The country of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia is exposed to the hazards of earthquakes. The tectonic collision of the Earth's plates is creating huge mountains in this region. These mountains are created from earthquakes on large faults along the northern Tien Shan mountain range. Kyrgyzstan's' capital, Bishkek, lies on top of one of these major fault lines and is home to a million people. In the past, major cities that exist along the northern edge of this mountain range, such as Almaty to the east, have been destroyed in large earthquakes at the end of the 19th Century. This occurred when they were relatively small towns. The impact today from similar sized earthquakes would have a much more devastating effect if it were to strike the major city of Bishkek. The rapid expansion of cities in poorer countries has meant that a large number of buildings are not strong enough to be resilient to earthquakes. We want to help the Government ministries in Bishkek, such as the Ministry for Construction and also for Emergency Situations, to be able to better assess the potential impact for earthquakes to strike the city in future. We will do this by providing them with estimates of how many people may die in future earthquakes, how many buildings will be damaged or collapse, and how much such an earthquake will cost financially. We will also provide maps of where we think the city will be most affected by different types of earthquakes, as small nearby earthquakes can have as big an impact as distant large ones. This will enable the Kyrgyz government ministries to target where in the city key buildings, such as schools and hospitals, should be reinforced, as well as to better plan where new housing estates should be built, and also to enforce the seismic building codes to make sure the buildings are built better. In order to provide this latest information, we will be working with the Institute of Seismology in Bishkek, whose responsibility it is to provide these kinds of estimates of seismic risk. We are therefore working directly with the organisation that has the mandate to provide information to the government and by doing so we will ensure that our work will also have an impact. We are also going to train the institute staff to be able to update these estimates of losses so that they have the capacity to continue this work once we are no longer working on this project. It is important to be able to keep updating the estimates of losses and maps of seismic risk. Cities are constantly enlarging. If these cities lie in earthquake prone areas, such as the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, this growth increases their exposure to seismic hazards, increasing the risk that people face. Often some of the best views over a city come from higher ground, but this high ground is created by faults that build mountains. The city of Bishkek is expanding southwards as the urban population grows, and homes are now being built right on top of these fault lines. Being very near to a fault increases the amount of shaking if an earthquake happens, and therefore increases the chances of the building collapsing, injuring or killing the occupants. As well as the increased exposure to earthquake hazards, we are also discovering more active faults in the region through mapping out the fault lines and identifying past earthquake ruptures. It is important to incorporate this new information into the estimates of seismic hazard, as some very large earthquakes are known to have struck the region in the past. Therefore we will include this recent scientific information into our estimates of seismic hazard. We are working with other partners, such as the Global Earthquake Model Foundation, which was created to serve the public good through collaboration, openness and transparency by providing credible assessments of seismic hazard and risk. Their open software "OpenQuake" enables us to do the calculations of seismic risk.

Linkages from deep geological formations to the surface in England have been known and exploited throughout recorded history. Since the 1960s, the UK has enjoyed the benefits of a domestic supply of oil and gas but most of the focus and much of the production has been from offshore reserves. Onshore oil production, though it exists, has received much less attention until recently, with the potential for commercial exploitation of onshore oil and gas (OOG) from shales and other tight formations. Appropriate regulatory control and protection of the environment and human health will be crucial to any successful exploitation of these opportunities and will rely on understanding the risks of these operations based on sound scientific evidence. Unfortunately our current knowledge of existing natural linkages is incomplete, either because the data doesn't exist, or more likely because it hasn't been compiled appropriately. Potential pathways that will be examined include faults, unconformities, sedimentary linkages, karst systems, boreholes, mineshafts and mines. The project proposes to use the National Geological Model, in particular the GB3D Bedrock Fence Diagram (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/ukgeology/nationalGeologicalModel/GB3D.html compiled by the British Geological Survey in conjunction with the Environment Agency) and other data sources and models to develop a national model that will support regulation of the OOG industry, thereby ensuring environmentally sustainable exploitation. The project will follow a staged approach starting with an extensive user consultation, the establishment of the methodology and the cataloging of nationally available datasets and models. The data and models will be synthesised in a three-dimensional Geoscience Information System to develop a prototype source - pathway - receptor analysis tool. This tool will be tested in real world scenarios, and a delivery system enabling the dissemination of the information to a wide range of users will be developed building on successful BGS technology such as the Geology of Britain Viewer http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/geologyOfBritain/viewer.html, the BGS Groundhog GSIS http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/environmentalModelling/groundhogDesktop.html and the Aquifer Shale Separation application http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/groundwater/shaleGas/aquifersAndShales/maps/separationMaps/home.html.

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.

Nitrogen (N) is vital for crop productivity, however, typically half of the N we add to agricultural land is usually lost to the environment. This wastes the resource and produces threats to air, water, soil, human health and biodiversity, and generates harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These environmental problems largely result from our inability to accurately match fertiliser inputs to crop demand in both space and time in the field. If these problems are to be overcome, we need a radical step change in current N management techniques in both arable and grassland production systems. One potential solution to this is the use of technologies that can 'sense' the amount of plant-available N present in the soil combined with sensors that can report on the N status of the crop canopy. On their own, these sensors can provide useful information on soil/crop N status to the farmer. However, they need refining if they are then to be used to inform fertiliser management decisions. This is because climate variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall, sunlight hours) and soil factors (e.g., texture, organic matter content) can have a major influence on soil processes and plant growth, independent of soil N status. These sensors therefore need to be combined with other data and improved soil-crop growth models to provide a more accurate report of how soil N relates to crop N demand at any given point in time. In this project, we are demonstrating how adoption of precision agriculture techniques (in the form of soil nitrate sensors) can be used to improve N use efficiency in both arable (wheat, oilseed rape) and grassland systems. While we are focusing on soil nitrate, as it arguably represents the key form of soil N associated with productivity and the environment, the approaches we are taking are also readily applicable to other nutrients for which sensors are currently being developed (e.g., ammonium, phosphate, potassium). We have designed our research programme in accordance with the strategic objectives of the BBSRC-SARIC programme and those recently produced by HM Government to facilitate delivery of sustainable intensification strategies. To maximise the potential for technology development, commercialisation and adoption we are working closely with a range of industry partners throughout the programme. Overall, we aim to (i) demonstrate the use of novel N sensors for the real-time measurement of soil N status; (ii) use geo-statistical methods to optimise the deployment of these in situ sensors; (iii) produce new mechanistic mathematical models which allow accurate prediction of crop N demand; (iv) validate the benefits of these sensors and models in representative grassland and arable systems from a N use and economic standpoint; and (v) explore how these new technologies can improve current fertiliser management and guidelines through enhanced industry-focused decision support tools. Ultimately, this technology shift could result in substantial savings to the farmer by both reducing costs, maximising yields and minimising damage to the environment. For example, if our technology improves N use efficiency by 10% in agricultural land where fertiliser is applied in the UK (8.2 million hectares of grassland and tilled crops), we estimate it would save 100 thousand tons of N fertiliser (equivalent to a saving of £69 million per annum to farmers). When the direct and indirect costs of nitrate pollution are considered (e.g., removing nitrate from drinking water is estimated to cost UK water companies >£20 million annually), and the reduction in direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions from manufacture and use of 100 thousand tons of N fertiliser are accounted for, the benefits of adopting a validated precision agriculture approach are clear.

The radioactive decay of uranium incorporated in natural carbonates (e.g. corals and stalagmites) provides a powerful way of dating these materials. Such U-Th techniques extend to about half a million years ago and provide the major way in which we can learn about the timing of past climate and environmental change. Over the past 15 years there has been considerable improvement in our ability to measure U and Th isotope ratios and concentrations resulting in a reduction of U-Th age uncertainties by an order of magnitude. Uncertainties are now as low as 0.1%, or 100 years in the age of fossil coral or speleothem that is 100,000 years old. This increase in precision has enabled a wide and expanding range of questions to be answered and is critical to our understanding of the mechanisms of Pleistocene climate and sea-level change. But it has also exposed a problem. Calibration of the tracer solutions used to make U and Th measurements is performed independently in each laboratory using differing techniques and it has become abundantly clear that resulting U-Th ages, while impressively precise, do not agree at this level of precision from one lab to another. There is now inter-laboratory bias at a level that exceeds typical quoted age uncertainty. The cause of this inter-laboratory uncertainty is due to a lack of suitable materials for both calibration purposes and for long-term assessment inter-laboratory agreement. One of the most widely used materials for such calibration, HU-1, has recently been demonstrated to vary, by up to 0.5% between the solutions used in different laboratories. And there exists no widely distributed and well characterised 'age standards' that could be analysed by all of the U-Th laboratories to facilitate quantification of inter-laboratory agreement. We propose a series of actions to address these short fallings in the international U-Th chronology community. We will develop a series of U-Th calibration solutions who's composition is known from first principles metrology (i.e. from the weighing and dissolution of high-purity U and Th metal). We will use these solutions to calibrate the tracers used in three UK and one overseas laboratories - each with a well established reputation for U-Th work. We will then proceed to do develop four different 'age solutions' by taking the U and Th isotopes and mixing them together in proportions that mimic typical compositions analysed by the community. The composition of these 'age solutions' will be measured using the newly and precisely calibrated tracers, so that all compositions will be known and traceable to basic measurements of mass. These 'age solutions' will also be made freely available to all U-Th laboratories who request them worldwide, and we will produce enough of the solutions so that they will last the community 20 years. We will co-ordinate an inter-laboratory comparison exercise so that, for the first time, we will be able to quantify the level to which dates produced in different laboratories agree. As a community we will want to ensure that the level of inter-laboratory variation is minimised, so if labs find their results to be inaccurate they will be able to use the age-solutions, whose compositions are well known, to improve the accuracy of their results. There is very widespread support for this effort in the international U-Th community and we have letters of support from 33 laboratories - the vast majority of all such laboratories worldwide. There are also limitations with the mathematical treatment of U-Th data used to produce dates. Our proposed analytical efforts will be made in concert with the development of these new data reduction template. Overall, these activities will provide dramatic and permanent increase in the reliability of U-Th dates of carbonates - the dates on which so much of our knowledge of Pleistocene climate is based.