Channel planform change was investigated along an 18 km section of the River Dee on the Welsh-English border by overlaying information from historical maps and air photographs. The information on river planform change spans the last 115 years, during which time the river has been subject to increasing flow regulation, which may have affected its planform. The downstream location of the reach provides two additional factors which may have an impact on the nature and rate of planform change through their influence on energy conditions in the reach: a tidal backwater influence on the downstream section of the reach; and a low angle of slope.The reach has shown very small changes in planform over the last 115 years, which have been successfully identified by a geographical information system (GIs)-based data handling methodology, which not only allows the estimation of a variety of indices of change, but also supports the estimation of the potential errors associated with registering the historical sources to a common base and digitizing the channel boundary locations. The study is successful in identifying channel planform change because it has utilized a GIs-based as opposed to a manual approach, but it represents the lower limit to which bank movement can be confidently identified in a low-power river environment from 1: 10000 scale sources.The changes identified by the GIS-based methodology include a decrease in channel mobility in a downstream direction; a predominantly oscillatory movement pattern in locations where channel movement has occurred; and an apparent propagation of a decrease in channel width downstream through the reach during the period since 1949, which is the main period of increasing flow regulation.KEY WORDS Tidal backwater Historical map sources Overlay analysis Geographical information systems Channel planform change

No abstract

Aerial photographs, maps and Optically Stimulated Luminescence dates were combined with existing soil data to construct high resolution chronosequences of soil development over 140 years at a temperate Atlantic UK dune system. Since soil formation had progressed for varying periods under different climate and nitrogen deposition regimes, it was possible to infer their relative influence on soil development compared with location-specific variables such as soil pH, slope and distance to the sea. Results suggest that soil development followed a sigmoid curve. Soil development was faster in wet than in dry dune habitats. In dry dunes, rates were greater than in the literature: they increased with increasing temperature and nitrogen deposition and decreased with increasing summer gales. The combination explained 62% of the variation. Co-correlation meant that effects of nitrogen deposition could not be differentiated from temperature. In wet dune habitats, rates increased with temperature and decreased with gales. The combination explained only 23.4% of the variation; surprisingly, rainfall was not significant. Effects of location-specific variables were not significant in either habitat type. Nitrogen accumulation was faster in wet than dry dune habitats, averaging 43 kg.N.ha -1

No abstract

The Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) is developing a management framework with the primary aim of restoring favourable conservation status to the sand dune resource of Wales. It will take onboard the requirements of both national and international conservation legislation and will also help CCW integrate its responsibilities for biodiversity, geodiversity, landscape, access and recreation for this habitat. In order to achieve certain conservation goals it will be necessary to have in place a variety of different types of management ranging from non-or minimal intervention through to intensive single species management and habitat re-creation. However, it will not provide a comprehensive framework for all aspects of site management, but only those that are deemed to be of strategic importance, and have significance within an all-Wales perspective for their nature conservation importance.