HAU Annual DVC Funded PhD Studentship: Pond creation and management: addressing fundamental knowledge gaps to inform science and practice.

About the Project

This project is one of five opportunities being advertised by Harper Adams University as part of our annual competition for a funded PhD studentship. The successful candidate will receive a studentship consisting of full tuition fee coverage, a stipend and approved research costs.

Pond creation and management: addressing fundamental knowledge gaps to inform science and practice.

Pond ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots and have been widely demonstrated to support a greater aquatic biodiversity than rivers, streams and lakes at a landscape scale, driven by the wide environmental gradients recorded across a pond network. Their importance to biodiversity becomes particularly important in agricultural regions, where ponds provide important ‘habitat islands’ for an array of aquatic and terrestrial taxa. However, agricultural intensification has accelerated the loss of pond habitats, with those that remain in agricultural landscapes often becoming terrestrialised due to neglect. As a result, significant declines in pond biodiversity across UK agricultural landscapes have been reported.

In recent years there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of agricultural ponds for biodiversity, and a need to create new ponds or restore existing ponds to reverse decades of pond infilling and neglect. The UK has been at the forefront of research that has

driven a significant advancement of our understanding of best practice for pond creation and restoration, with recent studies demonstrating that both methods can be highly effective in supporting aquatic macroinvertebrates and plants. Despite increasing literature and interest in pond creation and restoration (hereby collectively referred to as pond management), there remains a lack of fundamental understanding of many aspects of pond management. For example, pond management typically focusses on creating or restoring individual ponds, with limited consideration for the wider pond network within agricultural landscapes. In particular, there is no clear understanding of the potential spillover effects from pond restoration and the importance of late succession, shaded ponds in the landscape.

This PhD project will address several critical knowledge gaps to increase the effectiveness and biodiversity benefit of pond management across agricultural landscapes.

The overarching aim of the PhD is to advance fundamental understanding of the effects of agricultural pond management (creation and restoration) on aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity at larger landscape scales, to inform future practice and policy. This will be achieved through the following objectives:

1. At a landscape scale, quantify the aquatic biodiversity spillover effects from pond management.
2. Quantify the aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity within heavily shaded unmanaged ponds.
3. Determine the impact of pond management on terrestrial invertebrate (e.g., ground beetle) diversity at local and landscape scales.
4. Establish comprehensive pond management guidance to maximise biodiversity at a landscape scale.

Methods

Secondary macrophyte and macroinvertebrate data of agricultural ponds where pond management has been undertaken across the UK will be collated to examine the wider landscape scale contribution of pond management. Alongside this, primary data from a UK agricultural (e.g., Shropshire/Norfolk) landscape will be collected to examine the relationship between local environmental factors, connectivity, pond management and biodiversity (macrophyte and macroinvertebrate) gains across the agricultural landscape. To quantify the contribution of late succession shaded ponds to biodiversity intensive surveying of shaded ponds will be undertaken to quantify the invertebrate communities present in these ponds. Significant scrub and tree removal in the riparian zone of ponds is undertaken during pond restoration, yet we do not know the effect of this on many terrestrial fauna. Ground beetle and spider diversity will be collected before and after pond management at 10 pond sites. It is anticipated that the results of this PhD project will facilitate the establishment of comprehensive pond management guidance at a local and landscape scale, that will help maximise aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity across agricultural landscapes.

Additional skills required: Previous experience of ecological sampling within ponds habitat, and macrophyte/macroinvertebrate identification would be desirable. In addition, experience of undertaking statistical analysis in R would also be beneficial.