Impact case study database

Pathways: From the outset the GloboLakes project appointed an advisory board with key representation from the UK statutory and regulatory agencies, European SMEs, the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC; EU Science Hub). This greatly enhanced our ability to deliver and maximise impact from GloboLakes and H2020 research outputs. Stirling contributed to the development of the state of the art of International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG) Water Quality Report (Andrew Tyler was an invited member of the IOCCG Committee, 2014-2017), written specifically to highlight the potential of EO for end-users ( http://ioccg.org/group/water-quality/). The NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow Claire Neil’s [ F5] close interaction with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and water utilities has been critical in translating the EO opportunity into impact. The engagement of UN GEMS/Water by Andrew Tyler with GloboLakes [ F1], European projects [ F7,9], co-organised workshops with the India UK Water Centre (IUKWC) in Stirling and Kerala (2017), and the GEO AquaWatch initiative in Stirling (2018, http://stir.ac.uk/4mu)) with UNEP GEMS/Water, highlighted EO capability for water quality monitoring in data-poor regions of the world.

Impact 1 - Regulatory monitoring of Scottish water bodies: The Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s (SEPA) strategy recognises that new approaches are required to enable communities and businesses to thrive within the resources of our planet by regulating on a sector-by-sector basis. To deliver this, SEPA is embracing a digital future to facilitate community engagement, collaborations, and knowledge exchange across sectors to tackle the complex multidimensional challenges of climate change, and deliver sustainable economic growth. Since the start of NERC GloboLakes in 2012, SEPA has been working with the EO team at Stirling in realising the potential of EO capability for water quality monitoring. The H2020 EOMORES project and NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (Claire Neil) delivered a step change in the collaboration, adopting the ESA Sentinel 2 platforms to monitor a greater number of inland water bodies. Reflecting the success of this new model of working, enabled by the collaboration with Stirling, SEPA invested in EO capability by appointing Claire Neil to their Team. SEPA’s Ecology Unit Manager, Willie Duncan, states:

‘This provided a clear demonstration of how EO can deliver previously unobtainable levels of targeted and efficient water quality monitoring beyond the requirements of the Water Framework Directive. In 2018 Claire Neil was invited to join SEPA’s Remote Sensing Coordination Group. More recently, SEPA created a full-time post to support the development of its remote sensing capabilities and Dr Claire Neil was appointed to this important role.’ [ E1]

The Covid-19 pandemic then escalated the need to access EO to support SEPA’s activities:

‘The Covid 19 pandemic resulted in the cessation of SEPA’s routine water quality sampling programme, and this led to an acceleration in the development work that will see satellite derived water quality data being used for environmental assessment purposes and the subsequent sustainable management of natural resources.’ [ E1]

SEPA are now working to embed Stirling’s EO outputs within their day-to-day operations:

‘Currently specific applications and internal tools are being developed using outputs generated from University of Stirling projects to assess the impact of nutrient enrichment in lake and coastal ecosystems.’ [ E1]

Impact 2 - UK water industry: Water colour is impacted by changes from in-water constituents derived from detrital material received from the catchment, or growth of algae in the water body, including potentially harmful cyanobacteria blooms. Our work with Anglian Water, who serve 4,300,000 customers across an area representing 20% of England and Wales, has impacted their Water Resources Management Plan and improved management of their reservoirs. Stuart Knott (Innovation Discovery Project Manager) testifies [ E2]: ‘ Claire’s fellowship demonstrated for the first time the very real opportunity for Anglian Water to exploit the latest digital technology from satellite-based EO within the concept of a digital grid to monitor and manage our surface waters’. Anglian Water have deployed Stirling-derived EO to fulfil strategic objectives relating to environmental protection: ‘ Our partnership has allowed Anglian Water to exploit ESA’s Sentinel-2 images of chlorophyll a concentration to identify spatial regions at risk of water quality degradation.’ In relation to reservoir management, Stirling’s data:

‘facilitate the targeted and cost-effective treatment of algae in our reservoirs. […] The benefits of these data include a better understanding of blooms over a long period, medium and short time frame. A better understanding of how Anglian’s in-reservoir mixers can impact blooms. Importantly, this data has enabled us to ask more questions and guide research into reservoir management.’ [ E2]

Covering one third of the UK’s land area, including almost 800 islands and responsible for 8.2% of the UK’s population, Scottish Water acknowledge the challenges and opportunities in monitoring and managing of water and sanitation in their 2020 Strategic Plan. The strategic plan sets out the response to climate change mitigation and inclusive growth opportunities in Scotland. To deliver on this plan Scottish Water is pioneering its research and innovation in partnership with the University of Stirling. In relation to reservoir management, George Ponton (Head of Research and Innovation) states:

‘… as a result of the NERC GloboLakes project and the NERC Knowledge exchange fellow, we have demonstrated that EO can be used to monitor and manage reservoirs to pre-empt the impact of changing water colour from brownification or algal bloom development. Already we have used this approach to confirm the presence of algae in a drinking water supply reservoir and used the information to inform the operational response to minimise the impacts to our customers.’ [ E3]

Stirling’s EO capability is central to the GBP22,000,000 investment in Scotland’s International Environment Centre from the Scottish and UK Government ‘City and Region Deal’, which is developing a digital twin of the Firth of Forth catchment to drive Scotland’s Green Recovery. Ponton concludes:

‘*To build on this, Scottish Water and the Scottish Funding Council have now invested GBP3,500,000 in the University of Stirling to work closely with Scottish Water and to bring the Scotland’s water sector together and deliver on Scottish Water’s Strategic Plan.*’ [ E3]

Going forward, both Anglian Water and Scottish Water highlight the strategic need and benefit of embedding Stirling’s EO service within their operational monitoring.

Impact 3 - Global Inland Water Monitoring: filling the gaps where there was no previous monitoring: The United Nations Environment Programme Global Environment Monitoring System for freshwater (GEMS/Water) is mandated to provide the world community with sound quality-assured data to support water management. The mandate was expanded in UNEA-3 (UN Environment Assembly) through resolution 3/27 in December 2017, acknowledging the growing need for water quality monitoring and capacity building activities. The failure of countries to report their ambient water quality status (SDG indicator 6.3.2) affects UNEP’s ability to improve the provision of clean, safe, sustainable water and sanitation (SDG 6) strategies, which is fundamental to Agenda 2030, to reduce poverty and end hunger (SDG1&2) and to sustain economic development (SDG 8,9,11&12) and health and wellbeing (SDG3). The need to deliver on these ambitious monitoring goals persuaded UN Environment to exploit the Copernicus Global Land Operations. This impact uses the Calimnos processing chain to deliver water quality products (e.g. measures of chlorophyll, suspended sediment, turbidity) for over 4000 lakes globally [ E4]. This is contributing to the GEMS/Water goals and bringing SDG6 (Water quality & wastewater monitoring) back on track. This new satellite capability:

[Text redacted from publication at request of stakeholder] [ E5]

Showing that UNEP thinking has undergone a radical shift toward the use of EO:

[Text redacted from publication at request of stakeholder] [ E5]