urban planning mechanisms to limit urban sprawl Case studies of Saudi cities

Planning

15min Hong NiCity-region Governance in China: Between Centralized and Decentralized Intergovernmental Coordination

Planning

15min Yizhi Song Urban Governance of Smart Cities in China Planning

3min Yuqing ZhangUnequal school district and income-based residential segregation

Planning

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13.30 Thornton Room

The Rock Record: Convenor - Steven Beynon 1h21

15minJ Michael Grappone

Improving estimates of Earth’s paleomagnetic field intensity

Earth Sciences

15min Daniele Thallner What on Earth was the geomagnetic field doing just before the Cambrian explosion of life?

Earth Sciences

15min Yael EngbersIs the South Atlantic Anomaly a persistent reoccurring feature? A paleomagnetic study of Saint Helena

Earth Sciences

15minPeter

WooldridgeCharacterising basin scale sedimentary architecture through application of mass balance to the rock record

Earth Sciences

15min Stephan TobyThe fidelity of the stratigraphic record to archive sediment supply signals

Earth Sciences

3min Sofia Gonzalez Diagenetic controls on key rock properties in shale Earth

Sciences

3 min Ben HandfordThe length of the Low: how strong was Earth's magnetic field in the Triassic and Permian

Earth Sciences

15.15 Thornton Room

Fluid Flow: Above Ground: Convenor - Patrick Ballantyne 1h21

15min Peter HogarthConsistent Sea Level Rise around the UK over the last sixty years

Ocean Sciences

15minCristopher

FeeneySimulating long-term river channel changes to quantify floodplain sediment storage times

Physical Geography

15minHelen

Houghton-FosterThe Environment and Justice : Staffordshire c.1550-1750

Human Geography

15min Thea WingfieldStra tegic delivery of catchment wide natural flood management

Physical Geography

15 min Ahmad Tareemi Sustainable Water Demand Management Strategies in Saudi Arabia

Physical Geography

3min Grace Skirrow Long-term changes in the dynamics of former glacier-fed fluvial systems in Patagonia

Physical Geography

3min Dominik FahrnerGreenland wide terminus change from 1984-2017:linear climate responses and application of machine Physical

Geography


9

13.30 The Chapel

Geological Studies using Big Data: Convenor - Laura Scott 1h30

15min Simon Lloyd New version of the Shaw method Earth

Sciences

15min Isabella Masiero Evaluating the Structural Control Over Carbonate Platforms Developed in Syn–Rift Settings Using Stratigraphic and Seismic Forward Models

Earth Sciences

15min Haiwei Xi Numerical forward modelling of a peritidal carbonate system: autocyclic behaviour, sensitivity dependence and complexity

Earth Sciences

15minAsu Ebuta

Fubara Interpreting Hierarchical Stacking Patterns in Fan Strata produced from Lobyte3D Model Runs Tests

Earth Sciences

15min Yu Jiang A Bayesian approach for fault and volcano source parameters using wrapped InSAR data

Earth Sciences

15minBeth-Helén

Hatlebakk Munkli Acoustic analysis to predict plume propagation Earth

Sciences

15.15 The Chapel

Multi-disciplinary study of Ocean and ecosystem: Convenor - Leo Mahieu

0h54

15min Anthony Wise Connecting the Coast with the Deep OceanOcean

Sciences

15min Shaun RigbyUsing Helium to Constrain Resource Supply to the Ocean Mixed Layer

Ocean Sciences

15min Teri JonesVariation in sociality across foraging behaviour and strategy in a colonial seabird

Ecology and Marine

Biology

3minGemma Portlock

Sulphide and thiol species and their role in the marine copper cycling

Ocean Sciences

3min Leo Mahieu Iron chemical speciation in a more acidic oceanOcean

Sciences

3min Daniela Koenig Can iron isotopes constrain the ocean iron cycle?Ocean

Sciences

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9.30 Thornton Room

Dynamics and ecology of wet and dry ecosystems: Convenor - Patrick Ballantyne

1h18

15minAlice Harvey-

FishendenDrought and the construction of canal reservoirs

Physical Geography

15minCarmine Donatelli

How seagrass protect coastal lagoonsPhysical

Geography

15min Alice Walker The role of savanna ants in nutrient redistributionEcology

and Marine Biology

15min Phil KnightTidal Level Measurements for Coastal Resilience and Survey

Physical Geography

15min Lingyun TangReconstructing Historic and Contemporary Drought Patterns across China

Physical Geography

3min Joel WoonOut of the forest: How termites live inside and outside tropical rainforests

Ecology and Marine

Biology

10.50 Thornton Room

Urban Big Data and innovative methodologies: Convenor - Patrick Ballantyne

1h09

15min Melanie GreenComparing the urban environment with socioeconomic characteristics using features extracted from aerial imagery

Human Geography

15min Nikos PatiasA scalable analytical framework for Spatio-Temporal analysis of neighbourhood change

Human Geography

15minKrasen

SamardzhievTopological data analysis of big spatio-temporal urban data

Human Geography

15min Sam ComberUnpacking aspects of what we see from consumer amenities to characteristics of the human environment

Human Geography

3min Danial Owen Urban Sensors: exploiting new opportunitiesHuman

Geography

3min Chloe Steele Data Fusion and the 2021 Global CensusHuman

Geography

3min Sian TeesdaleThe Urban Analytics of Human Weather: form and forecast

Human Geography

14th May Oral Presentation Sessions


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9.30 The Chapel

The impact of weather on land and sea: Convenor - Malachy Buck 1h03

15min Natalie RoseUsing machine learning to explore the impact of weather on high street retail

Human Geography

15min Oliver BillsonObservations Of Infragravity Dominance In The Swash Zone Of A Steep Gravel Beach

Physical Geography

15min Jennifer JardineStorms as a trigger or seasonal stratification in temperate continental shelf seas

Ocean Sciences

15min David WilliamsMeteotsunamis produced by precipitating atmospheric systems across north-west Europe

Ocean Sciences

3minTemitope

Aiyewunmi Perceived causes and effects of flood events in Ijebu-Ode Southwest Nigeria.

Physical Geography

10.50 The Chapel

Impact of a changing climate on the ocean and ecosystem: Convenor - Malachy Buck

1h21

15minKatherine

TurnerHemispheric contributions to the global relationship between surface warming and cumulative emissions

Ocean Sciences

15min Liping MaHow Does the Atlantic Winter Jet Stream Affect Surface Heat Flux and SST?

Ocean Sciences

15minGuillermo

Garcia Gomez

"Can costs associated with organism growth explain major differences in rates at which energy is used as body mass increases?”

Ecology and Marine

Biology

15 min Daniel MaskreyThe complex relationship between behaviour and temperature in the beadlet sea anemone

Ecology and Marine

Biology

15 min Elliott PriceImpact of climate change and dietary resource availability on the feeding habits of Calanoid copepods in the Arctic Ocean.

Ocean Sciences

3min Stefano CoronaLong-term zooplankton dataset: resolving universal ecological responses to climate change

Ecology and Marine

Biology

3min Ciara PimmSouthern Ocean Ventilation and its impacts on heat and carbon uptake.

Ocean Sciences

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13.30 Thornton Room

Contemporary issues in Human geography: Convenor - Patrick Ballantyne

1hr36

15 minLeanne

Purdham

"It's like a summer camp": Discourses of humanitarianism and enforcement in The South Texas Family Residential Center

Human Geography

15min Alex KendrickStudent 'Lad' Culture in Online and Offline UK Higher Education Spaces

Human Geography

15min Ellie PerrinThe political economy of post-conflict transformation in Northern Ireland

Human Geography

15min Emma ThomasConservationists or ‘careless’ flood causers?:understanding the socio-cultural contexts of farmers’ agri-environmental action

Human Geography

15 min Celine Chalupa Ageing populations in CitiesHuman

Geography

15 min Li-Dan Shang The Influence of Nontraditional Family Structures on Children Educational Outcomes

Human Geography

3min Oliver McDowellThe contribution of alternative food initiatives to community empowerment in Liverpool

Human Geography

3min Gabrielle SaleAsian Women beyond resilience: negotiating community sevices in austere times

Human Geography

15.15 Thornton Room

Lakes and seas: physics and sedimentology: Convenor - Leo Mahieu 0h45

15min Hazel PhillipsDeveloping a Regional approach to paleoflood construction using lake and reservoir sediments

Physical Geography

15min Madeleine MoyleEstablishing the natural baseline and anthropogenic perturbation of P dynamics in the Shropshire meres from lake sediments

Physical Geography

15minValerie Le Guennec

Interannual variability of Black Sea's physical processes

Ocean Sciences


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15.15 The Chapel

Hazards & Natural Disasters: Convenor - Steven Beynon 0h54

15min Amy HughesA Field and Experimental Study of Shear Localisation and Frictional Melting in Volcanic Debris Avalanches

Earth Sciences

15min William Carter Insights into the Explosive Behaviour of Santiaguito Lava Dome Complex, from Seismic and Infrasound Network Deployment

Earth Sciences

15min Joe AslinRipplocations: a new mechanism to explain the deformation of phyllosilicates

Earth Sciences

3min Laura ScottThe origin of pseudotachylytes in seismogenic fault zones, and their role during interseismic creep

Earth Sciences

3minAntoine Delvoye

Understanding epistemic uncertainty captured in seismic hazard assessments for critical infrastructure

Earth Sciences

3minLouisa

Brotherson

Journey to the centre of the earthquake: how does damage affect earthquake source properties and radiated wavefields?

Earth Sciences

13.30 The Chapel

Fluid Flow: Below Ground: Convenor - Laura Scott 1h21

15min Steven BeynonHydrothermal vein morphology and distribution: a proxy for paleo-fluid flow within the Atacama Fault Zone, Chile

Earth Sciences

15min Simon MartinUnderstanding Fluid Flow during Magma Intrusion using Magnetic Fabrics in Analogue Models

Earth Sciences

15min Joshua WeaverSmectite disassociation at temperature; thermal weakening and permeability development in clay-bearing hyaloclastite

Earth Sciences

15minJenny

Schauroth Bubble nucleation and growth induced by shear in aphyric rhyolitic melts

Earth Sciences

15minDinfa Vincent

Barshep Bioclasts and hydrocarbons

Earth Sciences

3min Isabel Ashman Fluid flow through the crust: the role of mica-bearing shear zones

Earth Sciences

3minElliot

Rice-Birchall Factors affecting the formation of compaction bands in reservoir sandstones

Earth Sciences

14

Abstracts in alphabetical order

Mashal Hamed Alammar

Role of Urban Green Infrastructure for Enhancing Urban Liveability, Case of Dammam Metropolitan Area, Saudi Arabia.

This research is investigating the existing Saudi infrastructure.

The current Saudi landscape and urban planning face challenges such as water scarcity, desertification, sandstorms and lack of vegetation, have affected the formulation of Saudi built environment. Nevertheless, the problem occurred although from the absence of the integration between landscape planning policy and design that insignificantly deliver unlivable Saudi cities. Hence, this thesis tends to investigate the current and emerging of urban green infrastructure (UGI) to enhance urban liveability in arid regions and assist the Saudi Vision 2030. Dammam Metropolitan area has been chosen in this research to run a comparison narrative between three local government.

Temitope Olusegun Aiyewunmi

Perceived causes and effects of flood events in Ijebu-Ode Southwest Nigeria.

Several recent flooding events experienced in Ijebu-Ode have impacted the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of the inhabitants. Persistent and multi-hour rainfall experienced especially in the months of May, June, July and August have presented severe floods which have wreaked havoc in areas like; Igbeba, Talbot, Molipa, Ondo road, Obalende, Owakurudu amongst others, submerging roads, houses and schools, closing down business centres and causing loss of life. The research examines the perceived causes and effects of flood events in Ijebu-Ode, Southwest Nigeria. It will use both primary and secondary data. Secondary data are sourced from a variety sources including daily newspapers, community and official report, instrumental monthly rainfall (1981-2017) and temperature (1983-2017) for Ijebu-Ode, and climate parameters comprising of rainfall, temperature and rainy days (1990-2006) in Southwest Nigeria and population data for Ijebu-Ode covering (1950-2018) will be collated. Primary data collection will be focus around social science methodologies, particularly surveys and questionnaires which will examine public perception and understanding of flood risk and community interactions with existing flood relief channels which are commonly used for unofficial waste dumping. Data collected will be analysed using descriptive statistical analysis and graphical representations.

The research will explore environmental education and media opportunities as a tool for improving people’s awareness of flood risk and community responsibility to promote flood disaster risk management.


15

Isabel Ashman

Fluid flow through the crust: the role of mica-bearing shear zones

Phyllosilicate minerals form a significant proportion of the fault rocks in high strain fault zones at depths throughout the Earth’s crust. Phyllosilicate content in deforming fault gouges is known to be a control on a fault’s frictional strength at constant displacement rates. As yet unknown is the effect of varying phyllosilicate content on the mechanical properties of fault gouges and the associated volume changes during deformation with changing slip rates. Volume changes in response to changes in slip rates would result in transient pore pressures and permeabilities that could have significant implications for fault strength and the seismic cycle. In order to investigate the effect of phyllosilicate content on fault strength and volume changes during deformation, simulated gouge mixtures of quartz and kaolinite were triaxially loaded in velocity-step tests. The conditions of the tests were set at 100MPa confining pressure and 40MPa pore pressure to recreate conditions in the upper 4-5km of the continental crust. Initial results indicate that the frictional strength of the gouges decreases non-linearly as kaolinite content incrementally increases. The greatest decrease in frictional fault strength occurs between 20% and 40% kaolinite when the clay fills the available pore space, in agreement with the ideal packing model.

Khaled Alhomodi

The ability of urban planning mechanisms to limit urban sprawl: case studies of Saudi cities

Most Saudi cities have experienced huge urban growth because of a rise in the national economy. In order to control this growth, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs’ (MOMRA), the authority responsible for planning, adopted planning mechanisms that include Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs), Structural Plans, Subdivision Plans and Local Plans for more than 100 Saudi cities. Although Saudi cities have these planning mechanisms, the study observed that most of these cities are facing urban sprawl.

The main aim of this research is to understand why planning mechanisms have had a limited effect on controlling urban sprawl in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this aim, the research adopted a Case Study approach as methodology. The study conducted fieldwork and collected data through interviews, observations and documentary sources.

Based on the fieldwork results, the study found that there are a number of factors directly influencing the effectiveness of planning mechanisms, such as ownership of land, planning system and planning implementation. Currently, the study analyses and discusses the results in order to make recommendations.


16

Joe Aslin

Ripplocations: a new mechanism to explain the deformation of phyllosilicates

Phyllosilicates, such as micas, play a significant role in strain localisation within the lithosphere, owing to their strongly anisotropic, layered structure. Despite their importance, the deformation mechanisms which accommodate this strain have remained ambiguous. Unlike in other minerals, dislocation glide in phyllosilicates is limited to the basal plane with no facility for dislocation motion on other planes, meaning dislocation creep is not a viable deformation mechanism. In addition, kinking, one of the most commonly observed deformation processes in phyllosilicates, cannot be adequately explained by glide of basal dislocations alone. Crucially, there is no existing non-brittle mechanism by which strain can be accommodated perpendicular to the basal plane. Recently, a brand new class of defects, known as ripplocations, have been proposed to account for deformation in synthetic layered solids. Ripplocations take the form of atomic-scale ripples and are theoretically applicable to any layered solid, including natural phyllosilicates. We use high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to resolve the nano-scale bending characteristic of ripplocations in biotite mica. We demonstrate that conjugate delamination arrays are the result of elastic strain energy release due to the accumulation of layer-normal strain in ripplocations. We show that ripplocations provide the missing mechanism necessary to understand phyllosilicate deformation.

Patrick Ballantyne

Global Retail Centres And Their Composition

This short talk will introduce the project entitled “Global Retail Centres and their Composition.” This is a four year project working in partnership with GEOLYTIX©, which seeks to provide a strategy for defining retail centres at a global scale. The talk will focus on three key elements of the PhD project. Firstly, It will introduce the background to the issue of ‘global retail centres,’ highlighting what we know already, and why it is important to develop research in this area. This will be followed by an outline of the datasets that may be used in this investigation, focusing on the workplace area characteristics data (WAC) derived from LODES, and data on American points of interest from Yelp. Some of the potential methods will be outlined, followed by a brief update on the internship completed with GEOLYTIX© in Easter, regarding the outcomes of the mini-project undertaken with them.


17

Steven Beynon

Hydrothermal vein morphology and distribution: a proxy for paleo-fluid flow within the Atacama Fault Zone, Chile

Mineral precipitation in vein networks records interaction between fluids and deforming crust. Vein microstructures and chemistry are representative of their formation processes, which are fundamental in understanding earthquake processes and efficiently exploiting geothermal systems.

The Bolfin fault, in the Atacama Fault Zone, Chile, is one of several overstepping strike-slip faults that form a dilational jog. Sinistral brittle deformation of granodioritic crust has been occurring since ~125Ma owing to oblique subduction of the Nazca plate beneath South America. Structural transects and detailed maps were made within the permeable damage zone of the ~60km long fault, which is extremely well exposed due to the hyper-arid climate. Systematic samples were analysed petrographically and geochemically in order to constrain precipitation phases and rates in different parts of the fault system.

Two principal vein-forming events were observed to overprint earlier deformation: epidote-quartz, and calcite-palygorskite. Epidote-quartz veins commonly show complex cross-cutting relationships and hydrothermal brecciation, defining a period energetic yet episodic fluid flow under similar metamorphic conditions. Vein thickness is generally controlled by fracture orientation; however, growth microstructures reflect processes that supersaturate the pore fluid. Alteration is pervasive throughout, but most evident at a fault bend, suggesting greater percolation of fluids in this structural configuration.

Dinfa Vincent Barshep

Bioclasts and hydrocarbons

The Upper Jurassic shallow marine Corallian sandstones are important reservoirs in the Weald Basin. However, a paucity of data on the reservoir quality and reservoir quality evolution of these sandstones limits the ability to predict reservoir quality away from wells. We present a reservoir quality study of these Corallian sandstones using a combination of sedimentary core logging, petrographic, geochemical and petrophysical analyses to understand the fundamental controls on reservoir quality evolution. These sediments contained dominant quartz and minor feldspar grains, berthierine Fe-ooids, and abundant bioclastic materials. The main control on reservoir quality is predominantly calcite cementation, with intergranular volumes of up to 40% being modified by cementation. Early calcite cement (2 to 55%) derived from dissolution and re- precipitation of bioclasts and later organically derived from source rock maturation, prevented significant mechanical compaction and filled up to 98% of intergranular volume in some cases. Other cements include, apatite, pyrite, dolomite, siderite, illite, kaolinite, and quartz overgrowths. Reservoir quality shows no clear relationship to facies associations. Reservoir quality is mainly destroyed by carbonate cementation and enhanced by detrital grain dissolution, cement dissolution and iron-clay coats and can therefore be predicted from considering abundance of bioclasts, organically derived carbon dioxide and iron-clay coats.


18

Oliver Billson

Observations Of Infragravity Dominance In The Swash Zone Of A Steep Gravel Beach

Swash at the shoreline plays a key role in coastal erosion and inundation and is often dominated by infragravity motions in high energy wave conditions. However, the behaviour of infragravity swash on gravel (as opposed to sandy) beaches remains largely unknown. Here, 40 hours of shoreline video data, collected on a steep (0.14 slope), gravel (median grain size = 5 mm) beach during exceptional high energy conditions, (offshore significant wave height, H0, up to 3.3 m) are used to investigate the infragravity swash characteristics. Infragravity frequencies were observed in the swash and became dominant over gravity frequency oscillations when H0 exceeded 1.5 m. Infragravity swash height (Sig) increased linearly with offshore significant wave height (H0) according to Sig=0.51H0+0.3. These results demonstrate that infragravity motions can dominate the swash under high energy wave conditions, even on steep gravel beaches..

Louisa Brotherson

Journey to the centre of the earthquake: how does damage affect earthquake source properties and radiated wavefields?

Earthquakes have the potential to cause massive human, structural and economic devastation. The frequency and magnitude of seismic waves produced are a product of the earthquake source (where the fault zone is slipping) and the path along which seismic waves travel. Little is known about the seismic source, in particular how fault zone characteristics affect slip kinematics. My project aims to understand how the properties of the earthquake source are affected by the country rock surrounding a fault. Using laboratory experiments to simulate spontaneous earthquakes with blocks of varied elastic properties, the velocity and amplitude of ruptures will be observed. Numerical modelling of the ruptures will be developed in order to upscale results and predict the larger-scale behaviour of earthquake ruptures. Findings have the implication of reducing uncertainty in the earthquake source parameter and better reflecting natural observations in fault zones for seismic hazard purposes.


19

Malachy Buck

Exploring the use of Planning Obligations in funding environmental and community infrastructure.

This paper will form part of a PhD by publication, it seeks to explore the use of planning obligations by local authorities to fund environmental and community infrastructure.

Recent research has reported a decline in funding from planning obligations for Environmental and Open Spaces, amongst other areas, this is occurring in a context of local authority austerity and changing ‘planning gain’ policy environment. There has been evidence of strong variation in obligations secured between different regions and authority contexts. Some localities are in a strong position to bargain, whilst in others the development viability is much less clear, leading to more limited opportunities to extract obligations from development.This paper will explore the approach that different types of local authorities will take to negotiating planning obligations which may contribute to direct mitigation of development or meeting wider environmental and social objectives. It will use a mixed method approach using a number of interviews, surveys and policy review to understand if differences exist between authorities in different socio-economic contexts. If variations do exist a further piece of work may go to explore how a different practices impact upon meeting the environmental and socioeconomic objectives of the authority.

William Carter

Observations of cyclic behaviour at Santiaguito Volcano, Guatemala, using seismic and infrasound methods

Continuous data has been collected at Santiaguito Volcano, Guatemala, through the deployment of a network of seismic and infrasound stations since November 2014. From the ensuing catalogue of explosive events occurring regularly from the active vent of El Caliente, it was observed that the energy released appears to follow a cyclic pattern with a period of around 2 years. The relationship between total energy released, average explosion energy and explosion occurrence rate can be explained through a conceptual model which is initiated by an influx of fresh magma into the system, becoming supersaturated and triggering many small to moderate explosions. Over time these explosions become less frequent and larger until a new injection of magma starts the cycle over.

On a shorter timescale of hours, the explosions themselves obey a cyclic behaviour of pressurization, fractionation and magma recovery. When the pressurization of the system after an explosion is sufficiently higher than the magma recovery, smaller secondary explosions are observed to occur, which reopen the path of the primary explosion within the first ten minutes of the primaries onset.


20

Céline Chalupa

Ageing populations in Cities

Longer life expectancies and peaceful times are leading to rapidly ageing societies where a smaller proportion of working age people have to support a larger proportion of elderly inhabitants. Japan in particular has experienced a great impact on policy decision making to sustainably manage this change in the shape of its population pyramid. Little research has been done on the impact of this outside of Asia, and Europe is set to experience similar problems in the near future. At a city scale, neighbourhoods will be affected by trends such as ageing in place, as well as adverse health indicators (see AHAH index, CDRC, 2017). To protect businesses in those neighbourhoods and prevent decline councils will need to manage movements of ageing populations as well as predict those movements. Using planning permission data from Barbour ABI in conjunction with census and other open data geodemographic of age will be computed, and predictive modelling will be employed to forecast age related local challenges.

Meixu Chen

Quantifying the dynamic characteristics of urban area of interests through deep learning

With human activity increases in the city, the distribution of people is no longer at a single place, but changes over time annually or even monthly, leading to a couple of challenges for the planning and management of urban areas. Hence, how to better understand the changes of urban areas that people get interested in and interacted with over time, why these urban areas are appealing and how to allocate limited resources for the areas in great need, have become increasingly crucial for urban planning and local authorities. Recently, benefited from advances in computer vision and deep learning techniques, geotagged images have been proven powerful to investigate visual perception of our environment.

Within this context, this study investigates the global and dynamic characteristics of urban areas of interest, an outcome of human interaction with surroundings, aiming at providing a reference for stockholders by understanding the characteristics of urban areas of interest. The findings can be informative for transport palnners to regulate trip frequency at various seasons, with more trip frequency in winter or less in summer. It can also aid urban planners to have a macroscopic understanding on urban areas to better formulate relevant policy, e.g., invest more funds to certain areas to stimulate consumption for economic growth.


21

Sam Comber

Unpacking aspects of what we see from consumer amenities to characteristics of the human environment

Visual characteristics of urban areas are sensory cues that drive how these spaces are experienced and read. Typically, a neighbourhood’s scene is encoded by visual features present from street-level that are discriminative for different kinds of neighbourhood typology. In this paper, we explore the relationship between aspects of what we see for consumer amenities to socio-economic characteristics of the neighbourhood. While the traditional focus of social scientific research explores how proximity to consumer amenities such as leisure plazas, galleries, and shops enter into residential location choice decisions, the visual characteristics that pull particular groups of people into the neighbourhood are neglected. This is despite a tacit assumption that people translate visual ap- pearance into a judgement for the social characteristics of the neighbourhood, which allows home-buyers to draw fine residential distinctions when evaluating whether a location shares their tastes, interests and aspirations. Thus, to explore our research question, we introduce a deep learning model known as Convolutional Autoencoders to extract visual features from storefront images of consumer amenities. After partitioning these visual features into a sensible number of clusters, we introduce socio-economic characteristics to differenti- ate between the cluster partitions and assess which variables are distinctive for particular groupings. Overall, our empirical strategy unpacks different ar- rangements of socio-economic groupings from the clusters, which implies the existence of relationships between visual characteristics of urban areas and the socio-economic composition of the neighbourhood.

Stefano Corona

Long-term zooplankton dataset: resolving universal ecological responses to climate change

As sea water temperature rises, zooplankton animals’ ecology changes. The three main responses to this phenomenon are: 1) Phenological shift (annual life cycle shift their usual timing due to average higher seasonal temperature), 2) Geographical redistribution (species tend to “migrate” poleward to avoid higher temperature at their native latitudes), 3) Body size change (many marine invertebrates suffer from a body size reduction when exposed to higher temperature, due to a higher metabolic demand). My main aim for this PhD is to understand if and how these three main responses interact with each other. For example, is there a trade-off amongst them? What does make a species embrace one response rather than another?

So far, I have been focusing on the phenological shifts detected in 7 seven copepod species from two important UK sampling stations data (Plymouth and Stonehaven). I could detect some important phenological changes over few decades and sometimes strongly correlated with temperature.


22

Alec Davies

Using loyalty card records and machine learning to understand how self-medication behaviours vary seasonally in England, 2012-2014

Data driven population health surveillance is a core part of monitoring and identifying trends and behaviour in disease and illnesses. Administrative and survey data are traditionally used however they have limitations of cost, resolution and temporal coverage. The increasing self-medication movement brings opportunities to understand the prevalence and treatment of minor ailments. Loyalty card records offer one solution for revealing novel insights about self-medication behaviour whilst addressing these data limitations. We used loyalty card records from a national high street retailer to examine how purchasing of over-the-counter medicines for coughs and colds and hay fever varied in England (2012- 2014). Analyses were undertaken at the Lower Super Output Area level allowing exploration of ~300 retail, social, demographic and environmental predictors of purchasing. Gradient boosted trees (XGBoost) were used to predict future monthly purchasing. Clear purchasing seasonality was observed for both outcomes reflecting the climatic drivers of their associated minor ailments. Coughs and colds exhibited wider exposure through higher purchasing proportions. Dynamic models performed best, however where previous year behaviour differs greatly (training data) predictions witnessed higher error. The most important features were consistent across models (e.g. previous sales, temperature, seasonality). Feature importance ranking had the greatest difference where seasons changed.

Antoine Delvoye

Understanding epistemic uncertainty captured in seismic hazard assessments for critical infrastructure

The prediction of ground-motion expected at a site is one of the two pillars of seismic hazard assessment. Since the first developments of empirical ground-motion prediction equations about 50 years ago, a major increase of the awareness of the role of uncertainties associated with these models has been made. It is now considered as standard to split the uncertainties into aleatory and epistemic components.The aim of this study is to evaluate how the epistemic uncertainty is currently captured in state-of- the-art Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) and compare various techniques that have recently been used to capture the appropriate level of uncertainty. Epistemic uncertainty is commonly evaluated using a logic-tree approach. By running retrospective tests of PSHA, we can compare analysis from the past to data available now and qualitatively and quantitatively assess if the epistemic uncertainty would have been correctly assessed at that time and therefore propose a way to better evaluate the present state of uncertainty. Repeating this process with increasingly modern models, and by decreasing the amount of available data with the use of modern techniques to deal with scarce and limited data will help to understand how epistemic uncertainty affects ground-motion estimation in SHA.


23

Carmine Donatelli

How seagrass beds protect coastal lagoons

Seagrasses are marine flowering plants that provide key ecological services. In recent decades, multiple stressors have caused a worldwide decline in seagrass beds. Changes in bottom friction associated with seagrass loss are expected to influence the ability of estuarine systems to trap sediment inputs through local and regional changes in hydrodynamics. Herein, we conduct a numerical study using six historical maps of seagrass distribution in Barnegat Bay, USA, to demonstrate that reductions in seagrass coverage destabilize estuarine systems, decreasing their flood-dominance and increasing bed-shear stress values across the entire back-barrier basin. Furthermore, we reveal how seagrass decline has considerably increased the impact of wind-waves on marsh edges between 1968 and 2009. This study highlights the benefits of seagrass meadows in enhancing estuarine resilience and reducing marsh-edge retreat by wind-wave attack which is recognized as a chief agent in marsh loss.

James Duckworth

Red-Throated Diver Energetics Project

Red-Throated Divers have been identified as one of the seabird species most at risk of displacement from wind farms. Recent studies have demonstrated the magnitude of displacement, with reduced densities of birds within 15 kilometres of wind farms following construction. However, no study has investigated the consequences of displacement on individuals and populations. Using a variety of tags deployed in the summer, my study will look at overwintering locations, diving strategies and energetic budgets. With this knowledge, an Individual Based Model will be created to investigate the increased energetic costs under differing intensity wind farm construction scenarios. Outputs from the model will then be used to assess potential impacts on population health and influence future wind farm consent.


24

Yael Engbers

Is the South Atlantic Anomaly a persistent reoccurring feature? A paleomagnetic study of Saint Helena

The Earth’s magnetic field is not a perfect dipole. So how significant is the role of non-GAD (Geocentric Axial Dipole) features in the time-averaged field? Currently, the biggest anomaly of the Earth’s magnetic field is ‘The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA)’. We collected material for a paleomagnetic study from St Helena, an island in the SAA, to help address whether this anomalous behaviour is recent-only or persistently reappearing in this area. We have gathered directional data from two different localities. The directional data was gathered by performing both thermal and alternating field demagnetization experiments. The first locality displays single polarity results whereas the second locality shows evidence for three reversals. The results from these 30 cooling units from two localities are particularly interesting because of the relatively high VGP (virtual geomagnetic pole) dispersion (19. 6 ± 3.0º), compared to the average VGP dispersion (~15º) at this latitude based on a recent compilation from the last 10 Ma (Cromwell et al., 2018).

If the VGP scatter is in fact locally higher, that could suggest that the non-GAD features of the magnetic field have a higher contribution than in other areas, which is an argument for persistently reoccurring anomalies in the South Atlantic.

Dominik Fahrner

Greenland wide terminus change from 1984-2017:linear climate responses and application of machine learning.

Greenlandic tidewater glaciers (TWGs) have been undergoing widespread retreat since the mid-1990s and contribute up to 50% of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), though a comprehensive annual record of their retreat during the satellite age is currently lacking.We present a Greenland-wide data set of annual terminus positions for 220 TWGs for the period 1984-2017 based on Landsat 4-8/Sentinel 2 imagery (n = 3833). These were manually digitised using the Google Earth Engine Digitisation Tool (GEEDiT), and their changes quantified using the Margin Change Quantification Tool (MaQiT; Lea, 2018). Results were analysed alongside regional climate data, and with the supervised machine learning method Random Forests to determine the existence of threshold-type behaviour that may influence terminus stability.

Our analysis highlights distinct linear trends in the regional response of TWG termini. The south-east, south-west and north-west regions are found to behave comparably (advance/stability until the mid-1990s followed by sustained retreat). However, in the north-east sustained retreat occurred since the mid-1980s, which then accelerated in 2008/2009.

The generated data set enables the identification of regional linear trends of TWG behaviour for the first time, and has allowed the application of Random Forests to determine the relative influence of climate forcings on termini positions.


25

Christoper Feeney

Simulating long-term river channel changes to quantify floodplain sediment stoage times

Floodplain sediment storage preserves archives of past environmental changes in river basins and may host significant reserves of macronutrients or contaminants. Quantifying the duration of sediment storage is useful for constraining the longevity of environmental change records and the time necessary for a polluted river system to decontaminate under natural processes. River channel morphology, and changes over space and time, controls floodplain formation and destruction. We can calculate storage time as the onset of erosion of floodplain of known age (time since deposition). Using CAESAR-Lisflood – a landscape evolution model that redistributes sediment via the action of water – reach-scale (1 km-long valley floors) channel changes over 1000-year timespans are modelled. Reaches are based on real-world systems in northern England, with parameters controlling erosion rates calibrated from earlier hindcasting. Scenarios encompassing vegetation cover types and hydrology are tested. Non-linear regression is used to fit models to recorded sediment storage time distributions. Channel morphology is recorded at 10-, 20-, 50- and 100-year time intervals to observe how these might affect the shape of the sediment storage time distribution. Generally, river channels appear to preferentially rework younger floodplain areas. However, sampling at 100-year timesteps can indicate that no such bias exists for some simulations.

Asu Ebuta Fubara

Interpreting Hierarchical Stacking Patterns in Fan Strata produced from Lobyte3D Model Runs Tests.

Several runs tests analysis in Lobyte3D, a new numerical stratigraphic forward Matlab model, reveals differences in the geometries and stacking patterns of fan strata. Flow events cluster to form hierarchical compensation patterns made up of 3 principal elements: lobes, lobe complexes and compensational of depositional cycles (which form through successive progradational- retrogradational architectural cycles). The model runs tests from the two sediment supply scenarios result in sand-prone lobe deposition and lobe complex development which is occasionally punctuated by periods of hemipelagic sediment deposition. For each of strike-parallel (transverse) and dip-oriented (longitudinal) lithostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic the plot- pairs, I have documented changes in the frequency, thicknesses and spatial distribution (including lateral offsets and progradational shifts in the locus of deposition) of lobes and lobe complexes. Examination of dip-oriented and strike-parallel vertical sections, and the flow separation distance time series in both sediment supply scenarios leads us to suggest that the longitudinal ‘jumps’ and lateral ‘migration’ of lobes flow-events are 5th and 6th order lobe-switching and flow-switching avulsion events. Temporal variabilities in the hierarchical stacking patterns in the model fan strata may be due to a combination of factors including topographic compensation, bathymetric gradient and external controls.


26

Sarah Garlick

Geographic inequalities in ethnic minority and immigrant labour market experiences in England and Wales

The main objective of the project is to establish whether in England and Wales there are inequalities in the labour market experiences of residents from different ethnic groups and whether there is evidence of outcomes varying at sub-national and small-area level.

The project will utilise quantitative and spatial analysis methods to analyse Office for National Statistics’ publicly available 2011 Census data for administrative (regions) and statistical (Middle Super Output Area) geographies within England and Wales.

Although Census data are collected decennially, they contain a wealth of detailed information for small areas that can be analysed to explore the intersections between areas’ economic and demographic characteristics.

The project will bring together separate themes that consider different aspects of the labour market with a shared focus on outcomes at small-area level. The most recent analysis has focussed on residents who have an economically active status (employees/self- employed/unemployed/full-time students) and the broad occupation categories residents are employed in (e.g. Professional/Skilled Trades).

In the coming months I will be working on a theme comparing employed residents’ night-time geographies (i.e. where people live) to day-time geographies (i.e. where people work).

Guillermi Garcia Gomez

Can costs associated with organism growth explain major differences in rates at which energy is used as body mass increases?

Metabolic rate is a measure of the rate at which energy is used, and it is highly related to body size. The quantitative relationship between metabolic rate and body size (scaling), has been a central topic in physiology and ecology. Some species show a near constant rate of energy use per gram as they grow, while others show a marked reduction as the body enlarges. Temperature is also a strong driver of biological rates in ectotherms, as higher temperatures commonly lead to greater metabolic rates, and reduced energy use per gram as body size increases (decreasing the mass-scaling exponent). It has been hypothesised that this reduction during growth is caused by a shift from volume-related to surface area-limited processes. We present an alternative hypothesis to explain the observed reduction in mass-scaling exponent with increasing temperature, based on how costs of growth change as an organism gets hotter and bigger. We use quantitative models to test whether these mass-scaling exponents correlate negatively with rapid growth, as usually occurs when growth declines towards adulthood at warm temperatures. Considering the costs of growth may also help to explain stark differences in metabolic scaling between pelagic and benthic animals, and between life histories.


27

Sofia Gonzalez

Diagenetic controls on key rock properties in shale

Shales are the most abundant sedimentary rock on earth. Due to their particular characteristics shales develop important roles in many natural processes and human related activities like science and engineering. In the oil industry shales are of special concern due to their function as source rocks, cap rocks and as reservoirs in unconventional petroleum systems. Shale reservoirs have gained importance with the increasing production of hydrocarbons from rocks with high total organic content and very low permeabilities where absorbed gas is able to contribute to about 50% of total production. Due to shale’s characteristics, in order to be exploited, special drilling techniques (e.g. hydrofracturing) are used to release the fluids from the matrix into the wells. This study, using petrographic, mineralogical and geomechanical tests, aims to give a better understanding of the analysis and development of the mechanical and diagenetic properties of shale. This new understanding will aid the drilling decisions, well production predictions, static and dynamic modelling of the reservoir, stratigraphic correlations, well control properties. The work is aimed shale reservoirs but will be applicable to other industries (e.g. nuclear waste disposal, CCS, etc.) where fluid flow and mudstone properties are relevant.

J Michael Grappone

Improving estimates of Earth’s paleomagnetic field intensity

Paleomagnetism provides a unique set of geophysical data that help constrain mechanisms in the Earth’s deep interior, not only at present, but throughout geologic history. Studying the changes in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field provides insight into changes in geodynamo processes in the outer core and its evolution. Peering far back into Earth’s past, however, is not a straight-forward task. Older rocks have longer and more complex histories than the rocks paleomagnetic techniques are usually tested on, which are usually young or artificial. Different protocols have been proposed to improve the data- either changing the order of de- and remagnetization experiments or adding/removing demagnetization steps.

One of the main causes of problems in paleointensity experiments is the presence of large (multi-domain) grains of magnetite, which have asymmetric acquisition and loss of magnetization. Multi-domain grains lose their magnetization permanently when cooled below the Verwey transition (125 K). In this study, we aim to determine if the addition of a liquid nitrogen demagnetization (77K) after each heating step can improve the quality of data used to generate a paleointensity by removing the non-linear multi-domain grain effect.


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Melanie Green

Comparing the urban environment with socioeconomic characteristics using features extracted from aerial imagery

Information about the characteristics and activities of humans becomes encoded in the landscape as it is continually shaped by the people who live there. These characteristics are traditionally measured using census data and represented using geodemographic classifications. Although not directly containing information on human characteristics, remotely sensed images at a high resolution contain a huge amount of detail on the features of the urban environment, including individual objects and their arrangement in space. This paper investigates the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and the urban landscape using high-resolution aerial imagery and deep learning. A convolutional neural network is used to extract features from the images using transfer learning, and k-means clustering is applied to group together areas with similar features. When compared with socioeconomic groups from the Output Area Classification, different socioeconomic profiles are evident in each cluster, and these are spatially clustered in different areas of the city. This information can complement the information on the built environment that is traditionally used in geodemographic classifications and enhance understanding of the built and human characteristics of neighbourhoods.

Ben Handford

The length of the Low: how strong was Earth’s magnetic field in the Triassic and Permian?

Currently the global palaeointensity record is sparsely populated throughout the Triassic, a result of few large volcanic edifices of this age being identified. Any attempt to change this will require an approach focused around sampling smaller igneous formations.

It is hoped that improvements to the record will provide clarity on the proposed Mesozoic Dipole Low (MDL), a period of low field strength currently proposed for the Jurassic. Low reversal frequency, calculated from the directional data available for the Triassic, suggest that the MDL does not extend back before the Jurassic however recent palaeointensity results support the idea of a weak Early Triassic field (Anwar et al. 2016). This apparent disagreement providing further reason for investigation.

Preliminary work has been carried out on samples collected from the Fernazza formation, Dolomites, dated to 238Ma, regarding their suitability for palaeointensity. Data collected from these samples has also been used to calculate a mean virtual geomagnetic pole (VGP) for comparison with that calculated by Manzoni et al. 1970, using modern palaeomagnetic methods and equipment.


29

Alice Harvey-Fishenden

Drought and the construction of canal reservoirs

The first large-scale water supply in Britain was not for potable domestic supplies, but for the canal network. This paper examines how episodes of dry weather in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, reconstructed from a combination of narrative and instrumental sources, impacted the developing canal network. Analysis reveals how a frequent lack of preparedness for even relatively minor drought events resulted in conflict between water users. The economic pressure of compensating other users for loss of their water supply, resulted in canal companies investing in technologies and management techniques that continue to be used today as drought mitigation strategies. This period represents a key technological milestone in the development of the modern water supply systems, contextualising current challenges faced by the water industry. Themes emerge from this research which are as relevant today as they were in the eighteenth century, such as issues around ownership of water supplies and the value of preparing for potential future extreme weather scenarios.

A newly reconstructed composite precipitation series for Chatsworth House is presented (1760- present). Through comparing weather records within the archives of canal companies and their competitors for water supplies historical insight can be gained into the possible far reaching societal impacts of drought.

Peter Hogarth

Consistent Sea Level Rise around the UK over the last sixty years

Revised trends of coastal sea level rise around the British Isles since 1958 are presented. This start date allows the use of tide surge model data to remove much of the variability evident in the time series which has local meteorological causes. Archived UK tide gauge data is extended wherever possible, re-checked for datum control, reduced to Ordnance Datum Newlyn, (ODN), and compensated for mean seasonal variation, Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) and tidal surge components. A common mode signal is also subtracted to account for long range oceanographic effects. The resultant residuals show a remarkable reduction in annual and interannual variability, to the point where many cm level datum shifts now clearly emerge. It is shown that unresolved datum steps can be a significant contributor to low frequency variability. The datum steps apparent in actual MSL observations are then investigated using archived site-specific levelling information as well as recorded physical changes at each site where available. Finally, standard buddy checking procedures, altimetric and oceanographic model comparisons are used to independently quantify these datum steps, allowing estimated corrections and revised trends to be made at each site. These trends are more consistent than those found in previous analyses.


30

Olivia Horsefield

Spatial and temporal distributions of alcohol-related crime around off-licensed venues in Liverpool

Alcohol-related crime has typically been the focus in criminology research, and we usually associate it as a product of a night-out, typically located in or around on-trade outlets in town or city centres.

However, alcohol is not only consumed at on-trade venues but purchased at off-trade sites for the consumption of alcohol off-site. Due to increased accessibility and cheapness of alcohol, recent studies have seen growth in off-trade sales, to the point where they are overtaking the growth of the on-trade sales. However, the increased accessibility of alcohol means people are consuming more of it or pre-loading before a night out. These off-trade venues therefore have the potential to increase alcohol related crime around the on-trade sites as well as encourage alcohol-related crime nearer off-trade venues in neighborhoods where there is a lack of crime prevention strategies.

This project will use data from off-trade and on-trade outlets’ in Liverpool within a 10-year period to establish the density of these outlets, specifically the off-trade, over time across Liverpool’s LSOAs. 10 years’ worth of Merseyside Police crime data will be implemented to illustrate any spatial and temporal changes of alcohol-related crime around these off-trade outlets across Liverpool.

Dipita Hossain

Environmental impacts of textiles in Bangladesh

Textile and apparel industry can be perceived as most important industry in Bangladesh that employs 71% of manufacturing industrial workforce and constitutes about 40% of the total manufacturing establishments of Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2012). Within the textile industry, units like garment production, spinning mill, fabric dyeing etc. are designated as Amber B (polluting) and Red category (heavy polluting) establishments in the Environmental Conservation Rule(1997) of Bangladesh (Department of Environment (DoE), 1997). Therefore, textile industry can have significant impact on environment. Furthermore, health impacts of textile industry vary from skin irritation, sneezing and sore eyes, hearing damage up to dust induced lung cancer (Ahmed, et al., 2004; Birley, 1995; Islam, 2013). With such significance in country economy, negative impacts of textile industry should be addressed properly. Many of the negative health impacts can be avoided by careful planning (Birley, 1995) or policy reforming, policy enforcement or adaptation to environment friendly technologies. Incorporation of health impacts in existing environmental policy or tools like Environmental Assessment can help to initiate this journey. Therefore this research aims to explore the role of existing EA system to safeguard health and environment from textile industry in Bangladesh. Key informant interview, documentary analysis, case study analysis etc. techniques will be useful in collecting the data. The research is expected to be a mixed method research. Finally based on the findings, recommendations will be provided to establish good practice examples.


31

Helen Houghton-Foster

The Environment and Justice: Staffordshire c.1550-1750

The civil and criminal functions of the justice system in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries are widely understood, however they have not been examined as a means of understanding how early modern communities interacted with their environment. Recent work in environmental history has turned to examining flooding in the early modern period, viewing it as a “socio-natural phenomenon” (Morgan, 2015). However, work has focused more on coastal flooding than a landlocked county such as Staffordshire. The rich archival material for Staffordshire makes it an ideal candidate for examining how environmental issues were mediated and water was managed through the justice system in a period which social historians have often characterised as extremely litigious. Using records from different levels of the court system, I will discuss how communities used the mechanisms of law to assign responsibility and manage their environment. I will also compare with existing flood chronologies to ask whether apparently petty grievances were in fact often symptomatic of larger flood events.

Amy Hughes

A Field and Experimental Study of Shear Localisation and Frictional Melting in Volcanic Debris Avalanches

The collapse of Pichu Pichu, an andesitic volcanic complex to the east of Arequipa (Peru), resulted in a volcanic debris avalanche deposit with an area >100 km2 and a run out of 26 km. This deposit represents a rare occurrence of frictional melting at the base of an avalanche deposit.

Here we analyse a pseudotachylyte bearing basal contact in contrast with another more defuse basal contact, investigating chemical and microstructural features. We observe large variations in shear localisation at these basal shear zone outcrops. The pseudotachylyte bearing basal contact is 1-2 cm thick, with evidence of intense shearing and repeating melting events with pseudotachylyte fragments hosted in the adjacent cataclasite. The defuse basal contact is 40 cm thick bearing multiple fractures acting to reduce topographic roughness. Additionally, sub-parallel shear localisation planes identified in the lower flow deposit also have small amounts of melt. We also investigate experimentally the frictional behaviour and the conditions under which melt is produced by frictional sliding using low-to-high velocity rotary shear experiments on samples from the deposit.

Shear localisation on both basal and interior slip surfaces can change the morphology of the contact during the event and therefore the resistance to flow experienced along them.


32

Jennifer Jardine

Storms as a trigger or seasonal stratification in temperate continental shelf seas

The North Atlantic Storm Track acts as a conveyor belt that delivers extra-tropical cyclones to Northwest Europe. The effect these storms have on land is well-documented, yet the impact of rain also has an influence of the timing of stratification on the continental shelf. The current paradigm is that away from the coasts, stratification on the Northwest European Shelf is controlled by a balance of thermal inputs to wind and tidal mixing, yet observations from the Celtic Sea in spring 2015, however, identified that rain from a storm event was sufficient to trigger seasonal stratification a week earlier than theoretically predicted. Hindcast model data confirms similar rain events triggered seasonal stratification in 30 out of 34 years between 1982 and 2015. Storm activity in the North Atlantic is modulated by the Atlantic Multidecadel Oscillation (AMO). Both the stratification onset dates and the spring bloom initiation during positive AMO phases displayed up to a twofold increase in variability compared to negative AMO phases, driven by heightened storm intensity. Subsequently, there was a marked change in the phytoplankton growing season, with up to 35% of phytoplankton growth occurring outside the main blooming period during positive AMO phases, compared to 11 % in negative AMO phases. Future work will continue to focus on the community structure of these phytoplankton blooms and speculate the impact this will have on zooplankton recruitment and the wider fishing industry.

Yu Jiang

A Bayesian approach for fault and volcano source parameters using wrapped InSAR data

Satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) is used to constrain e.g., the slip on an active fault or the volume change of magmatic reservoirs. However, the interferometric phase pattern should be unwrapped to warranty correspondence to surface displacement predicted by theoretical geophysical models. Such unwrapping process is extremely ill-posed and lead to undesired phase jumps, affecting estimation of geophysical processes.

Here, we investigate whether wrapped (before unwrapping) interferometric phase can be directly used to estimate fault and volcano source parameters. We implement a new method in software package (WGBIS). WGBIS solves for unknown parameters using Bayes’ theory, providing also seamlessly its uncertainties.We will present experiments with simulated deformation phase and realistic noise. We compare the results between WGBIS and a state-of-the-art method (GBIS). We find that:

1. In absence of noise, both methods provide perfect retrieval of unknown parameters;

2. In present of noise, both methods show good performance. Although, the proposed method estimates narrower uncertainties;

3. As expected, GBIS is very sensitive to unwrapping errors.

In conclusion, WGBIS provides very robust es-timates for the source parameters over a wider range of simulation conditions, which demon-strates that WGBIS can help in challenging case studies where standard unwrapping fails or not be trusted.


33

Teri Jones

Variation in sociality across foraging behaviour and strategy in a colonial seabird

In marine environments, foraging opportunities are often highly spatially and temporally variable, and locating prey patches can incur significant time and energy costs. Group foraging strategies, in which individuals are able to acquire information through interactions with others, may reduce these foraging costs. Indeed access to social information has been frequently proposed as important factor driving colonial living. However, to date very few studies of colonial animals have been unable to examine social behaviours in detail, and have not addressed individual variation ins social associations. We examine sociality in two related foraging behaviours in a colonial breeding seabird. We simultaneously tracked 85% of a colony of Australasian gannets (Morus serrator) and examined the frequency of social associations across commuting (travel between foraging opportunities) and foraging behaviours. We then explored how individual sociality varies across commuting and foraging and how individual factors influenced sociality. Lastly we determine the potential outcomes of social behaviour across a foraging trip. We found that gannets associate socially during both commuting and foraging, although the level of sociality varied between individuals and with location-specific foraging strategies. Additionally, we found that individuals differed in their level of sociality between commuting and foraging behaviours but that individuals expressed low behavioural consistency in propensity for social association.

Alex Kendrick

Student ‘Lad Culture’ in Online and Offline UK Higher Education Spaces

Digital social media platforms are changing how we interact. Geographers have been interested in both the power of digital technologies in shaping how we view space and place across sub-disciplines (Ash et al., 2019) and the role of space and place in the formation of student identity (Holdsworth, 2009; Holton and Riley, 2013; Holton, 2015; 2016). This project looks into student ‘lad culture’, expanding on previous research in taking into account the role of social media, as well as offline student spaces, in its (re)production. Current work in the UK has tended to be policy focused, and from the perspectives of women students (Phipps and Young, 2014; 2015; Phipps, 2016), alongside a body of work that explores ‘lad culture’ in relation to sports teams and drinking (Dempster, 2009; 2011).

This presentation will draw upon the initial findings from qualitative, diary-based interviews and focus groups with students and staff at two case study institutions. In taking into consideration literature that frames the university as a neoliberal space (Phipps 2015; Smele et al., 2017), this paper contests the meaning of ‘lad culture’ in this context whilst drawing out key themes from my initial findings.


34

Fatemeh Khosravi

The potential for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in Iran’s Water Management

The main aim of this research is: To review EIA and its effectiveness in Iranian water sector. In order to achieve the aim of the research, following objectives have been formulated:

1. To review the status of the EIA system in Iran and its deficiencies.

To achieve this objective, data were collected using literature review, document analysis and semi- structured interviews. This section of research has already been published.

Khosravi. F, Jha Thakur, U. Fischer. TB. 2019. “Evaluation of the environmental impact assessment system in Iran”. Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment Review. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2018.10.005.

2. To examine the effectiveness of the EIA system in Urmia Lake Basin (ULB).

To achieve this objective, data were collected using document analyses, semi-structured interviews with local experts, and site visits. This section of research has already been published.

Khosravi. F, Jha Thakur, U. Fischer. TB. 2018. “The role of Environmental Assessment (EA) in Iranian water management”. Journal of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2018.1526998

3. To develop recommendations to enhance EIA effectiveness in Iran and evaluate the feasibility of adopting these recommendations within Iran, considering its contextual factors.

To achieve this objective, data were collected using literature review and exploratory interviews. This section of research has already been submitted to publish.

Khosravi. F, Jha Thakur, U. Fischer. TB. Enhancing EIA Systems in Developing Countries: A focus on capacity development in the case of Iran (Submitted).

Phil Knight

Tidal Level Measurements for Coastal Resilience and Survey

The project aims to explore the acquisition of tidal level data for ground-truthing coastal surveys to ensure coastal resilience. Radar-based coastal survey data (using Marine X-Band Radar) requires local data on tidal level to ensure high accuracy monitoring of coastal morphology and coastal morphological change over timescales from days to years. Through this data coupling, beaches and tidal flats can be characterized in terms of their instantaneous and long-term behaviours. Monitoring the health of beaches over the long term and in response to storms provides the essential evidence base for strategic beach maintenance.

The research direction has two separate elements:

1. To explore the use of alternative ways to measure tidal levels when traditional methods are not applicable, and/or there are no existing local tide gauge stations nearby.

2. To investigate and develop techniques to make use of the resulting spatial/temporal beach elevation data to gain a better understanding of beach morphology (Previous research has been restricted by only having limited numbers of LiDAR images, and/or a times series of single beach profiles).


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Daniela Koenig

Can iron isotopes constrain the ocean iron cycle?

Despite its relevance as a micronutrient limiting biological growth in a significant fraction of the global oceans, the ocean iron cycle is poorly constrained, and current biogeochemical models are unable to adequately reproduce observational data. The relative importance of the major iron sources and sinks remains largely unknown, as does the impact of the various transformation processes occurring within different parts of the ocean interior and boundary regions. Iron isotopes are a potentially useful tool to better understand the iron cycle, as the heavy iron isotopes are enriched (or depleted) during various transformation processes. This may allow us to track inputs from different sources with potentially unique isotopic signatures, as well as internal cycling processes, which may fractionate between the different iron pools.

During this project we will thus implement iron isotopes into an existing biogeochemical global ocean model and, by comparison to isotopic field data, try to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the iron cycle.

Valérie Le Guennec

Interannual variability of Black Sea’s physical processes

The Black Sea is a semi-enclosed basin with two restricted connections. The combined import of salty Mediterranean waters and the important rivers discharge results in a strong and permanent pycnocline. In summer, the seasonal thermocline leads to the formation of a second pycnocline which in between is the CIL (Cold Intermediate Layer), delimited by isothermes of 8°C. The surface layer is sensitive to environmental changes due to the decoupling between the surface and deep waters.Long term physical dynamics over the whole Black Sea is studied with numerical simulations based on v3.6 NEMO. The model set up uses 60 Z-vertical levels with partial steps and has a spatial resolution of 2.5km. Atmospheric reanalysis datasets from ERA5 are used to force the model from 2000 to 2017. The model output is compared with in situ vertical profiles of temperature and salinity.

The response of the model in terms of CIL formation, SST and Mix Layer over interannual time scales is investigated. The choice of the light scheme and the vertical diffusion parameters seems to have an important effect on the vertical stratification and the stabilisation of the CIL. Understanding those processes can help to understand the drivers of chlorophyll a dynamics on interannual time scales.


36

Hannah Lehnhart-Barnett

Peat moorland re-wilding: enhancing carbon sequestration and slowing-the-flows?

Peatlands form the largest terrestrial carbon store on Earth, sequestering 370 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year. However, damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gases (GHG), annually releasing almost 6% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Intact blanket bogs also play a significant role in the upland hydrological cycle, improving water quality and alleviating flooding. The restoration of these ecosystems can thus offer multiple benefits towards providing safe drinking water, minimising flood risk and reducing GHG emissions.

May Moss (SSSI), at 150 ha, is the largest area of intact upland blanket mire in eastern England. Like many peatlands in Britain, sections of May Moss were drained and ploughed to create timber reserves after the First World War. In 2009, with SITA-Trust funding, the Forestry Commission began work to restore the ‘lost’ half of May Moss. Since 2010, hydroclimate data have been collected on the intact site to assess the controls over the natural peatland water balance. The introduction of dipwells in 2017 and water samplers in 2018, has enabled a post- forestry bog to be compared with the adjacent intact site to test hypotheses about carbon sequestration, water quality and ‘slow-the-flow’ in the context of managed peat moorlands.

Yunzhe Liu

Understanding the Dynamics and Context of New York Transportation Hubs

Since Calthorpe (1993) codified the ‘Three Ds’ concept of transit-oriented development (TOD), urban planning towards TOD has been widely accepted as a leading planning strategy by most planning agencies around the world, representing a compact solution tackling urban transport challenges.

The macroscopic concept of such TOD is seemingly consistent in its prescriptions for urban planning. However, extensive studies have manifested that the microscopic implementation of TOD is of necessity to be highly sensitive to practical-based conditions and customised accounted for local differences. In response, it is strongly suggested that to build a context-based TOD typology (hereinafter referred to as TOD typology), aiming at differentiating heterogeneous station catchment areas into more homogeneous classifications based on the (dis-)similarities of their multidimensional characteristics that potentially drive public transport use.

Within this context, this study continues the tradition by constructing a TOD topology aiming at monitoring the condition of the subway station catchments in the case study area – New York City. However, this research improves upon previous research and makes contributions regarding the following aspects:

1. This study explores the potentiality of importing open data into the field of TOD typology. Many of the traditionally used inputs are supplemented /upgraded by the open data, which are subsequently handled by an artificial neuron network (ANN)-based unsupervised classifier.

2. Secondly, in addition to the inputs reflecting the ‘static’ characteristics, human mobility data are employed and analysed by a topic modelling technique to fill up the blankness in the field of TOD topology by emphasising the ‘dynamic’ perspective.


37

Simon Lloyd

New version of the Shaw method

The modern Shaw LTD-DHT method is proven to obtain reliable palaeointensity estimates for a wide variety of rock types and ages. Here I take a fresh and detailed look at the method, listing its implicit underlying assumptions. I test the validity of the current modified version against these assumptions and find areas for improvement. In doing so, I suggest a new way to determine whether the alteration corrections are valid without the need for a double heating. Not only is this new technique is arguably more robust, but it reduces the experimental time considerably. We also provide results for, and mathematical reasoning behind a technique for correcting a non-ideal NRM.

Liping Ma

How Does the Atlantic Winter Jet Stream Affect Surface Heat Flux and SST?

An ensemble sensitivity analysis method is employed using the Met Office Hadley Centre Hindcast Ensemble monthly data to analyse interaction between atmosphere and ocean. The atmospheric jet stream in driving patterns of surface heat flux and changes in sea surface temperature is explored for the winter North Atlantic.

Atmospheric jet speed and jet latitude are formally sensitive to the ocean surface heat flux and temperature in winter time. On monthly and seasonal time scales, jet speed and jet latitude force heat flux synchronously with a tri-pole correlation pattern and force the sea surface temperature in subsequent months with an opposite-signed correlation pattern. The effect of the jet speed on sea surface temperature persists for slightly longer, a time period up to four months, compared with the effect of jet latitude persisting for three months, as well as the effect of jet speed extending over a larger domain. Moreover, the linear regression prediction of SST and surface air-sea heat flux based on jet indices show that the percentage of total variation of heat flux as described by the the variation in jet indices is higher than the percentage of total variation of SST. In addition, the percentage of total variation of surface variables described by the variation in jet speed is more pronounced than with jet latitude.


38

Leo Mahieu

Iron chemical speciation in a more acidic ocean

Iron is an essential and toxic element for terrestrial and marine life. It is observed at subnanomolar concentration in seawater, limiting the oceanic primary life and the carbon export in 40 % of the ocean. The potentially bioavailable iron (i.e. useable for phytoplankton growth) is in the dissolved fraction, which is predominantly complexed (> 99 %) with organic ligands. The chemical distribution of the different iron species, or chemical speciation, is highly dependent on the pH. In view of the huge impact of iron on biogeochemical ecosystems, understanding how this chemical speciation, and therefore bioavailability, is likely to change in more acidic oceans is of vital importance.

The most sensitive methods used to investigate iron speciation are based on the voltammetric adsorption of iron bound to an electroactive artificial ligand on a mercury drop. The total iron and ligands concentration and the stability constants can be retried but these methods often implied fastidious experimental procedures. The main issue is the requirement of pH adjustment which is potentially modifying significantly the iron speciation and misleading the interpretation. In this project, we are trying to develop analytical methods flexible in pH to measure iron speciation at natural pH and to gain insights into the effect of ocean acidification on iron speciation.

Simon Martin

Understanding Fluid Flow during Magma Intrusion using Magnetic Fabrics in Analogue Models

Understanding magma behaviour during emplacement within the crust is vital for determining the dynamic processes occurring in volcanic systems. Here we present results from laboratory experiments that study fluid flow during magma intrusion. Multi-coloured plaster of Paris (a Bingham fluid and the magma analogue) seeded with magnetite particles was loaded sequentially or annularly into a piston, and this was injected through a central port in the base of a 1.2 x 1.2 x 0.5 m box filled with fine grained wheat flour (a cohesive granular material and the crust analogue). This created experimental plumbing systems which once solidified were excavated and photographed so the external morphology could be characterised in 3D. Cup structures, sheet-like dykes and tube-like conduits were identified, which all had surface planar crenulations and lineations. When sequential colouring was used, the external colour also indicated which sections of the plumbing system were active at what time. When annular colouring was used, the internal structures were characterised by slicing the intrusions into thin sheets. Closely-spaced sampling across the length, breadth and thickness of the intrusion slices permitted the detailed three-dimensional mapping of magnetic fabrics using anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility. The observed fabrics indicate that a series of complex processes occurred during emplacement, which are preserved by the orientation of magnetic particles. These results have important implications for the interpretation of flow fabrics in fossil and active intrusions in nature.


39

Isabella Masiero

Evaluating the Structural Control Over Carbonate Platforms Developed in Syn–Rift Settings Using Stratigraphic and Seismic Forward Models

Characterization of carbonate platforms developed in syn-rift settings is challenging. Carbonate strata are complex and heterogeneous, and the fault-related, differential subsidence characterizing extensional basins increases this complexity. We have used stratigraphic and seismic forward models to investigate how normal faulting may affect architecture, facies distribution and seismic imaging of carbonate strata.

The first step of the research has been the improvement of Carbo-CAT, a pre-existing 3D stratigraphic forward model of carbonate systems.

Carbo-CAT has been used to investigate how carbonate accumulation may be controlled by syndepositional normal faulting. Detailed sensitivity analysis investigates the relationship between carbonate growth and eustatic oscillations, slip rate and foot-wall uplift. We have also explored how fault evolution controls redistribution of carbonate sediment from the platform top area into adjacent basins.

The main outcomes of the performed sensitivity analysis, are a series of geological models, representing carbonate platform developed under the different, investigated controls. We populated the resulting 3D models with elastic properties, using a depth-domain convolution modelling, integrating both illumination and resolution effects, to calculate synthetic seismic images. We will compare the developed seismic images with known examples of syn-rift carbonate platform margins, analysing how the seismic platform architectures relate to eustatic and tectonic control.

Daniel Maskrey

The complex relationship between behaviour and temperature in the beadlet sea anemone

Anthropogenic environmental change is an ever-increasing threat to global biodiversity. Within species, a key determinant of the ability to cope with this change is the magnitude of phenotypic variation within a population. An important aspect of this is between-individual behavioural variation, termed personality. In the beadlet sea anemone, personality is seemingly linked to at least three different morphotypes, which live in different environments. In this study we used this species to investigate how different individuals, of different morphotypes and from different habitats on the shore, altered two risk-related behaviours when exposed to a graduated increase in temperature up to a thermal extreme. We found clear responses to temperature-change in both behaviours, which were related to morphotype and home-habitat. We further discovered consistent differences between individuals in these responses, and that these differences could be predicted by baseline personality. Our data suggest that certain individuals and groups may be better at dealing with environmental change than others. We also found possible evidence for a behavioural syndrome in this species, adding to the body of studies indicating that simple organisms, too, exhibit complex personalities.


40

Oliver McDowell

The Contribution of Alternative Food Initiatives to Community Empowerment in Liverpool

Alternative food initiatives have begun to be recognised as a means of regaining control in an increasingly globalised and neoliberalised food system. This research investigates the role that alternative food initiatives have in empowering communities to build resilient community economies based around principles of sharing and co-operation within urban environments effected by austerity. Rather than focusing solely on the negative aspects of austerity, the project seeks to use urban food as a lens through which to explore and illuminate more positive accounts of how people in cities, characterised (in part) by austerity, are looking to create prefigurative spaces of hope and justice.

Within the city of Liverpool, food will be highlighted as a way in which citizens can take back control of how a space is produced, involving an investigation into how the production, distribution and consumption of food can be reclaimed by communities. Through this, the project will explore how researching alternative food economies can help us to develop a more diverse account of how cities work.

Madeleine Moyle

Establishing the ‘natural’ baseline and anthropogenic perturbation of P dynamics in the Shropshire Meres from lake sediments

Many lowland lakes suffer problems with eutrophication and regularly fail to meet EU water quality targets due to elevated levels of phosphorus (P), often despite mitigation practices in place. Twenty-four months of monitoring at Crose Mere (Shropshire) found P levels which exceed EU water quality targets. To understand the context of the present lake status, palaeolimnological records are used to reconstruct past lake conditions and obtain pre- disturbance baselines for water quality to guide effective management of the ecosystem. Here, a sediment geochemical record has determined the phosphorus and detrital erosion fluxes for the last ~12,000 years at Crose Mere. A transect of cores reveals repeatable basin-wide episodes that show increased flux of erosional indicators (soil-derived Ti, K, Zr, Rb) and these have encouraged in-wash of particulate-bound P. Pollen inferred episodes of human impact coincide with these rate increases in particulate and nutrient fluxes to the lake. These episodes correspond to the timing of major (pre)historic periods. Thus, Crose Mere has experienced a long legacy of human impact from low-level pre-historic perturbation of the landscape, introduction of agriculture and large-scale and permanent woodland clearances. Linking 24 months of P monitoring with the sedimentary record for P suggests an initial onset to declining nutrient status ~800 years ago and crossing reconstructed EU thresholds for poor nutrient status ~60 years ago.


41

Matthew McParland

Modelling the Sediment Dynmacis of Large Woody Debris Dams

Large Woody Dams (LWDs) are one of the most commonly used Natural Flood Management (NFM) techniques. The majority of the evidence regarding the effectiveness of this method has come from modelling studies. Despite this, there are no specifically designed tools for modelling the in-stream effects of LWDs. Previous studies have relied on pre-programed structures such as weirs and culverts in HEC-RAS and Tu-Flow. Since LWDs function very differently to these structures, this is unlikely to be an accurate representation. Previous research has also neglected to include the effects of sedimentary processes. This is an important oversight since there is evidence to suggest that erosion and deposition could significantly alter the effectiveness of LWDs as a form of NFM. Therefore, the aim of this research was to develop a computer programme designed specifically for modelling LWDs. This was achieved by creating a new hydraulic and sediment transport model in MATLAB that can calculate the effects of LWDs on in-stream processes. The newly developed computer programme has been able to predict sediment transport, erosion and deposition that broadly concur with measured values. Predictions can be made both deterministically and stochastically so that uncertainties in the model predictions can be calculated.

Dahiru D. Muhammed

Sedimentary facies analysis based on multi-element XRF analyses.

Several works have reported that the conventional sedimentary facies subdivisions are not always helpful in reservoir quality studies, for example there is no automatic link to primary mineralogy or even the presence of grain-coating clays. This research project is designed to understand how modern analogue studies can be employed in reservoir quality studies, mainly reservoir quality prediction by analogy. The work is focussed on the Ravenglass estuary located in north-western England. In this work, an attempt has been made to characterise sedimentary environments based on multi-element XRF analyses, analysed ArcGIS and statistical tools. The estuary was mapped to define the distribution of 11 sedimentary environments. About 480 surface samples collected covering the entire study area. These samples were subjected to X-ray fluorescence analyses using handheld XRF tool. The results from the surface sediments include element distribution maps and cross-plots of different elemental indices. There is a good correlation between several of the depositional environments within the estuary and element concentration. Thus XRF data can be used to discriminate sedimentary environments; this will allow unequivocal identification of palaeo-environments from geotechnical cores drilled in the Ravenglass Estuary. Moreover, principal component analysis result also allows the delineation of some environments but limited to mud-flat, mixed-flat and sand-flat environments. This approach will ultimately be applied to post-glacial Holocene cores. This work has proved that there are strong and predictable relationships between clastic sediment environments and facies and element composition.


42

Beth-Helen Hatlebakk Munkli

Acoustic analysis to predict plume propagation

Assessing aspects of volcanic activity can be done in several ways. Volcanic explosions generate infrasound by the sudden discharge of gas and volcanic material. The infrasound signal can be acquired and analysed in near real time, and can provide information regarding volume of volcanic material expelled by the explosion without the constraints of visibility that remote sensing techniques have. This can aid in the predictions of ash plume propagation following an explosion. Presented here are the workflow and results from inversions using Acoustic Source Inversion (ASINV), a software utilising a 3-D finite difference time domain (FDTD) which accounts for topography. The inverted data is then used in PlumeRise. The data introduced and analysed are from Santiaguito, Guatemala.

Hong Ni

City-region Governance in China: Between Centralized and Decentralized Intergovernmental Coordination

In China, the term ‘city-region’ is referred to an inter-city collaboration and/or coordination for boosting economic competiveness and regional growth. It denotes an intermediate level of governance between cities and the state to circumvent the limitation of administrative boundaries and institutional framework of various levels of ‘local’ governments – from metropolitan, provincial to prefectural. Although the boundary of a city-region can be physically demarcated, it is essentially a scalable term in both the geographical scope and government structure. Scholars have argued, distinctly different from Western and other non-Western countries, the formation of city-regions in China in the last decade, by and large, has been the policy inclination of the central government for scale building. Seeing the city-region as an economic impetus to national development, the state government has favored a centralised approach to promote collaborative partnerships among various ‘local’ governments by means of administrative annexation, strategic regional development plan or alliance to foster metropolitan growth and city-region formation.

This research problematizes China’s prevailing centralized approach to inter-city collaboration for regional development that has been much propagated and widely implemented. Drawing on David Hamilton’s analysis of various governance responses to the pressure of metropolitan growth around the world, this research is set to conduct case studies on two types governing responses – ‘centralization’ and ‘decentralization’ – in both the Chinese and American contexts. By conducting a comparative study to identify different opportunities and challenges of intergovernmental coordination in the two countries, the research seeks to unpack the effectiveness of the two types of regional governing and provides recommendations on collaborative inter-city governance when advancing city- region under the special political and economic circumstances of China.


43

Danial Owen

Urban Sensors: Exploiting the Opportunities

As cities worldwide become ever more “smart”, the opportunities for data sources increase greatly. My PhD project aims to utilize the new forms of data from Smart Cities. The data for this project will predominately come from two Smart City projects in Valencia and Costa Del Sol; collected by consulting, engineering and architecture firm, IDOM.

The data collected by IDOM focus on six primary Smart Objectives; smart governance, environment, mobility, people, economy and smart living. In order to achieve these smart objectives, we must better our understanding on cities through the analysis of these data sources. Some of these data sources include the following sensors; smart parking, noise pollution, lighting, influx control, urban waste, etc.

My first project will attempt to analyse the characteristics of the flow of people in Malaga during the summer months using vector fields. The movement of people will be measured on a grid- based across 13 areas of the city. The project will explore spatio-temporal differences of movement in each area of the city.

Nikos Patias

A Scalable Analytical Framework for Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Neighbourhood Change: A Sequence Analysis Approach

Spatio-temporal changes reflect the complexity and evolution of demographic and socioeconomic processes. Changes in the spatial distribution of population and consumer demand at urban and rural areas are expected to trigger changes in future housing and infrastructure needs. This paper presents a scalable analytical framework for understanding spatio-temporal population change, using a sequence analysis approach. This paper uses gridded cell Census data for Great Britain from 1971 to 2011 with 10-year intervals, creating neighbourhood typologies for each Census year. These typologies are then used to analyse transitions of grid cells between different types of neighbourhoods and define representative trajectories of neighbourhood change. The results reveal seven prevalent trajectories of neighbourhood change across Great Britain, identifying neighbourhoods which have experienced stable, upward and downward pathways through the national socioeconomic hierarchy over the last four decades.


44

Ellie Perrin

The political economy of post-conflict transformation in Northern Ireland – the contribution of worker cooperatives

This research seeks to address the gap in the literature on post-conflict Northern Ireland by looking at the contribution of worker cooperatives and answer three questions.

First, what specific problems does neoliberalism cause when embedded in a Northern Irish context?

Second, cooperatives have remained relatively unnoticed in the literature on Northern Ireland, leading us to ask what role they play and whether they can support the empowerment of people who have been marginalised by the transition from conflict?

Third, what lessons can be learnt for promoting cooperative development in post-conflict societies and what challenges do cooperatives face?

This research uses a qualitative approach, which includes in-depth interviews with and observations of worker cooperatives, as well as interviews with key stakeholder such as politicians, public servants, trade unionists and community activists. This research seeks to explore the mechanisms of resistance that in the everyday life may contribute to the formation of peace and provide an alternative to the top-down economy of peacebuilding.

Hazel Phillips

Developing a regional approach to palaeoflood reconstruction using lake and reservoir sediments for the British Isles.

Data on flood magnitude and frequency in the UK before 1900 are sparse in nature and regionally variable. River gauging station time series in the UK are typically short in duration (<50 years). Records of rainfall and other related meteorological series whilst longer, rarely exceed ~200 years with restricted spatial coverage. Historical reconstructions have been used to augment river gauging station data, but also fail to present a full picture of past flooding with records increasingly fragmentary with time. The duration of flood time series can be extended by incorporating additional extreme events from sedimentary palaeoflood archives.

A challenge in developing a regional database of palaeolimnological flood series is that lakes are not ubiquitous. In Britain they are numerous in the north and west, but few occur in the south and east. Reservoirs conversely have a broader distribution with many constructed during the nineteenth century. Flood histories have rarely been generated from reservoirs despite the associated instrumental data on water levels and flows. Here, we extend the number of palaeoflood records, with new data from both lakes and reservoirs. A ~200 year sedimentary record has been developed from Thirlmere Reservoir (NW England) in the River Derwent catchment, which can be contrasted to nearby lacustrine palaeoflood series. The repeatability of reservoir palaeoflood records is explored using three adjacent reservoirs draining the western Pennines towards the River Tame catchment near Manchester. Further east across the Pennines, lacustrine palaeoflood data from Semer Water in the River Ouse catchment provide a basis for comparison with the Manchester reservoir records.

Our aims are 1) to explore how reservoir palaeoflood records differ from those preserved in lakes; 2) to build new palaeoflood time series for the Derwent, Tame and Ouse catchments for comparison with existing instrumented and historical palaeoflood data.


45

Susie Philp

Sensing Dynamic Retail Environments

The retail industry in the UK is constantly evolving. The rise of online retail and convenience culture has created a new paradigm of retail experience and consumer expectations. Adapting high street retail to these changes can involve complex and high-stake decision making, though imperative to the sustainability of the UK retail sector. Therefore, investing in newer, smarter and reliable methods to keep high streets thriving is vital to UK sustainability. Understanding how consumers spatially and temporally navigate their retail environment can improve retail experience and high street resilience. Advancements in sensing technologies have made consumer flows increasingly visible. Throughout my PhD studies, I aim to use analysis of this data to give a detailed insight into the variation of consumer flows and trends in retail centres, and the factors that influence them. Currently, I am clustering micro-locations on their similarity of footfall-driving characteristics, such as proximity to transport hubs. The resulting clusters show similar footfall signatures, which could be used to infer footfall for UK retail environments where it is unknown. These insights could allow stakeholders to understand how consumers experience their retail environment, and how to make this experience more positive and create a resilient and sustainable high street.

Ciara Pimm

Southern Ocean Ventilation and its impacts on heat and carbon uptake.

The Southern Ocean is globally important due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), connecting the three main ocean basins (Indian, Pacific, Atlantic) and leading to the global exchange of heat, carbon, and nutrients. The strong westerly winds in the Southern hemisphere lead to an upwelling of deep water and thus the creation of mode and intermediate waters, such as, Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW), and Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW). These mode waters spread northwards and ventilate the subtropics, and hence can have an impact on the amount of heat and carbon transported around the globe. I will be using the general circulation model, ECCO (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean), to conduct statistical analysis and sensitivity analysis using the adjoint method. The statistical analysis will focus on finding the correlations between mode water properties (such as kinematic and dynamic contributions to density and stratification) and surface water properties. The adjoint sensitivity analysis will consider sensitivity pathways and tracer release experiments to help identify source waters and look at the sensitivities of our objective function to different forcing and boundary conditions.


46

Gemma Portlock

Sulphide and thiol species and their role in the marine copper cycling

Copper (Cu) plays an essential role in marine systems as it is a micronutrient that facilitates many significant biogeochemical processes howeveris required for several physiological processes such as respiration. But copper is also toxic with, concentrations of free Cu2+ at and above 1Pm 1pM havinghave been shown in laboratory conditions to affect the reproductive rate ofhave toxic effects to aquatic animals and bacteriaphytoplankton species such as dinoflagellates.Thiols are believed to decrease the toxicity of metals by chelating with them. Thiols are organic compounds that contain a sulphur-hydrogen bond. Marine phytoplankton release thiols into the surface waters however, little is currently known about the distribution of these ligands. Thiols can exist in a number of different forms such as glutathione (GSH), cysteine, thioglycolic acid and possibly many more that have notn’t yet currently been identified in the marine system.

Sulfur species can also act as a ligand with Cu, forming metal complexing ligands.Cathodic stripping voltammetry (CSV) with a hanging mercury drop electrode is a highly sensitive analytical technique that allows detection in the sub nM levels of thiols and/or sulfide compounds. However, the peak is not specific to individual sulfidic compounds as only one peak can be observed for sulphide and different thiol species.

A series of experiments will be carried out for the identification of thiols/sulfides in seawater to study their interactions with copper and possibly other metals. .

Sophie Preston

Examining social learning in collaborative governance processes for nature-based solutions

As the effects of climate change are increasingly felt by society, ensuring the resilience of cities has never been more urgent. An innovative way of mitigating and adapting to these impacts are nature-based solutions (NBS). NBS are increasingly prioritised by the European Commission, who define them as “actions which are inspired by, supported by or copied from nature” that “result in multiple co-benefits for health, the economy, society and the environment”. One central theme of the NBS literature is the requirement for such projects to be a multi-stakeholder endeavour, with civil society being a key actor. The concept of multi-stakeholder endeavours is central to successful collaborative governance, where input from as diverse a set of actors as possible is seen to increase flexibility of management systems. The research will examine how collaborative governance systems as part of URBAN Green UP, an NBS project in Liverpool. In particular it will focus on social learning and meaningful participation of citizens as a key stakeholder.


47

Elliott Price

Impact of climate change and dietary resource availability on the feeding habits of Calanoid copepods in the Arctic Ocean.

Calanoid copepods in the genus Calanus form a large part of the zooplankton community in the Arctic Ocean. Given that they have high grazing rates on primary producers and are prey themselves for a range of marine organisms, Calanus spp. are of paramount importance in maintaining a stable and functional food web in the Arctic Ocean. The changing arctic climate is altering atmospheric and ocean temperatures, and influencing the dynamics of ocean circulation patterns, leading to a loss of sea ice, disruption of biogeochemical cycles and causing a potential long-term shift in the composition and availability of dietary resources for Calanus spp. Such changes will have consequences for ecological processes in which Calanus spp. are involved, cascading to alter interactions between other organisms in the rest of the food web. By using stable isotope ratios of 14N to 15N, we can assess how the diets and trophic positions of keystone organisms such as Calanus spp. are changing in response to altered ocean characteristics, which can lead us to valuable insights into the health of the ecosystem. This information can then be used to infer food web responses to future climate change scenarios in the vulnerable Arctic Ocean.

Leanne Purdham

“It’s like a summer camp”: Discourses of humanitarianism and enforcement in The South Texas Family Residential Center

This presentation analyses the current moment of U.S. “family detention”, or detention of immigrant children with a parent. Much work understandably focuses on the overt violence to children during detention, perhaps most clearly highlighted by the Trump administration’s recent policy of mass family separations. However, my work considers the complex discourses of helping, care, and humanitarianism found in legal struggles over family detention. My analysis centers on my volunteer work in the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC), in Dilley Texas, and advocacy in Athens, Georgia. I discuss how the discourses of care and helping interplay with those of enforcement and criminalized migration, shaping policy and the day-to-day workings of detention, in “family” detention centers and beyond. I will consider the implications of these discourses for advocates and those involved in efforts to end detention and challenge immigration policing in general.


48

Elliot Rice-Birchall

Factors affecting the formation of compaction bands in reservoir sandstones

As oil fields are produced, the pore pressure reduction can sometimes result in pore collapse and the formation of compaction bands. These are localised features which can significantly reduce the bulk permeability of the reservoir and are therefore problematic in the oil, water and CO2 sequestration industries. However, the control that sandstone properties, such as grain size, grain shape and sorting have on compaction band formation are still poorly understood, owing largely to the fact that finding natural sandstones with specific properties is challenging. Consequently, a method of forming synthetic sandstones has been developed, whereby amorphous quartz cement and sodium chloride are precipitated between sand grains as a product of the reaction between sodium silicate and hydrochloric acid. The salt can then be dissolved, resulting in a porosity representative of a reservoir sandstone. Preliminary results from triaxial experiments on these samples show that yield curves can be produced similar to those from natural sandstones. Axial loading of synthetic core samples with 30 – 32 % porosity to approximately 2 – 4 % axial strain has also shown evidence for possible compaction bands. Work will now focus on constraining the ideal conditions for compaction band growth, by performing tests on synthetic sandstones with controlled properties.

Shaun Rigby

Using Helium to Constrain Resource Supply to the Ocean Mixed Layer

Phytoplankton require a cocktail of resources for a range of metabolic processes. Hence, the supply of resources is key in maintaining and dictating rates of primary production.

The GEOTRACES programme has provided a plethora of observations throughout the global ocean, however associated vertical fluxes are yet to be calculated. Here, we use helium measurements to estimate the exchange of water between the seasonal mixed layer and main thermocline in the subtropical North Atlantic and equatorial Pacific. Tritium, the radioactive parent isotope of helium-3, was produced during bomb-testing in the mid 20th century and subducted to the main thermocline at high latitudes. The advection of tritium combined with radioactive decay has generated an inventory of helium below the mixed layer in mid and low latitudes. Helium is released from the ocean to the atmosphere at the surface, therefore we use the outgassing flux to ascertain that through the base of the mixed layer. We apply the established relationship between helium isotope ratios with nitrate to infer a vertical nitrate flux. Finally, we extend this relationship to include multiple resources for the first time, providing vertical flux estimates of resources which are fundamental to biological production.


49

Natalie Rose

Using machine learning to explore the impact of weather on high street retail

Retail is one of the most important economic sectors in the UK, on that is highly dynamic, and the nature of which has undergone significant changes in recent years, predominantly due to the rise of e-commerce and convenience culture. As a result, an understanding of the key influences on product sales is arguably amongst the most valuable information for retailers to help them stay competitive in the current retail landscape.

This study uses daily sales data, combined with meteorological data, to explore the varying impact of different weather types on product sales and identify the categories that are most susceptible to influence from changing weather conditions. In addition, spatial variations in weather impact will be explored at both local and regional levels. A random forest methodology is employed to undertake this analysis and quantify the impact that weather conditions have on sales. Furthermore, partial dependence plots are used to enable the relationships between weather variables and sales to be examined. By combining these machine learning methods with expansive sales datasets, it is hoped that we can provide a greater understanding of the relationship between retail and weather, which will subsequently aid retailers in the reduction of waste and economic losses.

Gabrielle Sale

Asian women beyond resilience: negotiating community services in austere times

Growing pressure on third-sector and community organisations to act as a source of community resilience exists amongst a backdrop of seismic changes in the organisation and delivery of service-provision at a local level, with an increasing dependence on charities and religious organisations to deliver previously state- delivered services. There is a need for further exploration of the ramifications of third-sector and voluntary organisations becoming both empowered and responsibilised for the welfare and wellbeing of local people. To date, much policy discourse on the wellbeing of British Asian women has been framed either around structural inequalities and barriers to state services and healthcare or, within a growing framework around the proactivity of individuals in ‘diverse’ or ‘superdiverse’ contexts. This second framework emphasises agency in improving lives and is often posited alongside discourses of resilience: constructing an optimistic narrative of ‘bouncing back’ in the face of economic and social adversity.

This research outlines current academic literature into the devolution of service provision in an era of austerity, as well as exploring potential research methods for exploring how South Asian women living in inner-city Birmingham, navigate and use these services. Through qualitative approaches, this research seeks a nuanced understanding of the impact of austerity and devolved services on users, and an exploration of the ways in which ethnicity and gender both intersect with, and are inherently bound up in, austerity politics.


50

Krasen Samardzhiev

Topological data analysis of big spatio-temporal urban data

Mobile phone calls, text messages or apps enable the capture of large amounts of data that can be stored for later analysis. When combined with spatio-temporal information they can be of interest to researchers looking to answer questions about the urban environment. This data can lead to new insights, but can also present new challenges. In order to meet these challenges researchers adopt new methodologies from fields such as machine learning.

Recently, a new field of data analysis - topological data analysis (TDA) is finding applications in various domains. What distinguishes it from machine learning and traditional statistical methods is its focus on more qualitative properties of the data, such as the ‘shape’ of the data and looking at what properties ‘persist’ as some filter is varied. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of this new data analysis paradigm by using TDA techniques and methods to quantitatively analyze and group areas that exhibit similar patterns of mobile phone activity.

Jenny Schauroth

Bubble nucleation and growth induced by shear in aphyric rhyolitic melts

Bubble nucleation and growth control magma transport, degassing and outgassing, and ultimately,

volcanic activity. Current models for bubble nucleation and growth rely on isotropic ‘shell’ models, which neglect anisotropy and bubble deformation, known to develop during shear associated with transport.

We aim to constrain how the application of anisotropic stresses, such as those extant in volcanic conduits, affect bubble nucleation and growth in aphyric magma.

We take an experimental approach, using a dilatometer in which we control the force applied to a sample, using a natural, water-bearing obsidian. Cylinders were heated to an isotherm at which a constant uniaxial load was applied. Deformation of the obsidian samples is calibrated against a standard glass, allowing for the detection of bubble nucleation onset and bubble growth. We find that with increasing load the onset of bubble nucleation shifted towards shorter timescales.

We hypothesise that deformation induces advection and potential changes in the melt structure, modifying the kinetics of nucleation and growth during shearing. Depending on the capillary regime of the bubbly suspension, growth rates are amplified by deformation. These results highlight that bubble nucleation, and growth kinetics are dependent on the complex stress distribution in liquids, not just on temperature and pressure.


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Laura Scott

The origin of pseudotachylytes in seismogenic fault zones, and their role during interseismic creep

Psuedotachylytes, or frictional melts, are commonly interpreted to generate around the brittle-viscous transition, at 10-15km depths within the crust. Association with brittle fault rocks is common, however occurrences of pseudotachylytes coeval to mylonites have been documented. The Ivrea-Verbano Zone in NW Italy preserves examples of pseudotachylytes associated with Hercynian and Alpine orogenies; these are associated with ultramylonites, and cataclasites. Previous studies document pseudotachylyte occurrences along the Insubric Line at the NW of the study area, and within the Balmuccia peridotite, however shear zones to the SW; the Cossato-Mergozzo-Brissago (CMB) and Pogallo Lines (PL), have little literature documenting pseudotachylytes. Field analysis and lab work will determine whether pseudotachylytes along the CMB and PL are associated with the late Permian Hercynian event, or the much younger Alpine orogeny. Geomagnetic analysis of samples will determine direction and sense of seismic slip, as well as the depth of pseudotachylyte generation. Griggs Rig and Creep Rig analysis can test the reactivation of deformation in pseudotachylyte-rich natural samples. This work will improve our understanding of the processes controlling aseismic slip in the earthquake cycle, linking rupture in the seismogenic crust, and the mechanisms accommodating deformation in the deeper crust.

Li-Dan Shang

The Influence of Nontraditional Family Structures on Children Educational Outcomes

Over the last two decades, family structures have diversified. International migration has led to a rise in the number of families in which at least one parent is foreign-born. The rate of partnership separation has loomed leading to a greater number of single-parent families, and families in which grandparents have assumed parental role for their grandchildren has also increased.

Existing evidence indicates a strong relationship between family structure and children’s educational outcomes. Parental involvement is well documented to be a key ingredient for the educational success of children. Yet the relationship between emerging non-traditional family structures and children education performance is not well understood. Drawing on Taiwanese multi-wave survey data (Taiwan Assessment of Student Achievement) and a series of regression models, this paper aims to determine this relationship by assessing the influence of six family structures (single father family, single mother family, skipped-generation family, lone grandfather family, lone grandmother family and immigrant family) on cognitive knowledge (measured by test score).Key findings revealed students from skipped generation family are more disadvantaged in terms of performance in subjects than those from immigrant family. They also show that students who live in single father family tend to have a worse education performance than those who live in single mother family.


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Naboth Simon

Relationship between Grain Size Distribution and Sedimentary Environments in Modern Estuarine

Grain size distribution is used as an important tool for discriminating sedimentary environments including potential analogues of reservoir rocks in mixed tidal-fluvial environments. Existing schemes and models, however, do not consider complex mixing in tidal-fluvial depositional environment e.g. in an estuary. Here, we provide data from a detailed study relating depositional environment and grain size distribution from the Ravenglass Estuary, Cumbria, UK. The Ravenglass estuary is a shallow, mixed energy, and macro-tidal estuarine system with an area of about 5.6 km2 of which approximately 86% are intertidal. Aerial imagery and detailed ground surveys were used to define a suite of 11 estuarine sub-environments. 482 surface sediment samples were collected from the estuary and nearby coast and subjected to grain size analysis using Beckman Coulter laser particles size analysis (LPSA) and GRADISTAT© soft-ware. The quantified sediment properties were plotted using MINITAB©, Excel© spreadsheet and ArcGIS© for grain size distribution and environmental discrimination. We will show subtle mapped variations in grain size distribution across all 11 sub-environments, detailing both differences between environments and within given environments. Specific morphology of a given depositional environment and estuarine hydrodynamics are the main controls on grain size distribution. This study may be used by analogy, to better predict the spatial grain size distribution and discrimination of sedimentary environments in ancient and deep buried sandstone.

Grace Skirrow

Long-term changes in the dynamics of former glacier-fed fluvial systems in Patagonia

This research focuses on the long-term changes in fluvial geomorphology and sediment dynamic at Rio Chubut (Argentina). The aim is to develop a geomorphological history and test the environmental drivers responsible for the temporal changes in geomorphic development. Mapping of the geomorphology using remotely sensed data, e.g. aerial photography, will inform field-based mapping, geophysical survey, sediment description and sampling for luminescence dating. A luminescence-based landform chronology and hydrogeomorphological modelling can test hypotheses on the magnitude, frequency and time scale of fluvial change.Fluvial change in this region has wider significance given the deglacial decoupling from ice masses and the interaction with the Southern Westerlies, and other hydroclimate parameters e.g. El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), The loss of glacial waters from fluvial systems is a growing concern in Patagonia forming a key water supply sources. Characterising the dynamics and long term evolution of past fluvial systems through glacial, deglacial and postglacial times forms a valuable analogue for understanding future changes.

In summary, this project will develop insight into the way rivers formerly fed by glacial outwash have responded to climate shifts during and after the major glacial episodes of the late Quaternary.


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Yizhi Song

Urban Governance Of Smart Cities In China

From 2008, cities start to consider smart transition. China, similarly, has a maximum amount of smart city pilots’ campaign (around 300 cities and areas) in the world. Building a smart city is a system project without a specific template. However, urban governance has regarded as one of key factors for smart transition in cities. Therefore, the aim of research is to understand and explore the role of urban governance to drive smart cities development in Chinese practices with detail narrative.

The research questions include what is smart cities and its urban strategy in China? What is the role of municipal and non-state stakeholder in planning, managing and finance process? How they steer, participant and collaborative? What is urban governance of smart city in Chinese context? The research attempts to provide the evidences from real Chinese implementation by documentary analysis and semi- structure interview into international debates to discuss urban governance of smart cities. In doing so, the research selects three cities as case study from China including government-led governance, public-private partnership and hybrid governance to present details on how local government, enterprises and civic society do on smart transition in order to understand and explore urban governance process.

Chloe Steele

Data Fusion and the 2021 Global Census

My project aims to merge data sources together in order to develop a method to create geodemographic classifications in countries that do not have reliable/widespread/useful data sources. There is a possibility of using satellite imagery to do this, or unconventional sources of data that would not normally be used to create geo-demographic classifications.


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Ellen Tablot

Using Energy Performance Certificates to critically evaluate the new fuel poverty definiton

Fuel poverty has been redefined, and it’s reduction has a focus on energy efficiency. This work aims to show that it is a multidimensional issue that cannot be reduced to such a simplistic understanding. By combining energy performance certificates with demographic indicators from the most recent census and small area income estimates, a new geodemographic classification has been generated in order to show the multitude of factors which lead to fuel poverty, over and above the energy efficiency of the building in which somebody is housed.

This piece also dissects the current definition and suggests that the Low Income High Cost model does not go far enough in understanding the lived experience of fuel poverty; people are missed, targeting is difficult and improvements are slow.

Lingyun Tang

Reconstructing Historic and Contemporary Drought Patterns Across China

Drought is a slow, long-term process that affects social economy agriculture, and people’s health unconsciously. As early as in the Oracle period, China had written records of meteorological disasters. This study is based on Chinese documentary data reconstructing China pre-instrumental period drought pattern, and through instrumental data to analyses the drought situation in recent 70 years. Due to China’s large population base, the social impact of drought will be magnified and deepened, the complex and special climatic conditions make China’s drought increasingly serious.

Through reinterpretation of the documentary data, restore the ancient drought grade from four aspects: meteorological drought, hydrological drought, agricultural drought, and socio-economic drought. Quantify the documentary data as a drought grade series to link with the drought level of the instrumental period to reconstruct the long-term drought patterns across China.


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Ahmad Ali Omar Tareemi

Sustainable Water Demand Management Strategies in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia faces a potential water crisis, with limited water availability comparative to need. The fundamental cause of this is increased consumption per capita, rising population and constant exhaustion of available water resources. This study examines the effectiveness of current water demand management strategies in the KSA and considers potential improvements. Specifically, the research takes a case study approach (focusing on the city of Jeddah) and will utilise interviews alongside questionnaires to explore: a) the nature and extent of schools’ delivery of water conservation messages and b) the potential role of imams (religious teachers) and mosques in providing delivery of water conservation information. To date, a review of the extant, relevant, literature has been undertaken and the methodological design has been undertaken.

Sian Teesdale

The urban analytics of “human weather” form and forecast

The Data CDT course is a 4 year integrated Master’s/PhD course in Data Society and Analytics, with my project being titled ‘The urban analytics of “human weather” form and forecast’. My PhD will be focusing on the movement of people within urban areas, with the use of vehicular and mobile GPS data collected by one of my sponsor Here Technologies. Both of my sponsors – Esri and Here Technologies – will aid me throughout my PhD by giving me training, and access to their data.

My presentation at the PGR Conference will be split into three sections: dataset, methods, and an overview of my internship. Primarily, Here Technologies will supply the data used in my thesis, with the company giving me the freedom to choose an urban area(s) of choice. The methods to explore this data will be provided with reference to current literature. Finally, a brief summary of my two-week internship at Here Technologies (based in Eindhoven, NL) will be given.


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Daniele Thallner

What on Earth was the geomagnetic field doing just before the Cambrian explosion of life?

Palaeomagnetic measurements from the Ediacaran period (635-541 Ma) produce anomalous results which might indicate unusual behaviour of Earth’s magnetic field. In contrast to the conventional geomagnetic dipole field, geocentric and aligned with Earth’s rotational axis, records of the palaeomagnetic field, stored in rocks in several locations in Laurentia and Baltica, have been used to argue that the Ediacaran geomagnetic field spent extended periods of time with its poles at the geographic equator. In addition, recent studies (Bono et. al., 2019) show that the intensity of the field was exceptionally low at that time.

This project aims to gain a better understanding of the ancient geomagnetic field of the Ediacaran period by analysing the strength of the field and to investigate the reasons for its anomalous behaviour. Palaeointensity measurements of Ediacaran rocks from the Grenville Dykes (Halls et al., 2015), the Skinner Cove volcanics (McCausland and Hodych, 1998) have been conducted using several different methods of palaeointensity determination. The results gained from these experiments indicate the presence of an extremely low geomagnetic field in the time period between 550 Ma and 600 Ma.

Emma Thomas

Conservationists or ‘careless’ flood causers?: understanding the socio-cultural contexts of farmers’ agri-environmental action

Farmers are increasingly placed, partly enforced through policy changes, in a position of great responsibility and pressure regarding the sustainable use and management of land and water. However, little is known about how about how farmers negotiate the riparian environments within agricultural management in order to increase the sustainability of such resources. This project has started to address these issues by examining farmers’ understandings of the river and riparian environments on their farms and placing them in context of the wider management of these farms and the wider social and cultural contexts in which the farmers operate. Presenting a summary of the findings, I will explore three of the main themes reported on in this research project. The first explores the methodological challenges of interviewing farmers about their lived experiences of, and perspectives on, rivers and riparian environments. Second, the Bourdieusian-inspired notion of the ‘good farmer’ and how riparian environments on farms fit within notions of good farming is explored drawing upon Bourdieu’s ideas of capital(s). Finally, the third theme explores farmers’ knowledge and learning process and how their knowledge is shared among the farming community to move towards more sustainable agricultural practices.


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Stephan Toby

The fidelity of the stratigraphic record to archive sediment supply signals

The rate of sediment supplied from catchments to sedimentary basins imparts key information about climatic, tectonic, and anthropogenic influences. Sediment supply is a major control on landscape dynamics and sediment transport systems, which in turn shape the stratigraphic record. The stratigraphic record is usually interpreted in terms of these external conditions, but landscapes and sediment transport systems are also strongly affected by self-organised processes internal to the transport system (autogenic processes) such as river avulsions.

Autogenic processes temporally vary sediment distribution over basins, which limits the transfer of sediment supply signals to the stratigraphic record. We hypothesize that sediment supply signals are only recorded in stratigraphy if they overcome a threshold magnitude set by autogenic processes. We quantify this threshold using a physical experiment of a delta formed under constant forcing conditions and test the threshold with a suite of experiments with cyclic sediment flux. The results of the experiments support our initial hypothesis and theoretical framework. Application of this framework to the stratigraphic record is a major step in accurately interpreting stratigraphy for past environmental change and predicting the response of landscapes to environmental signals.

Katherine Turner

Hemispheric contributions to the global relationship between surface warming and cumulative emissions

Climate models show a near-proportional relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and surface warming, which lends itself to establishing carbon budgets for agreed-upon warming thresholds. While this relationship has been explored on a global scale, here we use an Earth system model of intermediate complexity and interrogate the global responses on a hemispheric basis. We implement a theory that connects the relationship to the uptake of head and carbon by the ocean to see how the hemispheres contribute to the thermal responses and carbon responses essential for setting the proportionality between CO2 emissions and surface warming. We find that the thermal response has a distinct hemispheric asymmetry facilitated by nonuniform radiative forcing and cross-equatorial heat transport. Conversely, the carbon response is nearly symmetric across the hemispheres, as atmospheric CO2 is well-mixed and ocean ventilation is highly symmetric across the equator.


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Alice Walker

The role of savanna ants in nutrient redistribution

Spatial redistribution of nutrients by animals influences the local availability of plant nutrients, determines plant establishment, and can ultimately affect community dynamics and ecosystem structure. As a dominant animal group in the tropics and subtropics, it is thought that ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) play a major role in redistributing nutrients through their foraging behaviours, but few studies have tested this assumption experimentally. In this study, the contribution of ants to the redistribution of food resources was quantified in a South African savanna. Ants were suppressed in four 1ha experimental plots using a targeted baiting technique. Carbohydrate, protein and seed baits were offered in these treatment plots and in four control plots. Half the baits were caged to allow us to partition the contribution of invertebrates, vertebrates and ants. Baits were collected and weighed after 24 hours, and the proportion of bait taken by ants, non-ant invertebrates, and vertebrates was quantified. Invertebrates (ants and non-ants collectively) were responsible for 79.3% of bait removal. Of this invertebrate-mediated resource removal, ants alone removed 65.2% of bait. Vertebrates were responsible for only 20.7% of bait removal overall. In the absence of ants there was no compensation by vertebrates or other invertebrates in removing food resources. The evidence presented here suggests that ants are important ecosystem engineers, and shows for the first time that ants are the major taxa involved in redistributing food resources in savannas, thus facilitating nutrient redistribution. This study helps to expand our understanding of the structure and functioning of savanna ecosystems.

Joshua Weaver

Smectite disassociation at temperature; thermal weakening and permeability development in clay-bearing hyaloclastite

Thermal fluctuations can influence the mineralogical assemblage of rocks and in turn, affect their physical and mechanical properties. Here, we constrain the impact of temperature increase on the mineralogical, physical and mechanical properties of hyaloclastites collected from the Krafla geothermal field, NW Iceland. Hyaloclastites are a highly variable volcaniclastic rock formed during non-explosive quench-induced fragmentation, often associated with sub-glacial volcanism. They consist of heterogeneous sideromelane fragments that are variably palagonitised to water-rich clay and zeolites. The resulting highly porous and permeable structure can be targeted as a production aquifer, or can undergo efficient compaction to form an impermeable caprock.

Dehydration reactions initiating at 130, 185 and 600 °C result in mass loss and a progressive contraction of the material. X-ray diffraction, corroborated by textural and QEMSCAN analysis, shows that mass loss at 600 °C is related to the disassociation of smectite within the palagonite matrix. This evolution results in a positive correlation between thermal stressing temperature, porosity and permeability gain. Gas permeability measured at 1 MPa confining pressure shows a 3-fold increase following thermal stressing at 600 °C.

We show here that clay-bearing rocks can be affected by temperatures experienced at the hotter limits of geothermal fields.


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David Williams

Meteotsunamis produced by precipitating atmospheric systems across north-west Europe

Meteotsunamis are ocean waves that act like tsunamis that are atmospherically generated. There have been several meteotsunami case-study reports generated by convective storms between May–August in north-west Europe. However, there has not been a meteotsunami climatology in the region. Addressing this issue, we show the size-frequency distribution of meteotsunamis and seasonal occurrence patterns in north-west Europe.

We analysed 72 tide gauges between January 2010 – December 2017. For the purposes of this climatology, a meteotsunami has a period below 2 hours and > 0.3 m wave height. The Met Office radar-network helped determine an atmospheric mechanism.

Preliminary results show that on average 47.3 meteotsunamis per year occurred in north-west Europe. At least 10 meteotsunamis/ year exceeded 0.60 m, and one meteotsunami/ year exceeded 0.97 m. However, tide gauges with large sampling intervals may under-predict size- exceedance rates.

Most meteotsunamis occurred in winter (52.1%) and least in summer (7.9%). This suggests that previous studies have neglected cases that represent over half of meteotsunamis. The average meteotsunami wave height in summer is 0.43 m and in winter is 0.51 m; this over- representation is not explained by larger waves in summer than winter. Future work should focus on winter-time meteotsunamis and their atmospheric forcings.

Thea Wingfield

Strategic delivery of catchment wide natural flood management

Critical and often overlooked in the debate around Natural Flood Management (NFM) is the act of balancing land and water resources. Delivering interventions for societal resilience against flooding requires navigating a complex socio-ecological system of housing, food, biodiversity, transport, flood defence, conservation and landownership.

There is no defined strategy to guide integrated catchment scale decision making and furthermore there is a lack of clarity as to which organisation(s) should drive delivery. Without this strategic approach the legitimacy of NFM has to be proven with each and every application for funding.

This study outlines a novel approach to explore the perceived barriers to the adoption of catchment wide NFM from the perspectives of two groups, flood risk management professionals and members of catchment partnerships. The results of this study have been tested in practice using three cases studies (Ribble, Merseyside and Wyre) based in North West England. The findings of both pieces of work have now been brought together in an NFM delivery framework designed to support the production of catchment improvement plans and the equitable appraisal of NFM project business plans.


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Anthony Wise

Connecting the Coast with the Deep Ocean

Shallow coastal zones and the deep open ocean are separated by a steep continental slope and the governing dynamics at the two regions diverge. The two regions do not, however, evolve in isolation. As boundaries of ocean basins, coastal zones play an important role in the large-scale adjustment of the ocean via the transmission and dissipation of information and energy.

Similarly, variability in the open ocean from, for example, large-scale wind forcing, contribute to variability and long-term sea level at the coast. Unpicking the processes by which the coast and ocean are connected and investigating their dependency on the geometry of the bathymetry and parameterisation of friction are key objectives that will ultimately contribute to better understanding the drivers of coastal sea level, the ocean circulation and energy budget, and the dynamical justification of parameterisation in Ocean Circulation Models.

Peter Wooldridge

Characterising basin scale sedimentary architecture through application of mass balance to the rock record

Basin scale sedimentary architecture is usually interpreted through a qualitative statement about sediment supply rate versus the rate of accommodation generation, i.e. sediment mass balance. Although conceptually useful, this approach does not offer any robust predictive capability at the architectural level. To address this, a multidisciplinary approach will be used to generate a mass balance model that can be directly applied to field and subsurface datasets. In detail we will quantify:

1) the partitioning of sediment grain size and facies down system;

2) the existence fields of river system types under different mass-balance scenarios; and

3) whether the architecture is predominantly a function of autogenic or allogenic processes.

Once quantified this will be encapsulated in a simple stratigraphic model and then validated, for the first time, against a high-quality outcrop and subsurface dataset in the central Appalachian Basin (USA). The simplicity of the model framework means that it can be directly applied to field and subsurface sedimentary systems, even with a limited dataset and provide down system predictive capabilities of basin architecture. It is anticipated that this work will advance our understanding of sedimentary systems and make the critical link between sedimentary surface processes and sedimentary successions.


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Joel Shutt Woon

Out of the forest: How termites live inside and outside tropical rainforests

Termites are vital taxa across tropical ecosystems, contributing to ecosystem processes such as decomposition, nutrient cycling, and soil bioturbation. They evolved in warm, moist tropical forests, where they continue to be important, but some species have adapted to live in the “sub-optimal” dry, heterogeneous conditions found in savanna ecosystems, where they are considered ecosystem engineers. They not only contribute to the processes described above, but their mound building behaviour produces a heterogeneous environment that supports a higher abundance and diversity of plant life.

To understand how termites are able to live in savannas I will conduct a number of experiments along a natural precipitation gradient in Ghana, from tropical forest to dry savanna. These will focus on their physiological limits and mound building behaviour as the two most likely mechanisms allowing termites to thrive in savannas. I predict that savanna species will have more extreme physiological limits, and their mounds will buffer the inhabitants more from ambient conditions, as they exist in a more extreme environment. By developing an understanding of how termites have adaptedto live in sub-optimal conditions, we will be able to make more accurate predictions about how they will be affected by a warming climate.

Haiwei Xi

Numerical forward modelling of a peritidal carbonate system: autocyclic behaviour, sensitivity dependence and complexity

Carbonate strata are very complex and heterogeneous, as various internal and external geological factors are operating simultaneously and episodically. Therefore, the preserved stratigraphic record is usually incomplete and restoration is very difficult. Stratigraphic modelling provides a useful tool to test the interaction between various geological processes and the resultant platform geometry, degree of cyclicity, parasequence thickness distribution, spatial entropy, lateral continuity and connectivity.

An independent ‘geobody’ algorism has been written to extract defined geobodies from model outputs with subsequent systematic statistical analysis.

The results are in agreement with observations from various sources, and provides constraints for parameters which are usually difficult to observed or measure directly.


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Yuqing Zhang

Unequal school district and income-based residential segregation

Chinese cities, once featured by egalitarianism, are becoming unequal due to the tremendous political, economic and social changes since the ‘open-door’ policy adopted in the 1970s. Equal access to quality education is viewed as one of the effective approaches to ease the fast- growing inequalities by incentivising upward mobility in the income ladder. However, empirical evidence shows that affluent households are concentrated in wealthy residential areas which correspond with the good quality school district. This could potentially aggravate the income segregation in the long term. Nonetheless, only a few researches focused on the spatial implication of such transitions.

This paper aims to examine income-based residential segregation between different school districts in post-reform Suzhou. At this stage, one major question will be addressed: how does school district policy affect income-based residential segregation between school districts? To answer the question comprehensively, this study reviews relevant policies and literature. It also uses data from China Household Income Project (CHIP) to create dissimilarity index (d) which measures general segregation. Furthermore, survey and interview will be conducted to understand the relationships of income segregation in school districts with five major contributors: household registration system, housing policy, land supply policy, housing market mechanism and related urban history and culture influences.


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Notes

conference

School of Environmental SciencesPostgraduate Research Conference

May 13th-14th 2019

school of environmental sciences postgraduate research ... · 15min alec davies using loyalty card...

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