UK Technical Advisory Group for the Water Framework Directive
As Scotland and the UK strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the development of renewable energy sources is becoming increasingly important. With the prevalence of hydro-electric power generation including small to medium size schemes likely to grow over the coming years, a new project (WFD-21D) commissioned under SNIFFER’s Water Framework Directive UK TAG programme is significance.
The project – which began in early autumn 2011 – will examine the ecological indicators of the effects of abstraction and flow regulation from watercourses, as well as the potential optimisation of flow releases from storage reservoirs. A workshop was held in September to gather technical information for the project, and this will be used to develop a methodology which will be trialled in the near future.
Further information on the project we be made available on SNIFFER’s website once the development of the methodology has been completed.
Environmental Regulation Programme
The Environmental Regulation Programme managed by SNIFFER has completed a number of projects and has been developing future projects.
Projects and final reports include an air pollution tracking methodology, and the impact of aquatic carbon fluxes in peatlands. There are also a number of new projects under development including: ·
ER28: Assessing the effectiveness of regulatory activities at low-risk sites: user application development
- ER30: Environmental evidence/knowledge exchange hub
- ER31: Mapping environmental evidence partnerships
- ER32: Odour control and monitoring techniques and community engagement approaches for landfill and rendering facilities
- ER34: Environment agency interactions with UKAS certifying bodies.
Full details of these projects will appear on the Environmental Regulation section of SNIFFER’s website once work programmes relating to these have been initiated.
Climate Change
Two climate change projects have recently been initiated:
- ER23, which will examine climate change adaptation indicators; and
- CC13, which sets out to produce an online version of SNIFFER’s Climate Trends Handbook. It is intended that this will be included on Scotland’s Environment Web.