Bryan M Spears

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology | CEH · UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Bush Estate (Edinburgh)

Food security and healthy freshwater ecosystems are placed at jeopardy by poor phosphorus management. Scientists are calling for transformation across food, agriculture, waste and other sectors — mobilized through intergovernmental action, which has been missing thus far.

Cities are central to improving natural resource management globally. Instead of reinventing the wheel for each interlinked sustainability priority, we suggest synergising with, and learning from existing net-zero carbon initiatives to explicitly tackle another vital element: phosphorus. To achieve net-zero phosphorus actors must work together to (...

Recommended Citation: WWQA Ecosystems, 2023. White Paper – Embedding Lakes into the Global Sustainability Agenda. Published by UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology on behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme coordinated World Water Quality Alliance Ecosystems Workstream. 22nd March 2023. ISBN: 978-1-906698-82-9. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7752982....

Food systems depend on reliable supplies of phosphorus to fertilize soils. Since 2020, a pandemic, geopolitical disputes, trade wars and escalating fuel prices have driven a >400% increase in phosphorus commodity prices, contributing to the current food crisis. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has disrupted phosphate trade further. Concurrently, phospho...

https://theconversation.com/phosphorus-supply-is-increasingly-disrupted-we-are-sleepwalking-into-a-global-food-crisis-196538

This report sets out the UK’s first comprehensive national phosphorus transformation strategy, based on extensive stakeholder consultation across the UK food system, in addition to economic modelling and biophysical analyses. The UK’s food system is in transition, driven in part by major changes to agricultural policy. It is also under pressure fro...

In the UK most large reservoirs constructed for public water supply are in upland areas and situated in catchments that contain at least some organic-rich soils. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) leaching from these soils imparts a brownish colour to water and raises treatment challenges for the water industry since excessive post-treatment concentrat...

Dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fluxes from the land to ocean have been quantified for many rivers globally. However, CO2 fluxes to the atmosphere from inland waters are quantitatively significant components of the global carbon cycle that are currently poorly constrained. Understanding, the relative contributions of natural and human-impacted pro...

Solid wastes deposited in the coastal zone that date from an era of lax environmental regulations continue to pose significant challenges for regulators and coastal managers worldwide. The increasing risk of contaminant release from these legacy disposal sites, due to a range of factors including rising sea levels, associated saline intrusion, and...

Robust demonstration case-studies are needed to evaluate whether improvements in ecosystem condition are translated into improvements in ecosystem services. This research is essential for effectively scaling-up nature-based solutions across Europe and providing the evidence to support transformation agendas in society and industries, and ultimately...

Project objectives and research questions The overall aim of this project was to compile and assess the key evidence required to improve our understanding of climate change impacts on the water quality of Scottish standing waters at national, regional and local scales. The project focussed on the interactions between climate change, the drivers...

Innovative methods to combat internal loading issues in eutrophic lakes are urgently needed to speed recovery and restore systems within legislative deadlines. In stratifying lakes, internal phosphorus loading is particularly problematic during the summer stratified period when anoxia persists in the hypolimnion, promoting phosphorus release from t...

As demand for food production continues to rise, it is clear that in order to meet the challenges of the future in terms of food security and environmental sustainability, radical changes are required throughout all levels of the global food system. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) (a.k.a. indoor farming) has an advantage over conventional...

Managing phosphorus underpins the sustainability of the food system and is vital in achieving future food security. Strategies to deliver phosphorus sustainability include a transition to circular phosphorus value chains, land-use planning approaches that support greater phosphorus use efficiency and a reduction in consumption of animal products. A...

There are abundant opportunities to transition towards more sustainable phosphorus use. Taken collectively, these solutions unlock multiple environmental and societal benefits. Actions must be delivered cooperatively, as part of an integrated plan across sectors and scales. Indeed, coordinated action on phosphorus to support governments, existing c...

Recycling phosphorus-rich organic wastes and manures is critical for phosphorus sustainability and a transition to a more circular economy for phosphorus. Beyond agronomic benefits, the win-wins are numerous, with benefits to society, environment, economy, and business growth. However, to significantly increase phosphorus recycling, education, awar...

Unsustainable phosphorus use is at the heart of many societal challenges. Unsustainable phosphorus use affects food and water security, freshwater biodiversity and human health. Increasing demand for food to support a growing global population continues to drive increases in phosphorus inputs to the food–system, as well as losses from land-based so...

The 'Our Phosphorus Future' project (OPF) responds to the critical need to provide direction from the global phosphorus scientific community to progress sustainable phosphorus use. The OPF project ran from 2017-2021. During this time over 100 scientists and industry experts came together to develop this report. The report identifies the priority is...

Anthropogenic eutrophication caused by excess loading of nutrients, especially phosphorus (P), from catchments is a major cause of lake water quality degradation. The release of P from bed sediments to the water column, termed internal loading, can exceed catchment P load in eutrophic lakes, especially those that stratify during warm summer periods...

The flux of terrigenous organic carbon through estuaries is an important and changing, yet poorly understood, component of the global carbon cycle. Using dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and fluorescence data from 13 British estuaries draining catchments with highly variable land uses, we show that land use strongly influences the fate of DOC across...

Globally, anthropogenic actions of land use change and intensification and deliberate or unintentional species invasions have adversely affected lakes, resulting in widespread loss of benefits to society. In recognition of these impacts, restoration efforts have increased in recent years. Restoration is a challenging and expensive process, however,...

Interactions between stressors in freshwater ecosystems, including those associated with climate change and nutrient enrichment, are currently difficult to detect and manage. Our understanding of the forms and frequency of occurrence of such interactions is limited; assessments using field data have been constrained as a result of varying data form...

The dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export from land to ocean via rivers is a significant term in the global C cycle, and has been modified in many areas by human activity. DOC exports from large global rivers are fairly well quantified, but those from smaller river systems, including those draining oceanic regions, are generally under-represented i...

Despite advances in conceptual understanding, single-stressor abatement approaches remain common in the management of fresh waters, even though they can produce unexpected ecological responses when multiple stressors interact. Here we identify limitations restricting the development of multiple-stressor management strategies and address these, brid...

Rising dissolved organic matter (DOM) concentrations, and associated increases in water colour, have posed a potential problem for the UK water industry since the phenomenon was first reported in the early 1990s. Elevated DOM concentrations in raw water are of particular concern in upland catchments dominated by organic soils where DOM production t...

Eutrophication affects many lakes and reservoirs worldwide. It is caused by excessive amounts of nutrients entering waterbodies from their catchments, mainly due to human activity. The main sources of these nutrients are discharges from industry and wastewater treatment systems, and agricultural runoff. The water quality problems caused by eutrophi...

Climate and land-use change drive a suite of stressors that shape ecosystems and interact to yield complex ecological responses, i.e. additive, antagonistic and synergistic effects. Currently we know little about the spatial scale relevant for the outcome of such interactions and about effect sizes. This knowledge gap needs to be filled to underpin...

Steinman and Spears bring together an international cast of experts to summarize the state of knowledge of phosphorus loading and cycling in lakes around the world. In a well crafted treatment of the topic, the book first introduces the problem of P loading, its measurement, driving factors, and mathematical modeling. In the second section, 17 chap...

Loch Leven is a shallow eutrophic lake in the UK with a history of eutrophication problems. Here, we document the response of internal phosphorus cycling within the lake to a reduction in catchment phosphorus load from 5.25 mg total phosphorus (TP) m-2 d-1 (1985) to between 1.44 mg TP m-2 d-1 and 2.39 mg TP m-2 d-1 (1995, 2005, 2015). Since 1989, i...

Barton Broad is a very shallow lowland eutrophic lake, located in the Broads National Park, UK. The lake has been monitored over the last forty years, during which time a series of restoration measures has been undertaken. This started with the control of phosphorus from waste water treatment works (WWTW) to reduce phosphorus input to the lake, fol...

We set out in this book to present a comprehensive assessment of internal phosphorus (P) loading in lakes, drawing on a vast peer reviewed literature as well as long-term data from case studies. Most importantly, our co-authors have imparted hundreds (collectively) of years of expertise in measurement, modelling and management of internal loading a...

Lake eutrophication is a global problem that is being exacerbated by climate change, excess nutrient runoff, and land use alterations. While nutrient inputs to lakes from surrounding watersheds (external loading) have historically received considerable attention, phosphorus inputs (and other elements) generated from within the lake (internal loadin...

The transport of dissolved organic matter (DOM) across the land-ocean-aquatic-continuum (LOAC), from freshwater to the ocean, is an important yet poorly understood component of the global carbon budget. Exploring and quantifying this flux is a significant challenge given the complexities of DOM cycling across these contrasting environments. We deve...

Since 2017, we investigated iDOM in tropical and temperate rivers across Amazonia and Scotland using the next-generation liquid chromatography organic carbon detection – organic nitrogen detection system utilised by Pereira et al. (2014). Monthly sampling of rivers including the Cree, the Clyde and the Forth show evidence for iDOM mobilisation, but...

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6438/eaav5570/tab-e-letters Letter submitted in response to Perino, A., Pereira, H.M., Navarro, L.M., Fernández, N., Bullock, J.M., Ceaușu, S., Cortés-Avizanda, A., van Klink, R., Kuemmerle, T., Lomba, A., Pe’er, G., Plieninger, T., Benayas, J.M.R., Sandom, C.J., Svenning, J.C., Wheeler, H.C., Rewilding C...

We investigated the riverine carbon exports from a two headwater peatland environments in the UK, and examined the potential uncertainty of quantification due to the role of optically “invisible” dissolved organic matter (iDOM). Importantly, our work captured compositional changes of riverine DOM in during an exceptionally dry period and compared t...

The delivery of organic matter (OM) from land to freshwaters constitutes a significant flux within the global carbon cycle, with particularly high OM loading in aquatic systems draining organic carbon rich peatlands. However, the reactivity and therefore the fate of OM within the aquatic continuum is not fully understood. In this study, OM concentr...

Little is known about chemical and ecological recovery following red mud leachate pollution in fresh waters. This deficiency is confounded by a lack of knowledge on the chemical composition of red mud leachate and the changes in composition that occur as a result of interactions with sediments and freshwater organisms during transport through aquat...

About 40 % of European lakes are failing water quality targets for chemistry that have been set under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). One of the main causes of this problem is excessive inputs of phosphorus (P) to lakes from their catchments, including those from agricultural sources and wastewater treatment works. This study used WFD monit...

Abstract The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is a pioneering piece of legislation that aims to protect and enhance aquatic ecosystems and promote sustainable water use across Europe. There is growing concern that the objective of good status, or higher, in all EU waters by 2027 is a long way from being achieved in many countries. Through questionn...

The National Trust (NT) is often associated in the public mind with stately homes and tearooms but as the largest private landowner in the UK (250,000 ha) and with over 5 million members, its potential reach as a conservation charity is significant. In recent years, the Trust has consciously reemphasised its role in nature conservation and at the h...

Vanadium (V) is a contaminant which has been long confined to the annals of regulatory history. This follows the reduction of its historical primary source (fossil fuel emissions) since the 1970s (e.g., by 80% in the UK). However, V is quickly becoming an important strategic resource which promises its return to environmental prominence because of...

Executive summary The consequences of eutrophication in lakes are many, including the potential degradation of important ecosystem services such as the provision of food, the supply of clean water for drinking and industrial use, the support of tourism and recreation, and the maintenance of species and habitats of high conservation value. Phospho...

This project investigated the effectiveness of a technique for stopping the release of phosphorus from lake sediments. If successful, this could accelerate the ecological recovery of lakes with excessive nutrients and help to restore fish and wildlife populations. Lake treatment Eutrophication in lakes, caused by high nutrient inputs (particularly...

During a fish survey in Bassenthwaite Lake, Cumbria in 2013, a single young vendace (Coregonus albula) was unexpectedly caught in one of the nets. After a 12 year absence, during which it was thought to be extinct at this site, the vendace had returned! The elusive, mysterious vendace remains unknown to many, despite the fact it has been around wit...

Nature Ecology & Evolution - online Abstract There is a pressing need to apply stability and resilience theory to environmental management to restore degraded ecosystems effectively and to mitigate the effects of impending environmental change. Lakes represent excellent model case studies in this respect and have been used widely to demonstrate th...

RE: Sinha E., A.M. Michalak, V. Balaji. Eutrophication will increase during the 21st century as a result of precipitation changes. Science, 357, 405-408 (2017). http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6349/405/tab-e-letters Bryan M. Spears, Massimo Vieno, Marcel Van Oijen, Mark A. Sutton (28 August 2017) Climate Change and Eutrophication Rev...

Red mud is a by-product of alumina production. Little is known about the long-term fate of red mud constituents in fresh waters or of the processes regulating recovery of fresh waters following pollution control. In 1983, red mud leachate was diverted away from Kinghorn Loch, UK, after many years of polluting this shallow and monomictic lake. We hy...

The MARS Project aims to understand the effects of multiple stressors on the status of surface waters and groundwaters, their constituent organisms, and the ecosystem services they provide. It examines the impacts of multiple stressors through a series of multifactorial experiments, analysis of long-term monitoring datasets, sixteen case studies at...

D6.1-1 Summary: Currently, practical management of water bodies focuses on the control of single stressors which are assumed to be dominant. Work by the MARS project and others using ecosystem scale and experimental observations has demonstrated that the relationships between primary stressors and ecological response indicators can be confounded th...

Summary D6.1-1: Currently, practical management of water bodies focuses on the control of single stressors which are assumed to be dominant. Work by the MARS project and others using ecosystem scale and experimental observations has demonstrated that the relationships between primary stressors and ecological response indicators can be confounded th...

The focus of ecosystem restoration has recently shifted from pure rehabilitation objectives to both improving ecological functioning and the delivery of ecosystem services. However, these different targets need to be integrated to create a unified, synergistic, and balanced restoration approach. This should be done by combining state‐of‐the‐art kno...

Whilst a diverse array of phosphorus (P)-adsorbent materials is currently available for application to freshwater aquatic systems, selection of the most appropriate P-adsorbents remains problematic. In particular, there has to be a close correspondence between attributes of the P-adsorbent, its field performance and the management goals for treatme...

Little is known about long-term ecological responses in lakes following red mud pollution. Among red mud contaminants, arsenic (As) is of considerable concern. Determination of the species of As accumulated in aquatic organisms provides important information about the biogeochemical cycling of the element and transfer through the aquatic food-web t...

Interactions between microorganisms and rocks play an important role in Earth system processes. However, little is known about the molecular capabilities microorganisms require to live in rocky environments. Using a quantitative label-free proteomics approach, we show that a model bacterium (Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34) can use volcanic rock to...

Spears, B.M., Carvalho, L., Futter, M.N., May, L., Thackeray, S.J., Adrian, R., Angeler, D.G., Burthe, S.J., Davidson, T.A., Daunt, F., Gsell, A.S., Hessen, D.O., Moorhouse, H., Huser, B., Ives, S.C., Janssen, A.B.G., Mackay, E.B., Søndergaard, M., Jeppesen, E. Ecological instability in lakes: a predictable condition? Environmental Science & Techno...

Eutrophication is the primary worldwide water quality issue. Reducing excessive external nutrient loading is the most straightforward action in mitigating eutrophication, but lakes, ponds and reservoirs often show little, if any, signs of recovery in the years following external load reduction. This is due to internal cycling of phosphorus (P). Geo...

Highlights Reduced cyanobacterial blooms after treatment but initial response not sustained. Shift from cyanobacteria dominance towards a diverse phytoplankton community. Ecological status improved but failed to meet the proxy WFD water quality target. Need in-lake and catchment-based measures to effectively control internal P loading BACI analysi...