the presence of a complex network of sediment-filled fractures within the ice close to the margin of Múlajökull. Initial results suggest that they represent hydrofractures formed as pressurised meltwater tried to escape from beneath the glacier. UpGRO: unlocking potential of groundwater for the poor More than a third of handpumps in rural Africa do not work. We were awarded a £2 m grant by NERC in 2015 to lead an interdisciplinary consortium to help understand why this is the case. Researchers from Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia, UK and Australia are working with governments and WaterAid to properly diagnose the problem in the three African countries. In the first year of this four-year project we have finished surveys in Ethiopia and are well underway in Uganda. What we are finding so far is that the issue is not simply a badly built pump or a change in climate, but is much more complicated and relates to a wider set of interrelated issues. These include how water points are sited making best use of local hydrogeological conditions, how communities interact with technology, and ultimately how rural water supplies are commissioned. Our next step is to choose 50 poorly functioning water points in each country and take them apart. We will also talk to the communities to find out how things could be improved. This is one of many African groundwater projects we are involved with, from developing an online atlas of African groundwater to developing and testing new sensor technology for measuring faecal contamination. International ocean drilling platform — Atlantis Massif In 2016, the BGS-led ECORD Science Operator (ESO) consortium completed the sixth mission-specific platform expedition for the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), involving the first use in IODP of remotely controlled robotic sea-floor drills. The offshore phase of the expedition took place onboard the UK research vessel RRS James Cook, provided by the NERC as an in-kind contribution, and spent 27 days at nine sites on the Atlantis Massif, near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Over 57 m of high-quality cores were recovered from actively serpentinising lower-crustal and shallow-mantle sequences from the detachment fault zone of the Atlantis Massif. During the expedition, and for the first time, two borehole plug systems were successfully installed by a sea-floor drill. These will allow future sampling of formation fluids by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), which will facilitate better understanding of the geochemical and microbiological processes in these actively serpentinising systems. Development of national disaster risk profiles for Sub-Saharan Africa There are considerable knowledge gaps in the history of volcanic activity in East Africa, which create significant uncertainties for understanding volcanic hazards. About 88 volcanoes are known to have erupted sometime within the last 10 000 years in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, and these are considered capable of erupting again. Over 2.8 million Annual science review 25 people live within 10 km of one of these volcanoes, and impacts may be far-reaching both during and after an eruption. We have been working with Bristol and Addis Ababa universities under the auspices of the Global Volcano Model Network to produce an assessment of volcanic threat in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Our research considered a subset of volcanoes and focused on volcanic ash fall as the volcanic hazard that has potential to affect the most people over the largest areas. The NERC-funded RiftVolc project will generate new insights on the eruptive histories of volcanoes in the main Ethiopian Rift. The research is characterising the nature and timing of past magmatic and volcanic activity, assessing present-day magmatism and combining these data to evaluate future threat in Ethiopia. Such projects are invaluable in generating new data and knowledge to enable improved hazards assessments. Fieldwork at Butajira Volcanic Field, Ethiopia.
Annual Science Review 2015-2016
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