Last week Dŵr Uisce researchers Dr Richard Dallison and Dr Sopan Patil attended the British Hydrological Society’s 14th National Symposium (BHS2022), also presenting and discussing their work. Held in person for the first time since 2019, the symposium attracted many scientists and researchers from across the UK to Lancaster University, for an interesting two days of presentations, discussions, networking and demonstrations. Indeed, over 100 oral presentations were delivered across 16 sessions, covering a broad array of hydrology topics and study areas, with a further 60+ posters stimulating additional discussion.
Whilst participating in the symposium, Richard and Sopan attended sessions on various highly relevant topics, such as Next generation of land-surface and hydrological modelling and Data science in hydrology. The work presented in sessions under these themes, and others, was highly interesting and has furthered knowledge, research scope, and contacts, all of which will bring great benefit to Dŵr Uisce project research. Additionally, new avenues of research have been explored, and ideas generated for future work and new methods and analysis and results visualisation.
Richard presented his and Sopan’s latest research, in a talk titled: Future water availability for run-of-river hydropower in the UK and Ireland under climate change, in a session on future hydrological monitoring. The 10-minute oral presentation featured hot-off-the-press results from Dŵr Uisce Work Package 7, allowing an excellent opportunity for feedback from the hydrology community before the work is submitted for publication. The work compares the impact of different abstraction license conditions (applied by environmental regulators) on the ability of 531 studied run-of-river hydropower schemes in the UK and Ireland to make optimal use of future streamflows for power generation. The presentation demonstrated the impacts of these variations in licence on the amount of water abstracted between 2021-2080 from streamflow projections under a worse-case future climate change scenario, as well as the knock-on implications for power generation.
Richard said of the symposium, “this is the first time I’ve attended the BHS National Symposium, and it has been fantastic to gain insight into the varied interesting research going on across the breadth of UK hydrology. In addition, presenting our latest research and results has given a great opportunity to get feedback from some of the key players in the field. I’ve also enjoyed many presentations which have provided inspiration for future research.”
This has been a highly valuable opportunity to share Richard and Sopan’s Dŵr Uisce research, as well as allowing discussion with some of the leading researchers in fields relevant to the work presented, enabling comment and opinions on the presented work and future plans. Thanks must go to the organisers of the BHS2022, as well as Dŵr Uisce funders, the European Regional Development Fund through Interreg Ireland-Wales Cooperation Programme.