MIDST-CZ: Maximising Impact by Decision Support Tools for sustainable soil and water through UK-China Critical Zone science
Lead Research Organisation:
Lancaster University
Department Name: Lancaster Environment Centre
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Planned Impact
The following will benefit from this research:
1. Those living in and managing the land for food production, and soil and water quality, and their conservation will benefit from the decision support tools that will be refined or developed based on our Critical Zone integrated understanding of the environment functions. These tools will allow them to think about how best to manage their environment and will lead to improvements in their quality of life, ensuring the fundamental needs (generation of food and associated economic development; access to water of appropriate quality) and decisions of how to achieve these, are underpinned by a useful knowledge-base.
2. Commercial organisations responsible for innovation, such as 'app' developers will benefit from our engagement with them to explore in what form the decision support tools should be made available.
3. This joint research will remain of benefit to NSFC, raising their profile in the UK and amongst other critical zone scientists. The skill and information exchange that will occur during this research with Chinese colleagues, ultimately demonstrating to the international scientific community, that we value sensitive environments internationally, and particularly international cooperation in research, will help consolidate each country's position as a future key research partner and particularly the Chinese National Science Foundation as a partner of choice for future co-funded research.
4. Through publication and conference activity, the Chinese and UK academic parties will demonstrate to the community how their scientific endeavour can be used to create tangible outputs to improve the quality of life and global environment for those living in poverty. They will benefit through enhanced international standing and resultant funded research collaboration.
5. The wider public, and local communities hosting the research, will benefit during the research activity through research team communication activity that meets their passion for and excites them to understand the natural world more deeply. This also included those not involved directly in the research who may be asked to help gather data and in turn will receive training in new skills. In turn if this encourages greater interest in how STEM subjects also infom social development, the relevant country science base will benefit.
6. Through progress towards achieving sustainable development goals the global community will benefit.
1. Those living in and managing the land for food production, and soil and water quality, and their conservation will benefit from the decision support tools that will be refined or developed based on our Critical Zone integrated understanding of the environment functions. These tools will allow them to think about how best to manage their environment and will lead to improvements in their quality of life, ensuring the fundamental needs (generation of food and associated economic development; access to water of appropriate quality) and decisions of how to achieve these, are underpinned by a useful knowledge-base.
2. Commercial organisations responsible for innovation, such as 'app' developers will benefit from our engagement with them to explore in what form the decision support tools should be made available.
3. This joint research will remain of benefit to NSFC, raising their profile in the UK and amongst other critical zone scientists. The skill and information exchange that will occur during this research with Chinese colleagues, ultimately demonstrating to the international scientific community, that we value sensitive environments internationally, and particularly international cooperation in research, will help consolidate each country's position as a future key research partner and particularly the Chinese National Science Foundation as a partner of choice for future co-funded research.
4. Through publication and conference activity, the Chinese and UK academic parties will demonstrate to the community how their scientific endeavour can be used to create tangible outputs to improve the quality of life and global environment for those living in poverty. They will benefit through enhanced international standing and resultant funded research collaboration.
5. The wider public, and local communities hosting the research, will benefit during the research activity through research team communication activity that meets their passion for and excites them to understand the natural world more deeply. This also included those not involved directly in the research who may be asked to help gather data and in turn will receive training in new skills. In turn if this encourages greater interest in how STEM subjects also infom social development, the relevant country science base will benefit.
6. Through progress towards achieving sustainable development goals the global community will benefit.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Andrew Binley (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Turkeltaub T
(2021)
A Comparative Study of Conceptual Model Complexity to Describe Water Flow and Nitrate Transport in Deep Unsaturated Loess
in Water Resources Research
Turkeltaub T
(2022)
A review of models for simulating the soil-plant interface for different climatic conditions and land uses in the Loess Plateau, China
in Ecological Modelling
| Description | MIDST-CZO used cutting-edge science from the UK/China Critical Zone Observatory projects to develop the foundation of a new class of decision support tools (DSTs) to support agriculture and the environment at the same time. Economic impacts of agricultural management decisions were also considered by adopting the natural capital approach. Another facet of the research was to close resource loops in peri-urban agriculture by making better use of urban waste to produce fertilisers where nutrients are mined from sewage and other urban organic waste streams. Knowledge exchange is pivotal to the success of the project. We actively conducted socio-economic surveys in China to learn about demands for DSTs to support agriculture, based on existing gaps in available tools and improvements that could be made to increase uptake of DST use. This was the first time that humans have been integrated into critical zone science. In collaboration with China, we produced functional DSTs for policy makers that aim to improve farming decisions to decrease environmental threats. The vast dataset generated from the UK/China CZO programme has also been used to develop new models that describe the interaction between agriculture and environmental processes. These will help form the foundation of future DSTs. We have now completed just over 3 years of research on this project. The past two years, 2020-2022, were severely affected by COVID-19 restrictions, which was addressed to some extent by a no-cost 12-month extension and adaptation of our knowledge exchange activities with China. A critical activity to project delivery is Stakeholder Workshop 2 (WP1). In early 2019 we had Stakeholder Consultations with a number of groups through face-to-face meetings covering broad geographical regions of China from Guangzhou to Beijing. We also held Stakeholder Workshop 1 later in 2019 in collaboration with the Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences. This provided broader interaction with stakeholders at the interface between science and policy. From these activities, we have learnt that targeting agricultural industry conferences will increase the reach of our work for Stakeholder Workshop 2. Webinars and online surveys also formed part of our original KE activities with China. These have been enhanced to maintain continuity during the COVID-19 lockdown, but they do not replace the need for face-to-face interaction with stakeholders. It has been impossible to hold face-to-face activities. Work continued analysing knowledge exchange activities, informed by questionnaires and surveys conducted on previous visits and enhanced by new online surveys. We found that communication from government to farmers differed between regions in China, so local solutions would be needed. In some regions, farmers relied too much on fertiliser providers to make decisions, based primarily on crop yield. However, provincial agricultural research institutes in China are actively addressing knowledge exchange through the provision of online platforms, simple decision support tools and training. There is a strong demand for improved tools to address environmental threats caused by agriculture. Some existing DSTs to address yield and fertiliser use, such as Nutrient Expert, work extremely well, but could be extended to consider environmental impacts. A challenge with survey work is reaching a wide audience, particularly when travel is constrained due to COVID-19 restrictions. Animations with Mandarin and English voiceovers were created to publicise the CZO projects in China. We also established a number of online delivery platforms, such as a WeChat public account that has attracted over 2000 reads to some articles we have posted. Summary sheets are continuously being prepared from our research outputs to be targeted at lay audiences. We also produced a new online survey to understand the needs, habits and preference in the use and development of DST to support evidence-based decision making and promote decision support tools for agricultural management in China. The target audience is civil servants, researchers, and relevant personnel engaged in agricultural work. A desk study on decision support tool (DSTs) use in China's agriculture found over 400 working examples. Weaknesses included a focus on yield, without consideration of environmental and economic impacts. The data are analysed and a paper will be submitted in 2021 by the University of Aberdeen team. China has a strong research programme developing DSTs for agriculture. One of the leading tools is Nutrient Expert, which is very effective at improving nutrient use efficiency for a range of crops across China. |
| Exploitation Route | This project is developing decision support tools that use the critical zone approach. They are to guide better agricultural practices that have lower environmental impact. As we are encompassing a wide range of processes that occur in the critical zone, from the top of vegetation to groundwater, we are attempting to tackle previously neglected threats such as the deep leaching of nitrogen fertiliser to groundwater. We provided a scientific foundation that can be accessed by the IT industry and others to develop simple tools that are accessible to a range of users from farmers to policy-makers. Our research also demonstrated the importance of incorporating human behaviour and drivers into understanding how critical zone processes are affected by land management. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |
| URL | http://www.czo.ac.cn |
| Description | Drawing on the results obtained in the first phase of the UK/China CZO projects, we developed tools to help make decisions that guide more sustainable farming practices in China. These included regional models and simpler Decision Support Tools that were underpinned by critical zone science. This brings in processes involved in landscape evolution, such as geochemistry, deep processes like nitrogen leaching and the impacts of different management practices. A major advance of our approach was bringing in economic impacts into the critical zone science approach. This used a natural capital approach to assess the economic implications of different management approaches, drawing on earlier research that used the underlying geology and its weathering to predict crop yields. We produced functioning decision support tools for the regions where our critical zone observatories are located. Moreover, we assessed over 400 existing decision support tools, but found that most were inappropriate because they were either too limited or geographically inappropriate for China. Only about a dozen existing DSTs were thought to be suitable for use in China. There was a gap, however, in decision support tools that incorporated both agricultural and economic impacts. Our research also explored the use of urban waste streams for fertiliser development. Nutrients are being mined from sewage and manufactured into a product that is not too dissimilar in appearance to conventional chemical fertiliser. There are concerns about pathogens and heavy metals that are being assessed further using advanced molecular biology techniques and plant biochemistry to assess pollutant uptake. Impact was hampered significantly by COVID-19 travel and working restrictions. Travel to China remained restricted from December 2019 (a few weeks after our last stakeholder event in China) until the end of the project so we were not able to conduct much of the impact work in China. We had hoped to travel to China before March 2022 when the project ended, but was not possible. Via the British Embassy Beijing and FASE, we were able to disseminate our research findings to over 2300 people in a webinar hosted in September 2022. Teams in China have pursued DST modelling with the critical zone data and adopted the approach developed in the project of incorporating a human element to get a broader, interdisciplinary understanding. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2023 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | AGU Critical Zone workshop 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of project objectives to an international workshop on critical zone research |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |