Ian Foster

University of Northampton | UN · Geographical and Environmental Sciences

Archaeological and palaeoecological evidence relating to human activity in the English Midlands is scant compared to elsewhere in Britain. Knowledge of human activity in pre-Roman and Roman times is often fragmentary and disparate in parts of the region where it could be assumed that the resident population was small with little Roman impact. To ex...

Channel banks can contribute a significant proportion of fine-grained (<63 μm) sediment to rivers, thereby also contributing to riverine total particulate phosphorus loads. Improving water quality through better agricultural practices alone can be difficult since the contributions from non-agricultural sources, including channel banks, can generate...

Sediment source fingerprinting using environmental magnetism has successfully differentiated between sediment sources in several studies in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The method was applied in this study to the near‐natural landscape of southern Kruger National Park (Mpumalanga Province) to trace sediment and determine sediment yiel...

Soil erosion rates are high in many parts of Southern Africa, and are likely to rise because of climate change. Suspended sediment loads (SSL) and yields (SSY) are used to measure and benchmark soil erosion and/or sediment transport rates and determine trajectories of change. Some modelled SSY are available for Southern African catchments, but ther...

In many parts of South Africa, soil erosion rates are high, and likely to be exacerbated by the longer droughts and more intense rainfall that are predicted in long-term regional climate change scenarios. Suspended sediment loads (SSL) and yields (SSY) are accepted means of expressing and comparing sediment transport and soil erosion rates. Land ca...

Channel banks can contribute a significant proportion of fine-grained (<63 µm) sediment to rivers, thereby also contributing to riverine total particulate phosphorus loads. Improving water quality through better agricultural practices alone can be difficult since the contributions from non-agricultural sources, including channel banks, can generate...

Fine sediment is a leading cause for the decline of aquatic biodiversity globally. There is an urgent need for targeted monitoring to identify where management methods are required in order to reduce the delivery of fine sediment to aquatic environments. Existing sediment-specific biomonitoring indices and indices for general ecological health (tax...

Field-to-river flow of runoff and sediment in a lowland arable catchment in the south of England is explored from both field and modelling perspectives. Routes observed to be taken by flow and sediment on five study areas include many interactions between flow and 'landscape elements' (LEs), including those (field boundaries, paths, roads) of anthr...

Farm ponds, reservoirs and in-stream weirs exist in most lowland UK river catchments and often dominate over natural features such as lakes, wetlands, floodplains and debris dams. Artificial structures have served multiple purposes, including provision of power for historic flour milling and iron ore crushing and provision of water for medieval fis...

The delivery of excessive fine sediment (particles < 2 mm in diameter) to rivers can cause serious deleterious effects to aquatic ecosystems and is widely acknowledged to be one of the leading contributors to the degradation of rivers globally. Despite advances in using biological methods as a proxy, physical measures remain an important method thr...

Measures such as detention structures and buffer strips are widely used to limit off‐site damage of runoff from eroding fields. The effectiveness of such measures varies greatly. However, ‘effectiveness’ is often narrowly defined and ignores the unintended consequences of damage to freshwater systems by sediments and other pollutants. Detention str...

Purpose This review of sediment source fingerprinting assesses the current state-of-the-art, remaining challenges and emerging themes. It combines inputs from international scientists either with track records in the approach or with expertise relevant to progressing the science. Methods Web of Science and Google Scholar were used to review publis...

Monitoring has played a key role in understanding the rates, extent and frequency of erosion on agricultural land and this includes projects in Switzerland, Germany and the UK. In this case we focus on highly erodible soils in the Rother valley, West Sussex, southern England on which grow a range of arable crops throughout the year. Erosion rates a...

Little is known about the impact that Norse communities had on the landscape of Orkney. To redress this, a palaeoenvironmental investigation was conducted from the infilled Loch of Tuquoy, a basin located close to the high-status Norse farmstead and Crosskirk at Tuquoy on Westray, Orkney. Pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, microscopic charcoal, sedim...

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...

This paper provides an introduction and an editorial to this special issue of River Research and Applications by documenting the contributions made by Professor Geoffrey Petts to our interdisciplinary understanding of the functioning of rivers and their floodplains and their sustainable management. We outline Geoff's career, which framed not only h...

Connectivity has become an important conceptual and practical framework for understanding and managing sediment transfers across hillslopes, between hillslopes and rivers, and between rivers and other compartments along the river corridor (e.g., reservoirs, channel substrate, and floodplain). Conventionally, connectivity focuses on the quantity of...

Off‐site impacts of soil erosion are of greater social and economic concern in western Europe than on‐site impacts. They fall into two related categories: muddy flooding of properties and ecological impacts on watercourses due to excessive sedimentation and associated pollutants. Critical to these impacts is the connectedness of the runoff and sedi...

Purpose This study aims to identify a suitable sediment compartment for sediment quality monitoring by: (a) studying the concentration of trace metals (Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) in the bed, bank and suspended sediment compartments of the Ravensbourne River to establish any differences in trace metal concentrations with compartment; (b) determining the...

137Cs has been utilised extensively to investigate catchment sediment dynamics. Its activity can be indicative of sediment derived from surface sources, and its inventory in deposited sediments reflects local fallout, radioactive decay, sediment accumulation and sediment source. Lakes represent ideal depositional environments for the reconstruction...

Site‐average values of local gradient, defined as the steepest slope angle measured at a point, are a powerful predictor of long‐term rates of soil loss as measured by erosion pins on the non‐channel floor portions of ten badland study sites in the Karoo area of South Africa. Local gradient may be easily measured using a smartphone clinometer. The...

Mitigation of diffuse water pollution from agriculture is of concern in the United Kingdom, so that freshwater quality can be improved in line with environmental objectives. Targeted on-farm mitigation is necessary for controlling sources of pollution to rivers; a positive impact must also be delivered at the subcatchment and catchment scales befor...

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 classification of sediment source groups is often the least thoroughly considered part of a sediment fingerprinting methodology; however, the use of inappropriate source groups can be the cause of significant uncertainty. In many catchments, source groups based on land use or geology are a poor fit for their geomorphological processes and the n...

Soils deliver a range of ecosystem services and underpin conventional global food production which must increase to feed the projected growth in human population. Although soil erosion by water and subsequent sediment delivery to rivers are natural processes, anthropogenic pressures, including modern farming practices and management, have accelerat...

The River Rother, West Sussex, is suffering from excess sediment which is smothering the river bed gravels. This is thought to be exacerbating issues of pollution and degradation of ecosystems. This project aims to identify the severity, extent, possible causes and potential mitigation options available to reduce these pressures on the river. Data...

Several research projects undertaken by the authors and others over the last 14 years have used fallout and geogenic radionuclides for understanding erosion processes and sediment yield dynamics in South Africa over the last 100–200 years as European settlers colonised the interior plains and plateaux of the country and imported new livestock and f...

For the past 15 yr, the Sneeuberg uplands in the eastern Karoo, South Africa, have been a focus for research on land degradation by the above authors and other colleagues. Earlier work in the Karoo emphasised vegetation change whereas we concentrate on physical changes to the landscape at the small catchment scale, e.g., bare, degraded areas (badla...

Sediment source fingerprinting has been successfully deployed to provide information on the surface and subsurface sources of sediment in many catchments around the world. However, there is still scope to re-examine some of the major assumptions of the technique with reference to the number of fingerprint properties used in the model, the number of...

Cultivated fields have been shown to be the dominant sources of sediment in almost all investigated UK catchments, typically contributing 85 to 95% of sediment inputs. As a result, most catchment management strategies are directed towards mitigating these sediment inputs. However, in many regions of the UK such as the Nene basin there is a paucity...

The objective classification of sediment source groups is at present an under-investigated aspect of source tracing studies, which has the potential to statistically improve discrimination between sediment sources and reduce uncertainty. This paper investigates this potential using three different source group classification schemes. The first cla...

This chapter focuses on the measurements (the tools), namely gamma-emitting radionuclides, environmental magnetism and sediment geochemistry. By studying the post-fallout redistribution and fate of these fallout radionuclides, it is possible to obtain essentially unique information on soil and sediment redistribution and, therefore, on erosion and...

The semi-arid rangelands of the Great Karoo region in South Africa, which are nowadays characterized by badlands on the foot slopes of upland areas and complex gully systems in valley bottoms, have experienced a number of environmental changes. With the settlement of European farmers in the late 18th century agricultural activities increased, leadi...

The rangelands of the Great Karoo region in South Africa have experienced a number of environmental changes. With the settling of European farmers in the second half of the 18th century, agricultural activities increased, leading to overgrazing and probably representing a trigger to land degradation. Ongoing land-use change and shifting rainfall pa...

The aim of this chapter is to review the type of palaeoenvironmental evidence that might be obtained in order to establish reference conditions for the Water Framework Directive. We evaluate the barriers to their effective establishment and, finally, we explore the potentially uncomfortable relationship that appears to exist between policy, managem...

This commentary discusses the role of long-term climate change in driving increases in soil erosion. Assuming that land use and management remain effectively constant, we discuss changes in the ability of rainfall to cause erosion (erosivity), using long daily rainfall data sets from southeast England. An upward trend in mean rainfall per rain day...

This short article forms the preface to the Proceedings of the 13th IASWS conference held in Grahamstown in July 2014. It provides a background to the conference, a synthesis of the 15 published papers published in the special issue of JSS and a poem - written and read by Harry Owen on the opening night of the conference.

Purpose A methodology was developed to evaluate and mitigate the impacts of particle size and post-depositional diagenesis when using mineral magnetic signatures to trace the sources of historically deposited sediment in farm dams in the South African Karoo. Materials and methods Samples from a range of potential sediment sources were sieved to d...

UK grasslands occupy ~2/3rds of the utilisable agricultural area and support approximately 10 million cattle and calves and 32 million sheep and lambs with a net worth to the UK economy of around £8 billion per annum (Defra, 2013). These grasslands provide a number of key ecosystem services including water and nutrient cycling. To ensure food secur...

Soil erosion on arable land in lowland Britain has been the subject of field-based surveys, which have assessed the volumes or masses of soil transported in channels across farmers’ fields. These surveys provide a unique database on the extent, frequency and rates of soil loss by water. This study synthesizes the key findings from those surveys and...

A peat core from southern Greenland provided a rare opportunity to investigate human-environment interactions, climate change and atmospheric pollution over the last ~700 years. X-ray fluorescence, gas chromatography-combustion, isotope ratiomass spectrometry, peathumification and fourier-transforminfrared spectroscopy were applied and combined wit...

A peat core from southern Greenland provided a rare opportunity to investigate human-environment interactions, climate change and atmospheric pollution over the last ~700 years. X-ray fluorescence, gas chromatography-combustion, isotope ratiomass spectrometry, peathumification and fourier-transforminfrared spectroscopy were applied and combined wit...

Fine sediment in suspended form, recently deposited overbank and in temporary storage on or in channel beds was collected in the Nene basin during a period of drought through to a period of four high flows. The sediment was analysed for arsenic, copper, lead, phosphorus and zinc concentrations with the aim of investigating their sources, movement,...

Land degradation in South Africa has been of concern for over a hundred years with both climate change and inappropriate land management (overgrazing) being proposed as primary drivers. However, there are few quantitative studies of degradation and, in particular, few of erosion by water. Badlands, taken here to be the landform which results from e...

Purpose Fine sediment has been shown to be a major cause of the degradation of lakes and rivers and, as a result, research has been directed towards the understanding of fine sediment dynamics and the minimisation of sediment inputs. The use of tracers within a sediment fingerprinting framework has become a heavily used technique to investigate the...

Work undertaken in the seasonally arid upland areas of the Great Karoo region of South Africa has established a link between land degradation and overgrazing that began in the second half of the 18th century when European farmers first settled the area. Ongoing land use change and shifting rainfall patterns resulted in the development of badlands o...

The use of tracers within a sediment fingerprinting framework has become a commonly used technique for investigating the sources of fine sediment. However, uncertainties associated with tracer behaviour have been cited as major potential limitations to sediment fingerprinting methodologies. This paper aims to determine the differences between finge...

There is now a plethora of records of atmospheric metal deposition across Europe based on total concentrations and calculated enrichment factors. However, to place such records into an archaeological context and to identify anthropogenic contamination signals more accurately, it is important to separate the signals derived from anthropogenic activi...

Mabit et al. (2013) misrepresent Parsons and Foster (2011) as a review of the literature on the use of 137Cs for the study of soil erosion, whereas it was a review on the validity of the assumptions upon which the technique rests. Their paper presents no evidence that challenges our conclusion “that no current rates of soil erosion that are based u...

In recent years, sediment fingerprinting methodologies have gained widespread adoption in geomorphological research. A wide variety of tracers have been employed in the published literature, with corrections for particle size and organic matter applied to them on a situational basis. In the majority of more recent published studies, geochemistry an...

The history of sediment yield from a 57 km(2) catchment in the semi-arid Karoo of South Africa was reconstructed from the sediment stored in a reservoir at Cranemere dating back to 1843. The volume of sediment accumulating in the reservoir between different dates was estimated firstly by developing a core chronology based on Cs-137 and Pb-210 using...

This paper forms part of an ongoing, multidisciplinary study of land degradation in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. A series of studies of erosion, runoff and the development of gullies, badlands and sediment delivery to small farm reservoirs in the Sneeuberg uplands have shown that the semi‐arid Karoo is vulnerable to soil erosion. Cereal cultivat...

Concerns exist over increasing sediment yields in areas of South Africa with a Mediterranean climate that result from the clearing of invasive woody vegetation from steep slopes, as part of the Working for Water Programme. Erosion rates were monitored with erosion pins over a 26‐month period. Measurements were made on slopes covered with indigenous...

In South Africa, the relative extent of range degradation under freehold compared with communal tenure has been debated. This study presents findings from a ‘released’ communal area, where a former freehold farm was transferred to communal ownership in 1976 and compares this with an ecologically similar farm still under freehold tenure. Analysis of...

Fans, in association with hillslope gullies and badlands and their impact on the catchment sediment cascade, slope‐channel connectivity and local landscape evolution, have been reported in diverse geomorphic environments. However, research on the development and morphodynamics of gully fans is still in its infancy in South Africa. An investigation...

We provide an overview of published results and a significant body of new data from an ongoing research programme designed to reconstruct sediment yields and sources in small (2) catchments in the Eastern Cape, South Africa over the last 150 years. Our analysis of four catchments has determined that sediment yield increased significantly in the lat...

Catchment sediment management across England and Wales continues to require alternative criteria to the existing guideline standard (an annual mean suspended sediment concentration of 25 mg L-1) provided by the European Union Freshwater Fish Directive. In response, a recent collaborative science project has investigated the scope for developing alt...

Land degradation is widespread in South Africa but few long-term data sets are available to help identify the timing of this degradation and its impact on catchment sediment yields. We report a case study reconstructing the erosion history of a small upland catchment in the Sneeuberg mountains of South Africa based on the dating of reservoir sedime...

The invader shrub Pteronia incana has colonised extensive areas in communal villages, commercial farms and game reserves in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The spatial and temporal trends in patchiness dynamics for P. incana and their implications for landscape connectivity and functionality were analysed at the hillslope scale in one of t...

Purpose The significance of small farm dams in regulating water and sediment flows to downstream water storage reservoirs is identified as an important issue in South Africa where water shortages are a major current and likely future problem. The role of farm dam breaching, subsequent release of stored sediment and re-connection of the upstream sed...

The radioisotope 137Cs has been extensively used to provide information about soil erosion. The technique relies upon a number of assumptions that this review evaluates in order to establish what can be learned about soil erosion from the use of 137Cs. The assumption of locally spatially uniform fallout is broken down into three components: (1) atm...

Sediment plays a pivotal role in determining the physical, chemical and biological integrity of aquatic ecosystems. A range of factors influences the impacts of sediment pressures on aquatic biota, including concentration, duration of exposure, composition and particle size. In recognition of the need to assess environmental status for sediment and...

Background / Purpose: Determining the heavy metal content of river sediment has tended to receive less attention than that of water despite the significant role of sediment in determining water quality and in supporting aquatic life. Heavy metal contaminants in the aquatic environment are a growing concern in most urban rivers like the Ravensbour...

Establishment of water quality criteria to guide catchment sediment management is required by the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive. The topic, however, is hotly contested among scientists and policy makers. Existing legislation with regard to fine sediment was set by the EU Freshwater Fish Directive. Its guideline, i.e. mean annual sus...

Semi-arid landscapes are vulnerable to cultivation, overgrazing and climate variability, although it is difficult to identify the relative significance of these three factors. In the South African Karoo, the ‘desertification debate’ seeks to explain a change to more shrubby vegetation in heavily grazed areas. We examine these issues in catchments w...

Lakes, reservoirs and ponds exist in almost all parts of the drainage basin and preserve records over varying timescales of the movement of fine particulate material through the sediment cascade. Several developments have taken place over the past three decades that have produced improved methods for the collection, dating, analysis and interpretat...

This paper presents records of metal deposition as preserved by a peatland which has accumulated in the lowland coastal zone at Borth, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, mid-Wales, U.K. The research objective was to explore the origins and history of metal mining and (or) metallurgy by reconstructing a geochemical record of copper, lead and zinc polluti...

Many of South Africa's small farm dams have become mere sediment traps endangering the nation's larger storage reservoirs. The longest monitored sediment yield record in South Africa is from the lower Orange River. The data presented point to small farm dams in badly eroded dry-land areas playing a significant role in trapping sediment. Many of the...

Soil erosion on agricultural land is a growing problem in Western Europe and constitutes a threat to soil quality and to the ability of soils to provide environmental services. The off-site impacts of runoff and eroded soil, principally eutrophication of water bodies, sedimentation of gravel-bedded rivers, loss of reservoir capacity, muddy flooding...

An experimental approach has been used to establish whether medieval ironworking activity could be identified in peat bogs using mineral magnetic measurements. The research project comprised three elements. First, magnetic susceptibility and remanence properties were obtained for materials from an experimental iron smelt, in a furnace of medieval d...

The analysis and interpretation of changes in mineral magnetic signatures from a long (ca. 8.2 m) sedimentary sequence recovered from Lake Qarun, Middle Egypt in 2003 spanning a timescale of approximately the last 2,000 years is reported. A suite of mass specific susceptibility and magnetic remanence measurements were made at irregular intervals do...

This paper raises fundamental questions about the sole use of paleolimnological techniques to identify sediment sources and develop catchment management plans. The concept of an integrated lake: catchment framework was established 30years ago, yet paleolimnologists occasionally fail to appreciate the dynamics of the contributing catchment. This is...

To the European eye, the Karoo is an ancient landscape untouched by major climate change or glaciation and evolving through erosional processes since deposition of Jurassic rocks, uplift, and the break up of Gondwana about 180 million years ago (McCarthy and Rubidge 2005). This break up marked the end of ~300 million years of sedimentation, largely...

IntroductionTemporal Changes in Sediment YieldSediment DeliverySediment TransfersDiscussion and Conclusion References

In order to calculate sediment yields, a chronology was established for sediments accumulating in two farm reservoirs at single coring locations in each reservoir. The chronology has been transferred to six adjacent cores in each reservoir using magnetic core correlation, particle size and visual stratigraphy. Reservoir sediment volumes correspondi...

We present data from a farm reservoir constructed in 1843, which retains a complete and undisturbed sedimentary record exceeding 4 m in depth. A small number (27) of potential sediment sources were sampled and characterised by their mineral magnetic fingerprints. Similar signatures were measured on the reservoir sediments. While yet to be dated, an...