Topographic controls on soil biogeochemistry and its impact on water pollution

Motivation
65% of the UK's water courses fail to achieve a good status classification according the Water Framework Directive and the proportion of polluted water courses has been increasing the last decade. The problem is much more pronounced in England, where most of the UK's population resides. The main water pollutants are Nitrogen, Phosphorus and organic carbon and their largest fraction originates as diffuse source from agricultural land. To fully understand the dynamics of diffuse pollution and develop mitigation practices, we need to quantify in detail their flow path from the land to our surface and ground waters.
Quantification of those flow paths requires high quality data and models. Data includes high resolution soil and topographic maps, soil heath surveys, high resolution water quality measurements and land management practices, all not widely available. To overcome this issue current generation models, adapt simplified lumped or semi-distributed approaches in modelling transport of water pollutants in catchments. Such an approach drastically reduces our skill in quantifying the impact of the land's topography on the microbial dynamics of soils, and ultimately the transit times of pollutants from agricultural land to surface and ground waters. For this project we collaborate with Cool Farm Alliance to expand our modelling capabilities, develop a tool that will tackle all the related biophysical processes at their relevant scales and translate scientific knowledge to farming guidelines in optimally managing agricultural land.
Project Tasks
(1) Model Development
In the first task of the project we will develop a three-dimensional ecohydrological model. The work will build on the state-of-the art ecohydrological and soil biogeochemical model T&C. Further development will include parallel computing in order to achieve fast computations for a 3D model at very fine scales. Cool Farm Alliance and its extensive partnership network will provide inputs data to aid model development and sites for data collection and model validation.
(2) Translation to Methods
Working in collaboration with Cool Farm Alliance our novel model simulations will provide quantitative indicators related to field topography, soil health and soil microbial activity in a complex landscape, under multiple land management practices. These will be used to develop rule-of-thumb practical algorithms for the Cool Farm Tool (CFT) and farmer understandable indicators and link those with clear guidelines and related best farming practices. Note: the CFT is a computational tool which supports informed decision making for farmers by assessing greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration, water use, and biodiversity associated with their farming practices.
(3) Route to Impact
In the final part of the project we will provide the Cool Farm Alliance and its members with a specification for adoption of these results into the CFT.
Skills & Requirements