Conventional agricultural practices often lead to increased soil compaction, a decline in soil organic matter (SOM) and an associated decrease in structural porosity, compromising the water holding capacity and resilience of agricultural soils to hydrological extremes. Regenerative agriculture practices, with their focus on building healthy soil ecosystems, hold promises for enhancing agricultural resilience to extreme weather events like floods and droughts. These practices, such as reduced tillage, reduced trafficking and stocking density, cover cropping, and afforestation, can improve soil organic matter content, reduce compaction, enhance soil structure, and promote microbial activity, leading to increased soil porosity, water infiltration, and retention. However, due to the slow response of soils to changes in agricultural management, a critical research gap exists in the timely quantification of the potential effectiveness of these practices in mitigating flood and drought risks. Although undoubtedly robust and informative, long-term monitoring of soil properties before and after a management intervention may take decadal timescales to reveal any significant impacts.We have therefore adopted an exploratory approach to investigate the merits of back-analysing existing long-term soil moisture datasets to reveal any changes in inferred soil porosity due to changes in land use and/or management. The following UKCEH long-term datasets, which include soil moisture information, have been considered: Neutron Probe Soil Moisture Database (~50 years range), UK Greenhouse Gases Flux Network (last 15+ years), and COSMOS-UK TDT probe data (last 10 years). In addition, we have land cover information from UKCEH Land Cover Maps from 1990 onwards. For UK conditions, it is anticipated that an annual maximum soil moisture content, representing saturated conditions, is likely to be attained during most winter seasons (excluding any ‘dry’ winters, excluded based on rainfall data). It is then possible to estimate soil porosity in any particular year by equating it to the maximum soil moisture content, in effect using this as a proxy measurement with due regard for potential air entrapment effects. Any identified long-term changes in soil porosity obtained through trend, wavelet, and before-after-control-impact analysis might then be linked to changes in land use and/or management. Land cover changes may be identified using Land Cover Map data and local site knowledge, the latter of which will also provide insights into changes in land management. COSMOS-UK TDT data is particularly interesting in terms of land management impacts as, when installed, the instrumentation at each site was enclosed by a newly erected fence. The resultant compound therefore excluded stock and vehicle trafficking and initiated a change in land use from generally arable or improved grassland to rough grassland. It will therefore be valuable to understand if the proposed exploratory analysis approach can reveal any significant changes in soil porosity over time due to this intervention. Likely challenges to be discussed include disentangling any long-term changes in maximum soil moisture due to changes in soil porosity from background changes in climate. We will also share lessons learned and provide recommendations for future work on the back-analysis of long-term soil moisture datasets.

Observational data on soil physical and hydraulic properties are important for improving our understanding of hydrological processes. This is particularly relevant given current interest in the potential of land-based "natural flood management" measures (and related concepts: "nature-based solutions" and "working with natural processes") to reduce flood risk. Therefore, a detailed survey of seven field sites under different land uses and management practices in the Thames catchment, UK, was undertaken as part of the LANDWISE project. Measurements (n = 1300) included soil surface infiltration rate, saturated hydraulic conductivity, bulk density, estimated porosity, soil moisture, and soil moisture retention. Field sites comprised three arable fields on shallow soils over limestone, two arable fields on free-draining loamy soils over chalk, and permanent grassland and broadleaf woodland on slowly permeable soil over mudstone. Soil sampling points covered infield areas, trafficked areas (e.g. tramlines), and untrafficked margins. Samples were generally taken at five depths ranging from the soil surface to 100 cm below ground level. Soil saturated hydraulic conductivity measurements were made at 25 and 45 cm depths. Soil samples and measurements were taken between April and October 2021, with repeats taken pre- and post-harvest (arable sites). These data provide valuable insight into the hydrological behaviour of soils under contrasting management, including both conventional and innovative agricultural practices (e.g. herbal leys, mob grazing, and controlled traffic). Dataset applications include improving the performance of hydrological and land surface models and validation of remotely sensed soil observations. The dataset is publicly available at 10.5285/a32f775b-34dd-4f31-aafa-f88450eb7a90 (Trill et al., 2022).

Implementing Nature-based solutions (Nbs) can potentially reduce the flood risk in catchments and improve water and soil quality and biodiversity. Understanding the hydrological functioning of the Nbs interventions is important in determining their effectiveness in reducing flood risks. This study reports the findings from two UK projects namely the Littlestock Brook Natural Flood Management (NFM) pilot and LANDWISE (Land Management in Lowland Catchments for Integrated Flood Risk Reduction). The Littlestock Brook NFM study showed that the Nbs interventions successfully attenuated all storm event discharge peaks during the monitoring period (up to 55% reductions) and that over 40% of the total storage volume remained available throughout all events. The LANDWISE project demonstrated that whilst increased organic matter improves soil structure and porosity, innovative arable management practices (e.g., controlled traffic and min till) can also improve soil structure and porosity, increasing soil hydraulic conductivity and therefore NFM potential.

The SpongeScapes project aims to accelerate understanding Nature-based Solutions (NBS) that enhance the sponge functioning of soil, groundwater, and surface water ecosystems, improving landscape resilience against hydrometeorological extremes across diverse climates. One NBS being explored within SpongeScapes is the adoption of Regenerative Agricultural Practices (RAPs) such as reduced tillage and cover cropping. These practices can improve soil health and potentially increase water retention capacity, compared to conventional agriculture practices that degrade soil structure and porosity. However, quantifying RAP benefits is challenging due to the delayed soil response to management changes. This report discusses an exploratory approach of back-analysing long-term soil moisture datasets to assess the impacts of RAPs on soil water retention capacity. By inferring changes in saturated water content (proxy for porosity), findings from trend analyses on UK case studies provide insights into the potential of RAPs as an NBS for enhancing landscape water resilience through improved soil sponge functioning.

This paper evaluates a unique, transdisciplinary participatory research and knowledge exchange methodology developed in the Drought Risk and You (DRY) project and offers it as a transferable framework for others engaging stakeholders and systemic connections with environmental risk. Drought in the UK is a complex, diffuse and hidden risk, involving multiple stakeholders and systemic connections across diverse sectors. Historically, drought risk management has been underpinned by specialist science and technology implemented by statutory stakeholders. This paper critically evaluates the social learning from a longitudinal research process that involved co-working with seven river catchment-based, multi-stakeholder groups. The DRY project was a creative experiment in bringing drought science and stories into the same space, aiming to reveal different knowledges—specialist science, practical sector-level insight, and local knowledge—as a new evidence base to support better decision-making in UK drought risk management. An evaluative multi-method research methodology was overlaid on this process, using surveys, within meeting reflective evaluations, and summative semi-structured narrative interviews. This paper reflects on participant experiences of the ‘open’ scientific modelling development, ‘storying’ approaches, and their iterative interaction. It outlines the enablers, inhibitors and required support for this engagement process, which aimed to facilitate integration of different forms of knowledge as evidence, with social and sustainability learning among diverse stakeholders at its core. The process offered opportunity for valuable experiential learning as researchers of the nuanced impacts of intersecting factors on participatory place-based methods. It showed that similar approaches to science-narrative dialogic processes can play out locally to integrate aspects of social and sustainability learning in different ways. This sustainability learning provided a valuable platform for creative multi-stakeholder scenario-ing possible drought futures for increased local climate resilience. It then proposes a transferable research framework that promotes participatory, place-based, narrative-science knowledge exchange for building local capital for managing systemic environmental risk.

The COSMOS-UK observation network has been providing field-scale soil moisture and hydrometeorological measurements across the UK since 2013. At the time of publication a total of 51 COSMOS-UK sites have been established, each delivering high-temporal resolution data in near-real time. Each site utilizes a cosmic-ray neutron sensor, which counts epithermal neutrons at the land surface. These measurements are used to derive field-scale near-surface soil water content, which can provide unique insight for science, industry, and agriculture by filling a scale gap between localized point soil moisture and large-scale satellite soil moisture datasets. Additional soil physics and meteorological measurements are made by the COSMOS-UK network including precipitation, air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, soil heat flux, wind speed and direction, and components of incoming and outgoing radiation. These near-real-time observational data can be used to improve the performance of hydrological models, validate remote sensing products, improve hydrometeorological forecasting, and underpin applications across a range of other scientific fields. The most recent version of the COSMOS-UK dataset is publically available at https://doi.org/10.5285/b5c190e4-e35d-40ea-8fbe598da03a1185 (Stanley et al., 2021).

Cosmic‐Ray Neutron Probes (CRNP) have found application in soil moisture (SM) estimation due to their conveniently large (>100 m) footprints. Here, we explore the possibility of using high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) moderator to limit the field of view, and hence, the footprint of a SM sensor formed of 12 CRNP mounted on to a mobile robotic platform (Thorvald) for better in‐field localization of moisture variation. Ultra Rapid Adaptable Neutron‐Only Simulation neutron scattering simulations are used to show that 5 cm of additional HDPE moderator (used to shield the upper surface and sides of the detector) is sufficient to (a) reduce the footprint of the detector considerably, (b) approximately double the percentage of neutrons detected from within 5 m of the detector, and (c) does not affect the shape of the curve used to convert neutron counts into SM. Simulation and rover measurements for a transect crossing between grass and concrete additionally suggest that (d) SM changes can be sensed over a length scales of tens of meters or less (roughly an order of magnitude smaller than commonly used footprint distances), and (e) the additional moderator does not reduce the detected neutron count rate (and hence increase noise) as much as might be expected given the extent of the additional moderator. The detector with additional HDPE moderator was also used to conduct measurements on a stubble field over three weeks to test the rover system in measuring spatial and temporal SM variation.

There is a growing interest in different forms of participatory modeling that bring science and lay knowledge into the same space. This recognizes that, traditionally, the environmental science community has mostly seen stakeholder engagement as a ‘follow on’ activity to be undertaken once the key scientific research has been completed. By excluding communities from the scientific process, or at best approaching communities in one-way communication, scientists are missing out on the wealth of local community knowledge about the very facets of the environment which they seek to understand. The challenge, however, is in identifying, developing and adopting appropriate platforms for communication and co-creation to allow scientists and local communities to have effective dialogue, efficiently gather, interpret and evaluate lay knowledge, and develop relevant, scientifically robust, but widely comprehensible, results. DRY (Drought Risk and You) was a 4-year project, funded under the RCUK Drought and Water Scarcity Program, with the aim of developing an evidence-based resource to support better decision-making in United Kingdom drought risk management. In DRY, scientific data and multiple narrative approaches have been brought together to facilitate decision-making processes and improve community resilience. Creative experiments were designed by the DRY interdisciplinary team to engage local communities in using specialist science as a stimulus for storytelling at catchment level, but also to give scientists the insight required to develop meaningful scenarios of local change to explore potential drought impacts in a particular river catchment. One challenge of working with storytelling is that it is very often retrospective and linked to past experiences and memories. It can be seen as a backward-looking activity, learning principally from what has happened before. The participatory approaches applied in DRY demonstrated that storytelling can be also used to imagine, interrogate and plan for a future that communities might collectively wish to subscribe or adapt to. In particular, by co-designing and facilitating storyboarding workshops, the DRY team, together with local stakeholders, have been exploring the ‘scenario-ing’ of possible futures as a way of creating a story and visualizing a picture for the future of the community. By allowing the scientists, community and local stakeholders to develop model drought scenarios iteratively together using storytelling, these scenarios should not only be scientifically accurate, but should also reflect local interests and aspirations, as well as local drought mitigation practices. This process integrates valuable knowledge exchange and the building of mutual capital to support local risk decision-making - scaling up from the level of the individual to the collective.

Abstract. The cosmic-ray neutron sensor method of soil moisture measurement is now widely used and is fundamental to the COSMOS-UK soil moisture monitoring network. The method is based on a relationship between a measured flux of neutrons and soil moisture, and requires the neutron count to be adjusted for time variations of atmospheric pressure, humidity and the incoming flux of cosmic-ray neutrons. This note describes an empirical approach to the development of a revised correction factor for the last of these. Using the revised correction factor makes a significant difference to the derived soil moisture at wetter sites. This has implications for quantifying the soil moisture regime at these sites and management decisions that depend on a proper understanding of soil moisture dynamics, such as flood management and the release of greenhouse gases.

Drought in the United Kingdom is a “hidden” pervasive risk, defined and perceived in different ways by diverse stakeholders and sectors. Scientists and water managers distinguish meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socio-economic drought. Historically triggers in drought risk management have been demarcated solely in specialist hydrological science terms using indices and critical thresholds. This paper explores “drought thresholds” as a bridging concept for interdisciplinary science-narrative enquiry. The Eden catchment, Scotland acts as an exemplar, in a maritime country perceived as wet. The research forms part of creative experimentation in science-narrative methods played out in seven United Kingdom case-study catchments on hydro-meteorological gradients in the Drought Risk and You (DRY) project, with the agricultural Eden the most northerly. DRY explored how science and stories might be brought together to support better decision-making in United Kingdom drought risk management. This involved comparing specialist catchment-scale modelling of drought risk with evidence gathered from local narratives of drought perceptions/experiences. We develop the concept of thresholds to include perceptual triggers of drought awareness and impact within and between various sectors in the catchment (agriculture, business, health and wellbeing, public/communities, and natural and built environments). This process involved developing a framework for science-narrative drought “threshold thinking” that utilizes consideration of severity and scale, spatial and temporal aspects, framing in terms of enhancing or reducing factors internal and external to the catchment and new graphical methods. The paper discusses how this extended sense of thresholds might contribute to research and practice, involving different ways of linking drought severity and perception. This has potential to improve assessment of sectoral vulnerabilities, development of adaptive strategies of different stakeholders, and more tailored drought communication and messaging. Our findings indicate that drought risk presents many complexities within the catchment, given its cross-sectoral nature, rich sources of available water, variable prior drought experience among stakeholders, and different quantitative and perceptual impact thresholds across and within sectors. Fuzziness in identification of drought thresholds was multi-faceted for varied reasons. Results suggest that a management paradigm that integrates both traditional and non-traditional “fuzzy” threshold concepts across sectors should be integrated into current and future policy frameworks for drought risk management.

Hypothesis / aims of study Urinary incontinence reduces the quality of life of around 30 % of men and up to 25 % of women over the age of 65. Urodynamic assessment in the clinical environment aims to reproduce symptoms while accurately measuring pressures within the bladder and abdomen. If conventional cystometry is unable to reproduce symptoms, ambulatory studies may be indicated allowing the patient to move freely around while wearing a holster that records the pressure traces for analysis later. Measurement of pressure for urodynamic studies requires catheterisation. Disposable catheters usually use a fluid-filled line to transmit the pressure to an external transducer. While water-filled catheters are suitable for conventional urodynamics, movement artefacts make them unsuited for use in ambulatory studies. Consequently, solid-state transducers mounted on the tip of the catheter remain the preferred choice for ambulatory studies, but these devices are expensive and so in general reusable and hence require cleaning after use. Air-charged catheters (ACCs) are disposable alternatives. A volume of air is used rather than water to transmit the pressure at the catheter tip to an external transducer, almost eliminating artefacts due to the weight of fluid in the catheter. As yet, however, it is unclear whether clinical measurements of pressure made using ACCs are equivalent to measurements made with other technologies [1], [2], and no study has investigated whether ACCs are stable enough with time to use for ambulatory urodynamics. Consequently, the aim of this study was to assess the stability of pressure measurements made using aircharged catheters over a six hour time period.

Cosmic-ray soil moisture sensors have the advantage of a large measurement footprint (approximately 700m in diameter) and are able to operate continuously to provide area-averaged near-surface (top 10-20cm) volumetric soil moisture content at the field scale. This paper presents the application of this technique at four sites in southern England over almost 3years. Results show the soil moisture response to contrasting climatic conditions during 2011-2014 and are the first such field-scale measurements made in the UK. These four sites are prototype stations for a UK COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System, and particular consideration is given to sensor operating conditions in the UK. Comparison of these soil water content observations with the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator 10-cm soil moisture layer shows that these data can be used to test and diagnose model performance and indicate the potential for assimilation of these data into hydro-meteorological models. The application of these large-area soil water content measurements to evaluate remotely sensed soil moisture products is also demonstrated. Numerous applications and the future development of a national COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System network are discussed. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Interactions between soil moisture and the atmosphere are driven by the partitioning of sensible and latent heating, through which soil moisture has been connected to atmospheric modifications that could potentially lead to the initiation of convective precipitation. The majority of previous studies linking the land surface to subsequent precipitation have used atmospheric reanalysis or model data sets. In this study, we link in situ observations of soil moisture from more than 100 stations in Oklahoma to subsequent unorganized afternoon convective precipitation. We use hourly next generation (NEXRAD) radar-derived precipitation to identify convective events, and then compare the location of precipitation initiation to underlying soil moisture anomalies in the morning. Overall we find a statistically significant preference for convective precipitation initiation over drier than normal soils, with over 70% of events initiating over soil moisture below the long-term median. The significant preference for precipitation initiation over drier than normal soils is in contrast with previous studies using satellite-based precipitation to identify the region of maximum precipitation accumulation. We evaluated 19 convective events occurring near Lamont, Oklahoma, where soundings of the atmospheric profile at 06: 00 and 12: 00 LST are also available. For these events, soil moisture has strong negative correlations with the level of free convection (LFC), planetary boundary layer (PBL) height, and surface temperature changes between 06: 00 and 12: 00 LST. We also find strong positive correlations between morning soil moisture and morning-to-afternoon changes in convective available potential energy and convective inhibition. In general, the results of this study demonstrate that both positive and negative soil moisture feedbacks are important in this region of the USA.