Damian Maurice Lawler

Coventry University | CU

This study examines for the first time the changing characteristics of summer and winter southern African rainfall, and their teleconnections with large-scale climate through the dominant timescales of variability. As determined by wavelet analysis, the austral summer and winter rainfall indices exhibit three significant timescales of variability o...

Stream power can be an extremely useful index of fluvial sediment transport, channel pattern, river channel erosion and riparian habitat development. However, most previous studies of downstream changes in stream power have relied on field measurements at selected cross-sections, which are time consuming, and typically based on limited data, which...

In most episodic erosion and deposition systems, knowledge of the timing of geomorphological change, in relation to fluctuations in the driving forces, is crucial to strong erosion process inference, and model building, validation and development. A challenge for geomorphology, however, is that few studies have focused on geomorphological event str...

Oil spills in estuaries are less studied and less understood than their oceanic counterparts. To address this gap, we present a detailed analysis of estuarine oil spill transport. We develop and analyse a range of simulations for the Humber Estuary, using a coupled hydrodynamic and oil spill model. The models were driven by river discharge at the r...

Crude oil is predicted to become one of the most detrimental sources of anthropogenic pollution to estuaries. A comprehensive survey of oil spill literature reveals that oil spill transport in estuaries presents a gap in academic knowledge and literature. To address this gap, we present the first detailed analysis of estuarine oil spill dynamics. W...

Oil spills in estuarine systems can strongly endanger habitats and water quality. However, the impacts of projected climatic conditions on oil spill transport in estuarine environments have received little attention. To address these key gaps, we analyse here a range of simulations for the Humber Estuary, UK, using coupled hydrodynamic and oil spil...

This study investigates the potential for physical damage caused by suspended fine sediment on gills of three macroinvertebrate species, Hydropsyche siltalai, Ephemera danica and Ecdyonurus venosus. Macroinvertebrate cadavers were exposed to three suspended sediment concentrations (control 3.5, low 83.7 and high 404.0 mg l⁻¹) at two velocities (low...

Climate change is expected to significantly impact on the availability of water resources in West and Central Africa through changes in rainfall, temperature and evapotranspiration. Understanding these changes in this region, where surface water is fundamental for economic activity and ecosystem services, is of paramount importance. In this study,...

This study provides the first assessment of CMIP5 model performances in simulating southern Africa (SA) rainfall variability in austral summer (Nov–Feb), and its teleconnections with large-scale climate variability at different timescales. Observed SA rainfall varies at three major timescales: interannual (2–8 years), quasi-decadal (8–13 years; QDV...

During the austral summer season (November–February), southern African rainfall, south of 20°S, has been shown to vary over a range of timescales, from synoptic variability (3-7 days, mostly Tropical-Temperate Troughs) to interannual variability (2-8 years, reflecting the regional effects of El Niño Southern Oscillation). There is also evidence for...

Over recent decades, regions of West and Central Africa have experienced different and significant changes in climatic patterns, which have significantly impacted hydrological regimes. Such impacts, however, are not fully understood at the regional scale, largely because of scarce hydroclimatic data. Therefore, the aim of this study is to (a) assem...

Free access at: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1W85lB8cccof2 (till 18th Jan 2018). Estimates of sediment yield are important for ecological and geomorphological assessment of fluvial systems and for assessment of soil erosion within a catchment. Many regulatory frameworks, such as the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the N...

The impact of fine sediments on both habitat quality and macroinvertebrate communities of riverine systems has been well documented over recent years. However, there is a paucity of studies examining the mechanisms that relate macroinvertebrate sensitivity and responses of individual macroinvertebrate species to burial by sediment. Laboratory-based...

Unprecedented drought episodes that struck western and central Africa between the late 1960s and 1980s, triggered many studies investigating rainfall variability and its impacts on water resources and food production systems. However, most studies were focused at the catchment scale. In this study, we aim at investigating the key large-scale contro...

Fluvial flood events have substantial impacts on humans, both socially and economically, as well as on ecosystems (e.g. hydroecology, pollutant transport). Concurrent with climate change the seasonality of flooding in cold environments is expected to shift from a snowmelt-dominated to a rainfall-dominated flow regime. This would have profound impac...

Fine sediment storage within gravel beds is a key component of catchment sediment budgets and affects the health of benthic and hyporheic habitats. Here, we assess the performance of two substrate infiltration traps for the characterization of fine sediment (<2 mm) accumulation. One design, the vertically extending sediment trap, permits both later...

The use of turbidity for indicating environmentally detrimental levels of suspended and colloidal matter in freshwater systems, and for defining acceptable water quality standards in national and European drinking water regulations, is well established. Turbidity is therefore frequently adopted as a surrogate for suspended sediment concentrations (...

Unprecedented drought episodes that struck western and central Africa between the late 1960s and 1980s. This triggered many studies investigating rainfall variability and its impacts on food production systems. However, most studies were focused at the catchment scale. In this study, we examine how rainfall variability has impacted on river flow at...

Fluvial flood events have a large impact on humans, both socially and economically. Concurrent with climate change flood seasonality in cold environments is expected to shift from a snowmelt-dominated to a rainfall-dominated flow regime. This would have profound impacts on water management strategies, i.e. flood risk mitigation, drinking water supp...

The unprecedented droughts episodes that struck West Africa during 1970s and 1980s, have triggered a plethora of studies investigating rainfall variability and its impacts on food production systems. In general, studies exploring impacts of rainfall variability on streamflow were restrained to basin scale with few of them investigating impacts at t...

This study examines for the first time the ability of 24 global climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) to reproduce decadal timescales of summer southern African rainfall variability and their teleconnections with large-scale climate through the dominant time scales of variability. As determined by wavelet analysis,...

The global economy relies heavily on oil and gas resources. However, hydrocarbon exploitation projects can cause significant impacts on the environment. But despite the production of numerous Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) to identify/mitigate such impacts, no study has specifically assessed the quality of EISs for both onshore and offshore...

Please email me or 'Request' to obtain a pdf of the complete paper: Damian.Lawler@coventry.ac.uk Abstract/Introduction below, for DM Lawler paper on 'Turbidity, Turbidimetry and Nephelometry', CMSE 11006. "Turbidity is an expression of the optical property of a medium, which causes light to be scattered and absorbed rather than transmitted in s...

An ongoing research challenge is the detection of biological responses to elevated sediment and the identification of sediment-specific bioassessment metrics to evaluate these biological responses. Laboratory mesocosms and field observations in rivers in Ireland were used to evaluate the relationship between a range of biological and sediment metri...

We examine secular changes and multidecadal climate variability on a seasonal scale in northern France over the last 500 years and examine the extent to which they are driven by large-scale atmospheric variability. Multiscale trend analysis and segmentation procedures show statistically significant increases of winter and spring precipitation amoun...

This study examines for the first time the changing characteristics of summer and winter southern African rainfall, and their teleconnections with large-scale climate through the dominant timescales of variability. The summer and winter rainfall indices exhibit three significant timescales of variability over the 20th century: interdecadal (15–28 y...

flooding across much of northern Europe in recent years opened up the question of changing underlying hydroclimatic drivers of flood events. Predicting the manifestation of such changes is difficult due to the natural variability and fluctuations in northern hydrological systems caused by large-scale atmospheric circulations, especially under alter...

Unrestricted cattle access to rivers and streams represent a potentially significant localised pressure on freshwater systems. However there is no consensus in the literature on the occurrence and extent of impact and limited research has examined the effects on aquatic biota in the humid temperate environment examined in the present study. Further...

Water contaminated with fine sediment can be a primary risk to human and ecological health. Sediment impacts are, however, complex and difficult to assess in environmental and social impact assessments, especially where timescales are short. We outline a new process-based framework - Fluvial Sediment Impact Assessment (FSIA) - designed to anticipat...

We examine secular changes and multidecadal climate variability on a seasonal scale in northern France over the last 500 years and examine the extent to which they are driven by large-scale atmospheric variability. Multiscale trend analysis and segmentation procedures show statistically significant increases of winter and spring precipitation amoun...

The summer and winter rainfall indices exhibit three significant timescales of variability over the 20th century: interdecadal (15–28 year), quasi-decadal (8–13 year) and interannual (2–8 year). Teleconnections with global sea-surface temperature and atmospheric circulation anomalies are established here. Significantly, they are different for each...

Summer Southern African rainfall exhibit three significant timescales of variability over the 20th century: interdecadal (15–28 year), quasi-decadal (8–13 year) and interannual (2–8 year). Teleconnections with global sea-surface temperature and atmospheric circulation anomalies are different for each timescale. Interdecadal fluctuations in summer r...

Elevated suspended sediment concentrations in fluvial environments have important implications for system ecology and even small concentrations may have serious consequences for sensitive ecosystems or organisms, such as freshwater pearl mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera). Informed decision making is therefore required for land managers to under...

Water contaminated with fine sediment can be a primary risk to human and ecological health. Sediment impacts are, however, complex and difficult to assess in environmental and social impact assessments, especially where timescales are short. We outline a new process-based framework - Fluvial Sediment Impact Assessment (FSIA) - designed to anticipat...

The deliberate damaging of oil pipelines (interdiction) is a key problem in the global petroleum industry and tends to have a strong spatial identity. It also has local, national and international implications for energy security and susceptible environmental receptors. This paper specifically focuses on Nigeria, a country often affected by complex...

Oil spills pose significant environmental risks to river resources and ecosystem services, particularly at Pipeline River crossing locations. Flow duration curves (FDC) can provide useful information for water resource and environmental managers to support mainly river oil spill contingency planning and possibly, response efforts. Yet, no study app...

Regional classification techniques can help in identifying spatial structure in river flow variation. As such, a framework can be provided around which to test hypotheses, making regional classification an important tool for hydrological research, particularly over large and complex geographical domains. Here, the results of a regional classificati...

Understanding oil slick migration in rivers is important for effective spill response because rivers provide essential services for household purposes e.g. fisheries, water supply, transport, socio-cultural activities and recreation. Rivers constitute the second most important source of household water supply in Nigeria. Yet rivers are major recept...

Environmental Impact Assessment (ElA) is designed to anticipate and mitigate project impacts starting from the front-end engineering design stage to decommissioning. To further our understanding of the gaps between EIA predictions and the actual impacts of oil and gas projects, it may be plausible to independently review the quality of projects' EI...

10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2010.02.009 We suggest here an improved spatial connectivity approach (a network connectivity matrix model) and apply it to the oil pipeline network in Nigeria, as one measure of the robustness of such a network. Parts of the distribution network for oil supply have been disrupted in many parts of the world by incidents of delibe...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2011.07.012 In countries with insufficient investments in infrastructure and weak environmental governance, oil leakage from pipelines often occurs as a result of poor management and maintenance. Nigeria has its share of such incidents, but also, it suffers a large number of deliberate attacks (‘interdictions’) on...

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is designed to anticipate and mitigate project impacts starting from the planning to engineering design stage and construction. However, there is very little published literature on the quality of the resultant Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), especially for the hydrocarbon exploitation industries. The o...

This 2010 Special Issue of the international journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms develops from the ‘Geomorphology: a 2020 Vision’ Conference of the British Society for Geomorphology, organised by Damian Lawler and Ian Fairchild at the University of Birmingham, UK, in July 2007. Entitled ‘New Developments in Process Understanding and Model...

This Special Issue of Earth Surface Processes and Landforms develops from the ‘Geomorphology: a 2020 Vision’ Annual Conference of the British Society for Geomorphology, organised at the University of Birmingham, UK, in July 2007. Entitled ‘New Developments in Process Understanding and Modelling in Geomorphology’, the Issue comprises an Introduction...

Invited Paper, reprinted in a Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Special Issue devoted to 'the 10 most cited or influential papers in the subject of Geomorphology over the last 3 decades'. ABSTRACT: River bank retreat around two meander bends in South Wales was monitored over a two-year period with dense grid-networks of erosion...

This article discusses environmental footprints of petroleum transport infrastructure within Lagos State and its adjoining cities with respect to other parts of Nigeria. Transport pipeline interdiction on national and regional bases is analyzed. Reasons for the patterns and urban environmental implications in terms of spillages, fire and fatalities...

Mountain environments are extremely important to the world’s water resources, weather systems and populations. This Special Issue of Hydrological Processes, edited by Carmen de Jong, Damian Lawler and Richard Essery, contains 12 key research papers from leading international research groups on the important theme of ‘Mountain Hydroclimatology and S...

To assess hydrological sensitivity to climate variability, improved understanding is needed of the process cascade linking large-scale climate to river flow. For northern Europe such knowledge is limited, and is further complicated by mountainous terrain. This research gap is addressed through composite analysis of large-scale climate drivers of mo...

This paper is a critical review of the role of Fluvial Geomorphology and Stream Hydraulics and Sediment Transport processes within Hyporheic Zones. The Hyporheic Zone is defined as a zone of groundwater and surface-water mixing beneath, and adjoining, river systems. The 14 key messages are as follows: 1. Geomorphological impacts on hyporheic zone...

Recently, there has been much interest in groundwater - surface water interactions and, in particular, the Hyporheic Zone, as demonstrated by a growing number of scientific papers, conference sessions and special issues of journals, as well as the establishment of HNet, the Hyporheic Network (http://www.hyporheic.net). Research interest in this are...

Note: This report is publically available from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-hyporheic-handbook-groundwater-surface-water-interface-and-hyporheic-zone-for-environment-managers This comprehensive 12-chapter book, written by leading international experts on surface water and ground water processes and interactions, critically review...

Improving the prediction of river flow variation is a major scientific challenge of clear societal relevance. The necessity for accurate river flow prediction is made more acute by the need to manage water resources in the face of projected changes in hydrological cycle behaviour and intensified anthropogenic pressure on finite water resources. Thi...

The Nigerian Niger Delta has in recent years remained a national and international focus for diverse stakeholders not only for its enormous oil and gas resources but for environmental unsustainability, wealth/revenue sharing controversies, civil unrest, and poverty of its inhabitants. To this effect, many innovative individual, corporate and/or joi...

Nigeria’s Niger Delta has in recent years remained a national and international focus for diverse stakeholders not only for its enormous oil and gas resources but for the environmental unsustainability, wealth/revenue sharing controversies, civil unrest, and poverty of its inhabitants. To this effect, many innovative individual, corporate and/or jo...

This study was focused on understanding turbidity and suspended sediment concentration dynamics in the presence of extreme urbanisation. Sites were selected on the Wolverhampton arm of the main upper River Tame, West Midlands, UK. The Tame flows into the Trent which is a major contributor to the Humber estuary (Jarvie et al., 2000), one of the most...

Understanding atmospheric drivers of river flow variability necessitates clear knowledge of the process chain linking climate and hydrology, yet the nature of such linkages remains poorly understood for the New England region of the northeastern United States. This research gap is addressed through a composite analysis of large-scale climatic contr...