UKC

2 interesting articles

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spendi...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/07/hide-evidence-storm-de...

More trees, less sheep ?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I posted this on another thread, but it's probably more relevant here:

One of the good things about Monbiot (and possibly down to a scientific education) is that his articles may be polemical, but he backs them up with references, particularly the versions on his own website (monbiot.com) rather than the Guardian versions, which get edited. However, even this piece includes a reference to the research on infiltration at Pontbren

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.9826/abstract - you'll need an academic login to read more than the abstract, but it's an important study.

The Pontbren study is very relevant. I'm trying to remember the catchment, but there's another really long term study, I think in America, that's worth a look, but it's been a while since I taught this and I can't remember it's name!

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I would agree with him on this. However what the National Parks will do is blame the climate and not the terrain. Or they'd say if the NPAs were given more money they could put in more flood barriers etc.. simply trying to protect their jobs, rather than solve the bigger problem.

In reply to toad:

Hubbard Brook in the USA ?
http://www.hubbardbrook.org/

Bormann, F. Herbert, and Gene Likens. Pattern and process in a forested ecosystem: disturbance, development and the steady state based on the Hubbard Brook ecosystem study.

In reply to Chris the Tall:
This article makes the environment ministry sound corrupt, and the government short-sighted.

Not even the Guardian itself mentions the contributions of CAP and other government policy to increased risk of flooding in their normal news coverage.

So is the article inaccurate or overblown? Or are our news agencies failing to report in any useful way?

In reply to Doug:

yes, that rings a bell!

In reply to toad:

I'm not sure if it's the same document, but there's some stuff on the Pontbren study here:

http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/5890/1/ur16_impacts_upland_land_management_wp2_2_v1_...

In reply to RyanOsborne:

My incredibly quick scanning of the conclusions in that article suggests that they are recommending small scale planting of individual trees or woodland strips, DOWNSTREAM of hills and at strategic points. And that this would make a significant difference.

It's worth remembering that Monbiot does have an agenda here, and that the general principle of some of that ("more trees") may help with flooding, these two aims may not be perfectly aligned.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Thanks for that. As a punter who has wandered many hills in mid Wales, yet again I think that George's brilliance is that he has the intelligence to point out the blindingly obvious. Others of us just think that thats the way it is......but it clearly doesn't need to be.

In reply to climbwhenready:

I'm not sure that you can draw specific recommendations for the problems in Keswick from the recommendations for the problems in Pontbren, as there will be different factors in different areas. There's a couple of points in there specific to the comparison in the land management:

Compared to grazed grassland, there is significantly less overland flow within tree planted areas where sheep are excluded.

Catchment-scale streamflow data demonstrated that subcatchments dominated by agriculturally improved land produced higher flood peaks than those with more natural landscapes.

Placement of single trees or small strips of woodland will generally have a positive effect on flooding.

I think the main thing they're recommending is more research. Perhaps these floods, and the government's seeming willingness to look into the issue will lead to some research of a similar nature in the Lakes.

In reply to RyanOsborne:


Researchers always recommend more research...

In reply to humptydumpty:

The later, unfortunately!

In reply to humptydumpty:


To be fair to the BBC, it mentions tree cover as a potential way to stop flooding in its 'how to stop floods' article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25929644

In reply to toad:


He has some interesting things to say, but some of his ideas have a counter-narrative (I have posted articles on here about the work of Allan Savory before). "Why George Monbiot is wrong: grazing livestock can save the world" http://gu.com/p/4vzzp/stw

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Does anyone know how places downriver from Ennerdale (for example Egremont) fared ? Unfortunately it's another River Eden, so hard to search for news reports. I would imagine that Ennerdale would receive similar rainfall to Borrowdale and the Buttermere valley, but has a lot more trees.

In reply to Shani:


he was on farming today a few days ago. His theory (which is all it is) is that because animals (wild ones) developed the land to the shape it is today through millions of years we can use farm animals to do the same. There are several flaws though, mainly the scale or number of farm animals and also in the wild reproduction would be tempered by the lack of abundance of food etc..

His point is that we should do nomadic grazing etc.. moving the animals on etc.. but that's no different farmers moving cows round a field now. Following Savory's logic, we are under grazing the fields and moors, which seems a little odd, when many farmers are already supplementary feeding to top up their diet.

In reply to summo:



My god, you are wrong on so many levels and you don't seem understand what 'theory' means in a scientific capacity. Savory has developed his model in successful field trials. You might find his TED talk on the subject informative. http://bit.ly/1kI51ft

In reply to humptydumpty:

Or are our news agencies failing to report in any useful way?

That's it.

I find it odd that whilst I am generally sympathetic to where Monbiot is coming from on many levels, as soon as I hear him (did anyone hear him on Any Questions last week?) I come to loathe him. Deeply annoying character, convinced of his rightness in every respect, which I always find a turn off.

Anyway- back to the thread...

In reply to Shani: Do you have any links to articles about this? All I can find is a rebuttal of a rebuttal published by the not too convincing sounding "planet-tech.com".

I'm interested to see if the "carbon sequestration" in the soil balances against the methane production of livestock.

In reply to Fultonius:

The main commercial implementation I am aware of is Polyface farm in the US. http://www.polyfacefarms.com

In reply to Shani: Just watched the TED talk. Not convinced.

How can a piece of barren land feed the animals in the first place? I could maybe have entertained the thought that it could improve poor land, if it was backed up by credible science, but's just not conceivable that cows can "graze" bare earth creating new grass. What, exactly, do they eat in the meantime? Soil?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/aug/04/eat-more-m...

Until someone provides some solid, repeatable research in a respected journal I'm filing this one somewhere between "yet to be convinced" and "stark raving bonkers".

Also, how it relates to flooding in Cumbria I'm not so sure??

In reply to Shani:


Oh do expand?

Wrong, if you think that pushing cattle production on a monoculture of rye grass is going to improve biodiversity and restore a natural habit, then you are as deluded as him. To even have a hope of improving the soil, fields would need to be completely replanted with better mix, add in some rotations and vastly reducing the grazing, plus reduce stop taking silage and only cut once a year for hay. Either way, sheep is a biggest enemy, because it eats most things and so close to the ground.

If he said get rid of sheep altogether, half the number of cattle in the world, then replant forest and use wild grazing deer, elk, wild boar etc.. as a natural sustainable meat source I would give him just an ounce of credit for his 'theory'.

I've done roughly 8 years of science study, primarily in natural sciences. I farm a mixture of land, which includes 20 hectare of fields and grazed forest, where we have a very small herd of 6-7 beef cows, because that is all the land 'naturally' supports, without any intervention and inputs. Over half the fields are classified as the equiv. of SSSIs because of their flora & fauna and we have a list of rules as long as your arm on what we can and can't do to maintain the land for it's diversity. We have a visitors book as there are many species that only exist in one or two other places in the whole of southern Sweden and we get field visits from Linnea University (and others) because of this diversity. We also get regular state visits from the managing authorities to check we are doing as we should, for example if we don't scythe some fields ourselves, then they will send somebody to do it, to maintain diversification etc..
So whilst you might be able to lecture me on your computer coding stuff, I afraid you are little out of your depth here.

In reply to summo:



No, and neither Savory nor I make this claim.


Argument by appeal. Your farming methods may not be optimal. Savory has applied his theories on denuded land and has advised others on permaculture. I wouldn't necessarily take your advice over his.

In reply to Shani:

Except he has no verifiable evidence that any of this actually works. Unless I'm missing something - as always, I wait patiently to be enlightened by good science.

In reply to Fultonius:


That is a fair position to take.

In reply to Shani:


I have evidence though, our cattle are entirely grass fed, zero medication, antibiotics etc. their entire lives. The grass is either grazed on and off all summer starting in may (we aren't allowed any earlier), or left until mid july and one cut of hay taken. Then grazed in autumn until the end of Oct, when we aren't allowed to have animals on the land any longer than that because it gets wrecked, but by Oct all the grass is short anyway. So we are at optimum grazing capacity, whilst also maintaining maximum species diversification. So everything is driven by physical evidence, no theory here. The environment authorities even have bits of metal buried in certain places, so they can come out with a metal detector, find the exact spot they did their last species count, then lay their metre square grid over it and count again.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Don't know offhand. His claim about the Liza being relatively unaffected in 2009 doesn't match my recollections from then. There were dead freshwater mussels all over the place afterwards.

In reply to Chris the Tall:


I think it's the Ehen not Eden

In reply to Shani:



I think on this occasion, I would. I just wasted some time googling round for research papers to support Savory, and there seems to be very little credible research which wholeheartedly supports his position. Although it's a good starting point on many occasions, TED talks are often as much about the showmanship as the science, and I think he falls into this category. I'm surprised the bit about "reductionist science" not being the answer didn't set off your dodgy science detector

However management of drylands and management of moorland/ upland heath / grassland in northern europe (which is what lies at the heart of our land management as it relates to flooding) are very different things. Much of what he said just doesn't stand up to the evidence of people looking at soil erosion and runoff in the uplands. Reduction in grazing density, a move away from sheep and a careful monitoring of the effects of grazing, and revision of the grazing plan in the light of your monitoring are all key to his, which sounds very much like the regime Summo works under?

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

This suggest it was easily in flood

http://apps.environment-agency.gov.uk/river-and-sea-levels/120710.aspx?stat...

In reply to Chris the Tall:
I've used my academic access to read the paper Monbiot cited, and I've also read the unrefereed internal report that RyanOsborne linked to, so it may be useful to summarise them for those without access or time. It's thorough research by a highly reputable team, and adds to the already widespread view that tree cover helps reduce flood peaks generated by moderate amounts of rain. But I don't think there's anything in it to suggest that trees would make much difference in an event as extreme as last week's.

According to the paper in Hydrol. Procs. the mid-Wales field experiments that Monbiot refers to were done in four 12m x 12m plots (control and three treatments; no replication) in sheep pasture with field drains, during rainfall events ranging from <10 mm to a maximum of 47 mm. In those conditions they found an impressive reduction in total surface runoff (added up over all the storms) from the treatment plots: 48% less when sheep were excluded and 78% less after trees were grown. The internal report explains how they scaled their findings up to the small (18 km2) and not very steep stream catchment within which the plots were located, and ran it for various scenarios. For an extreme event (140 mm over 2 days) they predict a 36% (uncertainty range 10-50%) reduction in peak flood discharge if there was 100% tree cover, but only 5% with "optimally placed tree shelter belts".

Last week's storm was far more extreme still (Met Office are saying >300 mm in 24 hrs in places), and as we all know the higher parts of the Lakes have a lot of steep slopes with bare rock or thin soils and not much scope for planting trees. I can't see that what little planting would be possible high up would make any difference to flooding from streams like the ones that took out the Dunmail Raise road, and I doubt that even extensive planting lower down would have reduced the flood peak in Carlisle by more than 5-10%. That doesn't mean that reforestation isn't worthwhile, but the bottom line is that what used to be regarded as highly improbable rainfall amounts are becoming more frequent.

In reply to rif:
I was in the Ecrins in August this year just after a very heavy storm had hit the area where we were staying (the ironically named Désert de Valjoufrey). The valley is fairly well wooded on the lower/mid slopes - but the rain had led to massive landslides which moved topsoil & trees, so even though tree cover helps attenuate smaller storms (the woodland I studied for my PhD 'stopped' a large proportion of rainfall ever reaching the soil ) very heavy rain still causes problems. I think the storm in the Ecrins was a once in >100 year storm (although they seem to come round a bit more often now

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I've read the article and come away feeling it is yet another Monbiot crusade, based on cherry picking the facts that suit his personal ideas. Ignoring those which don't.

Reading through it, I believe anyone with a good scientific knowledge would pick so many holes in the article it would be laughable. Much as his ramblings on red and grey squirrels and pine martens were, he did more harm than good.
I'm not spending an evening evidencing every sentence, nor am I saying I disagree with all of it, but overall it is lightweight scientific journalism.

There seems to be much positive in what Pontbren are doing, this is great news and they won the European Landowners Association (nominated by Wales CLA) award in 2014. Odd he didn't credit that!

It is typical Monbiot, sells papers and makes complex issues appear simple to solve, whilst giving him a soapbox to bash away at any organisation or individual he doesn't agree with.

Anti Monbiot jounalism rant over.

In reply to rif


This is the heart of it. After all the arguments, this was a truly exceptional storm

In reply to Doug:


That's a common misconception, it's actually a local delicacy, great pudding.

In reply to rif:

They are a small part, less land drainage, less urban concrete, restore natural wetlands.. it all needs to be done.



As they probably admit, it's very small scale, so it's hard to replicate. Within a large area there would have probably been small ponds and marsh that have long since be drained etc.. these are just as, if not more critical than the forest itself for slowing the peak. Nothing will change the amount of rainfall trying to get from the clouds to the sea, all we can do is try and spread it's landward journey over a longer period of time.


The storm had impressive peak rainfall, but it's flood height was not much higher than the 2 previous major floods, so in climate terms (not annual weather) that scale of flooding could be described as regular, or even common.

Thin soils, plenty trees will grow and in time soil will develop, as leaf litter etc builds it up. There is of course as limit to how steep, how thin etc. but I see no reason why most of lakes could not have tree cover. It's about the right tree for the right soil, angle slope, slope aspect etc..

Streams; perhaps streams need to have buffer, large boulders etc.. small dams to take the energy out of the water, rather than the emphasis being on getting the water off the land and away as quickly as possible.

In reply to Moley:

would agree in part, I certainly don't share his opinion on apex predators or most of the views spouted in his favourite newspaper. But there is an identified problem and often in life any action is better than inaction.