This thesis seeks to investigate the changes in the characteristics of 20th and 21st century meteorological droughts in the UK to address the following lines of inquiry: 1) How credible are rainfall-based indices in representing hydrological droughts, 2) How coherent are droughts?, 3) Can alternative method of analysis provide new (or additional) information on the uncertainties in climate models?, and 4) Will future drought characteristics change?. Key results, respectively, are summarized as follows: • The drought severity index (DSI), can be considered a good proxy for assessing hydrological droughts as can be seen in its ability to capture the major hydrological events. The main caveat of the DSI is that there is often an underestimation of drought intensity and duration, • Drought covariance is higher for the (i) wet season, (ii) moderate and (iii) shorter duration droughts, • Evaluating climate models using drought statistics produces contrasting results compared with that using the model's precipitation fields. Drought statistics show biases which are largely negative, more intense, and have a greater spatial coverage. • The projected ensemble-mean change is generally greater (and more widespread) for (i) moderate droughts and (ii) wet season compared with extreme droughts and the dry season, respectively with increases in drought intensity, drought covariance index, frequency of drought months and frequency of drought events for a given duration shown for England.

Multilateral efforts are yet to produce meaningful action on climate change. Part of the problem with these approaches is a perceived lack of fairness among state actors. Whilst academic discussion has traditionally focused on the issue of distributive fairness, very little has been said about procedural fairness in this respect. To this end, this thesis analyses principles of procedural justice in order to develop practical policy measures for institutional design. It does so in four steps. First, it argues that procedural justice is important for reaching a mutually acceptable agreement when there is reasonable disagreement about the substantive ends that collective action should achieve. Second, it develops several principles of procedural justice that should govern the decision-making processes of climate institutions. This includes principles that govern who should participate in decisions, how these decisions should take place, and how transparent they should be. Third, it considers the relative value that procedural justice should be given against other important ends. In doing so, it proposes that procedural justice is a fundamental feature of fair and effective climate institutions. Finally, it considers what this means for climate institutions in practice by determining a set of pragmatic policy prescriptions that can guide the design of climate governance institutions.

Environmental management is plagued with uncertainty, despite this, little attention has until recently been given to the sensitivity of management decisions to uncertain environmental projections. Assuming that the future climate is stationary is no longer considered valid, nor is using a single or small number of potentially incorrect projections to inform decisions. Instead, it is recommended that decision makers make use of increasingly available probabilistic projections of future climate change, such as those from perturbed physics ensembles like United Kingdom Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09), to gauge the severity and extent of future impacts and ultimately prepare more robust solutions. Two case studies focussing on contrasting aspects of local water management; namely irrigation demand and urban drainage management, were used to evaluate current approaches and develop recommendations and improved methods of using probabilistic projections to support decision making for climate change adaptation. A quantitative understanding of the impact of uncertainty to decision making for climate change adaptation was obtained from a literature review; followed by a comparison of using (1) the low medium and high emission scenarios, (2) 10,000 sample ensemble and 11 Spatially Coherent Projections (11SCP), (3) deterministic and probabilistic climate change projections, (4) the complete probabilistic dataset and sub-samples of it using different sampling techniques, (5) the change factor (or delta change) and stochastic (or UKCP09 weather generator) downscaling techniques and (6) different decision criteria using two contrasting case studies at three UK sites. This research provides an insight into the impact of different sources of uncertainty to real-world adaptation and explores whether having access to more data and a greater appreciation of uncertainty alters the way we make decisions. The impact of the “envelope of uncertainty” to decision making is explored in order to identify those factors and decisions that have the greatest impact on what we perceive to be the “best” solution. An improved novel decision criterion for use with probabilistic projections for adaptation planning is presented and tested using simplified real-world case studies to establish whether it provides a more attractive tool for decision makers compared to the current decision criteria which have been advocated for adaptation planning. This criterion explicitly incorporates the unique risk appetite of the individual into the decision making process, acknowledging that this source of uncertainty and not necessarily the climate change projections, had the greatest impact on the decisions considered by this research. This research found the differences between emission scenarios, projection datasets, sub-sampling approaches and downscaling techniques, each contributing a different source of uncertainty, tended to be small except where the decision maker already exhibited an extremely risk seeking or risk adverse appetite. This research raises a number of interesting questions about the “decision significance” of uncertainty through the systematic analysis of several different sources of uncertainty on two contrasting local water management case studies. Through this research, decision makers are encouraged to take a more active role in the climate change adaptation debate, undertaking their own analysis with the support of the scientific community in order to highlight those uncertainties that have significant implications for real world decisions and thereby help direct future efforts to characterise and reduce them. The findings of this research are of interest to planners, engineers, stakeholders and adaptation planning generally.

Västervik Municipality has had problems with odorous compounds in its primary water source, Lake Hjorten. Geosmin and cyanobacterial blooms have been detected in the lake. This report aims to experimentally investigate the cyanobacterial populations in the primary and secondary freshwater lakes depending on the climate change factor temperature. An understanding of number of cells is the foundation to understand the potential harmful chemical levels. This provides an opportunity to predict the water quality in the lakes in the future due to climate change. The results show that cyanobacteria did not benefit from an increase in temperature from 10°C to 18°C solely during autumn. However, the diatom Aulacoseira did increase in numbers although it is not known to produce odorous compounds. Consequently a warmer Swedish autumn would not cause worse drinking water quality in absence of other contributing factors according to this study.

Climate change is one of the major contributing factors to degradation of ecological services, and these in turn are harming many people and causing poverty mainly in rural areas. The information available and the gain of knowledge on how climate change is affecting livelihood resources in the Bolivian Andes are very limited. This research aims to advance in the understanding of adaptive capacity to social and climate change in rural communities whose livelihoods are dependent upon agriculture and local resources. The proposed framework of this research focuses on the vulnerability assessment of the socio-ecological system, which targets on the identification of adaptation strategies in the context of their contribution to the overall adaptive capacity of the system. Following an exploratory design, two representative communities from different agro-ecological regions are selected as case studies: Santiago de Okola (Municipality of Puerto Carabuco, highlands) and Sita-Chorocana (Municipality of Inquisivy, inter-Andean valley). The research is conducted using a participatory rural appraisal approach and combines indicators encompassing natural, physical, human, financial, and socio-cultural variables. Data collection is based on community discussion (n=6), key informant interviews (n=31), household interviews (n=125), and local observations. Data analysis is conducted for quantitative and qualitative information. The results are presented in four main sections: 1) Integral diagnosis of the current situation in each case study considering general characteristics of the population, agriculture activities and forest resources; followed by a complete description of impacts and strategies to cope with extreme weather events and socio-economic conflicts at household level. 2) The assessment of strategies based on cultural knowledge describes the existing traditional ecological knowledge and local customs. Moreover, a mathematical model has been developed to evaluate the current knowledge needed to cope with and adapt to climate change. The outcomes point out that for the highlands the diversification of knowledge, and for the inter-Andean valley the social—pooling are strategies that contributed the most to secure crop production under extreme weather event scenario. 3) The assessment of socio-economic strategies identifies households under the category of poor as the most vulnerable group to climate change; this group is dominated by old women living alone in the communities and in charge of the farm. Based on the redundancy analysis poverty indicators have been identified: In the highlands, off-farm activities represent a potential strategy whenever the crop production is reduced or limited; these activities are related to the labor availability in the household, health conditions and level of education. In the inter-Andean valley, out-farm and eucalyptus plantations represent a potential strategy to secure crop production when households have access to land and markets and they participate in social networks. 4) The assessment of social networks identifies the relationship between the households, stakeholders, and the municipality to cope with socio-economic conflicts and the impacts of extreme weather events. Independently of each case study, the outcomes point out the existing social networks under socio-economic scenario contributed to the implementation of a wide number of coping strategies to secure in the long-term the well-being of the household including economic development, food production, education, social organization, infrastructure, and health. The existing social networks under the extreme weather events scenarios contributed mainly to secure food production of the households by providing immediate access to labor. This research presents evidence on how social and climate changes are the major contributing factors to increasing vulnerability of the socio-ecological system. It is the first explorative research in which cultural knowledge, socio-economic and social networks strategies are integrated to understand the adaptive capacity of rural communities in the selected case studies. The livelihood adaptation strategies identified independently of each of the two case study eco-regions showed particular characteristics related to the lifestyle, the knowledge and the socio-economic resources available in the communities; and highlights the potentialities and limitations of the households to reduce their vulnerability. Finally, the proposed model towards adaptive capacity is a tool that can be used to guide new policies and programs that target poverty reduction and minimize the adverse impacts of climate change.

Small but mighty phytoplankton can be used as excellent model organisms to answer questions that are of importance to marine biologists and researchers in experimental evolution alike. For example, marine biologists are interested in finding out, how, in a changing ocean, the phytoplankton foundation of the ocean ecosystem is going to change - can we use short-term data to extrapolate to longer timescales? What are the physiological consequences of selection in stable and fluctuating high-pCO2 environments? From a more evolutionary perspective, is elevated pCO2 alone enough to drive evolution in marine algae? Can we select organisms to maintain plasticity in fluctuating environments, and how does selection in a fluctuating environment affect their ability to evolve? Can we detect a cost of plasticity? I have used theoretical and practical approaches from both disciplines to answer these questions, as they are ultimately similar questions that are important to address, and the lack of communication between disciplines has lead to conflicting predictions on the fate of populations in changing environments. Using evolutionary theory and applying it to an organism with a known function in the marine environment allows us to make ecologically relevant predictions while also enabling us to disentangle the underlying evolutionary mechanisms. While there have been some studies focusing on evolution of marine algae in climate change scenarios since I started my PhD, my study is the first to test the link between phenotypic plasticity and adaptation empirically, and it is also the first to use 16 rather than single or few genotypes of an algae, thereby creating the statistical power necessary to make any predictions. In a short-term CO2 enrichment study, and a selection experiment, those 16 physiologically and genetically distinct lineages of Ostreococcus, the smallest free living eukaryote, were selected for 400 generations in fluctuating and stable high pCO2 environments. I have shown that short-term plastic responses in phenotype can predict the magnitude of long-term evolutionary ones. Ostreococcus lineages in fluctuating environments evolve to be more plastic with no associated costs, and the adaptive response to selection in a high pCO2 environment is to grow more slowly in monoculture, but to be more successful competitors in mixed culture. High-pCO2 evolved lineages are genetically and physiologically different from their ancestors. Importantly, their quality as a food source for zooplankton will change, with possible repercussions for the ocean ecosystem at a whole. Furthermore, the lineages’ ability to perceive pCO2 levels in the surrounding medium is altered after evolution in fluctuating and high pCO2 environment, allowing them to broaden the window in which they can respond to changes in their environment without suffering metabolic stress.

Increased renewable electricity generation is key to the reduction of carbon emissions and has the added benefit of reducing reliance on imported gas and coal while increasing diversity of the generation mix. To encourage development of renewable generation the Scottish Government has adopted an ambitious 100% renewable electricity generation target to be met by 2020. Although hydropower has generally been considered insignificant in a UK context, when forming part of a Scottish target the resource becomes much more significant as the majority of the UK’s existing capacity and potential for new capacity is located within Scotland. Scotland has a long history of hydropower development with the majority of current operational capacity installed during the mid 20th century. Recent studies have produced a range of estimates for the remaining resource from 286 to 1000 MW. The studies undertaken have tended to rely upon catchment analogue methods or the use of regression equations to produce estimates of flow at sites of interest, with simple assumptions of installation costs and energy yield. This work uses a novel method combining time series flow data produced from a distributed hydrological model with GIS techniques and a detailed parametric cost model to enable a state-of-the-art hydropower resource model to be developed. The use of time series flow data allowed investigation of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the resource to be made, both run-of-river and impoundment schemes to be investigated and a preliminary assessment of the impact of climate change to be performed. Three financial scenarios have been considered using 5%, 10% and 15% discount rates as this is the most sensitive variable when assessing the feasibility of hydropower projects, reflecting the cost of finance available and investors’ attitude to risk. The spread of discount rates will account for changes in available subsidies, electricity prices and ongoing costs. Clearly availability of low cost finance and a low risk subsidy environment will have the largest impact on hydropower development. A major limiting factor was found to be the cost of grid connection; if this were reduced the potential figure could be higher. The results of this work show that at a 10% discount rate, 440 MW of new run-of river hydropower potential capable of producing 1.7 TWh per year is available. Exploitation of this would represent an additional 4% contribution towards the Scottish Government’s 100% renewable electricity target.

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG) which has a global warming potential 296 times greater than that of carbon dioxide (CO2). Agriculture is a major source of N2O and in the UK approximately 71 % of N2O emissions are produced by agricultural soils, mainly as a result of the application of nitrogenous fertilisers. Despite previous research into agricultural N2O emissions which has demonstrated that N2O emissions have high spatial and temporal variability, there is still a lack of knowledge surrounding the factors that influence the magnitude of emissions from agricultural soils. Agricultural N2O emissions for the UK’s annual GHG inventory are currently estimated using a 1.25 % emission factor (EF) (to be decreased to 1 % in 2015) which assumes that 1.25 % of applied nitrogen (N) fertiliser is emitted as N2O. The EF does not take into account influencing factors such as location or fertiliser type. Mitigation of N2O emissions is vital if future climate change is to be prevented, yet this must also be combined with the need to intensify agricultural production to feed the increasing global population. Biochar which is a carbon rich material produced during the pyrolysis of biomass has been identified as a potentially useful soil amendment with the ability to mitigate N2O emissions. However, most previous research has focused on laboratory scale experiments and there is a need to investigate the use of biochar in a field environment. Other N2O mitigation options such as nitrification inhibitors, or altering fertiliser management practices, require testing under different conditions to assess their suitability for use. This thesis aims to investigate a). The factors affecting N2O emissions from synthetically and organically fertilised arable soils, and b). To explore the potential of various N2O mitigation options for arable systems, including biochar. This thesis firstly investigates N2O emissions from synthetically fertilised arable soil. Varying application rates of ammonium nitrate fertiliser were applied to a Scottish arable soil during a year long field experiment and the effects of mitigation options such as a nitrification inhibitor (DCD) were assessed. N2O emissions were shown to be significantly affected by soil water filled pore space and the 1.25 % EF was demonstrated to be generally greater than those calculated in this experiment. The use of DCD significantly decreased N2O emissions and crop yields. A second year long field experiment was carried out to investigate N2O and NH3 emissions from an organically fertilised arable soil and to explore the effect of the timing, form and method of organic fertiliser application on emissions and EFs. Slurry, poultry litter, layer manure and farmyard manure were applied in the autumn and the spring. Cumulative N2O emissions were generally greater from the autumn applications and NH3 emissions were greater from the spring applications, due to wetter soil conditions and incorporation of fertiliser during the autumn. The type of fertiliser applied affected the magnitude of emissions with the greatest cumulative N2O and NH3 emissions from the layer manure. The method of fertiliser application had no effect on emissions. The following experiment investigated the ability of different biochars to retain N from a solution and the effect of biochar particle size on retention. A batch sorption experiment was used to test the affinity and capacity of six biochars for ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3-) from different concentrations of NH4NO3 solution. All of the biochars studied demonstrated the ability to retain NH4+ and NO3- from solution although greater NH4+ retention was observed. Differences in biochar affinity for N could be explained by pyrolysis temperature, but there was no effect of particle size or pH. Oil seed rape straw biochar was demonstrated to have the greatest NH4+ and NO3- retention capacity and as such was chosen for use in the next experiment. This work investigated the potential for oil seed rape straw biochar to decrease emissions of N2O, CH4 and CO2 from stored slurry and whether any GHG mitigation effects would continue following application of the slurry to arable soil. The effect on emissions of amending the biochar and slurry mixture with DCD after application to the soil was also explored. There was no significant effect of the biochar on GHG emissions from the stored slurry although the slurry initially acted as a sink for N2O and CO2. There were no significant differences between emissions from any treatments following application to the soil. The overall results of these studies indicate that N2O emissions are highly dependent on weather conditions, and hence location, in addition to fertiliser type and application timing. It was concluded that the use of a standard 1.25 % EF for synthetic and organic N fertiliser applications for the whole of the UK is inappropriate. Mitigation options such as the use of DCD, altering fertiliser application season or fertiliser type have been shown to possess the potential to mitigate N2O emissions but tradeoffs between N2O and NH3 emissions, and impacts on crop yields must be considered. Biochar was demonstrated to retain NH4+ and NO3- ions and this property may account for biochar’s N2O mitigation capabilities as observed by previous researchers. However, if N retention is taking place, the N appears to still be available for production of N2O and crop uptake.

The pursuit of urban sustainability is considered central to sustainable development and is a key objective of the global Sustainable Development Goals (2015) and the New Urban Agenda (2016). This thesis aims to contribute to debates on urban sustainability by providing insights as to the role of actors participating in processes of governing for urban sustainability, with particular focus on the municipal organisation. The thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach to illustrate divergent approaches to governing for urban sustainability, with reference to empirical studies of strategic planning processes in municipalities in selected North-western European countries – Sweden, Switzerland and The Netherlands. These studies address themes including climate change, sustainable transport and multi-level governance. The thesis provides a broad overview of theoretical discussions related to governing, strategy and planning, the role of actors in governing for urban sustainability, and the particular importance of climate change as a challenge for urban sustainability. A number of research gaps are identified and addressed in two research questions, focusing on the organisation and practice of processes of governing for urban sustainability, and the factors influencing actors participating in such processes. The thesis responds to these research questions with reference to five appended papers, which illustrate different dimensions of governing for urban sustainability. The first paper concerns the organisation of processes to develop energy and climate strategies in Swedish municipalities, and the second paper highlights the experiences of actors participating in such processes. The third paper presents results from a survey illustrating the expectations of stakeholders active in governing transport in the city of Norrköping, Sweden. In the fourth paper, the development and implementation of policies aiming for sustainable transport and urban sustainability in Basel, Switzerland, are discussed. In the final paper, cooperation through transnational municipal networks is explored with reference to the World Ports Climate Declaration, an initiative of the city of Rotterdam. The thesis confirms the presence of five factors – capacity, mandate, resources, scope and will – that shape the “strategy space” of actors and play an important role in conditioning the form and content of processes of governing for urban sustainability. The thesis suggests that the ways in which a municipal organisation perceive and mobilise the five factors will strongly determine the extent of its sustainability strategy space. In sum, municipal organisations and other actors participating in processes of governing for urban sustainability need to mobilise the five factors and expand their strategy space, in order to achieve vertical and horizontal alignment of strategic objectives and facilitate implementation that delivers transformative change.

A key question related to climate change projections is how will aquatic systems respond to changes in variables such as temperature and precipitation? This thesis uses GWLF, a simple catchment scale model to explore potential impacts of climate change on water quantity and quality. River discharge and nutrient loads were modelled for several warmer world scenarios. For one catchment in New York, USA changes in annual dissolved phosphorus loads decreased along with annual streamflow, and particulate phosphorus loads increased for a single future climate scenario. For the Galten catchment of Lake Mälaren, Sweden, the spring melt peak observed historically was reduced for six future scenarios. Peak runoff and dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen load maxima occurred in winter rather than early spring. A synthesis of model results for dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) loadings for five European catchments showed changes in the timing and magnitude of peak DIN load for several future scenarios. In northern Europe, changes were largely due to increased winter streamflow and reduced snow pack and spring melt runoff. In western Europe, DIN loads increased in winter or early spring due to increased precipitation. The biological response for a warmer future scenario was modelled for the Galten basin of Lake Mälaren using GWLF coupled to a lake phytoplankton model and a physical lake model. An increase in cyanobacteria biomass accompanied by a decline in diatom biomass resulted from changes in the timing of nutrient export from the catchment. The projected increase in lake temperature favored an overall increase in total phytoplankton biomass. Lastly, a method based on hourly measurements of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) fluorescence provides the appropriate data for dissolved organic carbon (DOC) model parameterization and may also be used for surveillance of organic matter inputs to lakes.