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In the UK, water supplies are under pressure from climate, population and lifestyle change. Showering is the largest component of domestic water consumption. Young adults are high water-users at a transitional life-stage, when practices are dynamic, and habits shaped. This paper presents the methodology, early findings and reflections on challenges of working with different data types and scales, to explore real-world water-saving through a mixed-methods approach, focusing on showering patterns of first year university students in campus accommodation at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Combining household meter, logged water-fixture micro-component, personal-use questionnaire, user diary and stakeholder focus group data with the Scottish Government Individual-Social-Material model, typical showering demand reduction interventions were evaluated and insights into alternative interventions were generated. Results indicate Estates' routine equipment maintenance and database management affect data quality and consistency. Despite these issues a profile of daily student water use was derived (equivalent to 114 litres per person per day) but with high variability between different households (from 83 to 151 litres per person per day). Average shower durations (self-reported 10–12 minutes) were higher than reported UK norms, although frequency was similar to the UK daily shower norm. Average measured shower volumes (51 litres in one house) were not excessive, indicating shower fixtures provided a contribution to water saving.

Resilience as a concept and resilience assessment as a practice are being explored across a range of social, ecological and technical systems. In this paper, we propose a new method and visualisation approach for interrogating the communication of resilience within organisational networks, using participatory social network analysis and message passing. Through an examination of the UK water sector organisational network, represented by multiple co-produced network graphs, we identify organisations having a key role in the communication of resilience regulatory and evidence messages, as well as highlighting the potential role of complexity tools in strategy formulation. Animations are presented showing the dynamics of resilience communication, which is discussed. Reflections on the use of participatory social network analysis are explored, as the method opens new doors to potentially examine how network changes could alter communication. Key insights highlight that perceived responsibilities for resilience in the UK water sector rest with a small core of organisations; water customers play a limited role in the two-way communication of resilience and water sector organisations do not communicate widely on resilience with other sectors (such as energy). Additionally, who an organisations' neighbours are and what catalyses a message to be passed are important in determining how quickly messages spread. Results lead to a recommendation that high level governmental and policy organisations should engage to a greater extent with new resilience knowledge and consider the use of complexity tools in policy making. Policy in relation to resilience is not keeping pace with such knowledge, limiting the communication and learning of organisations who ardently follow policy and regulation. For inter-organisational cooperation to make a difference to water governance, such organisations need to be encouraged to communicate and embed the latest approaches in relation to resilience and complexity thinking and practice.

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. ; Resilience as a concept and resilience assessment as a practice are being explored across a range of social, ecological and technical systems. In this paper, we propose a new method and visualisation approach for interrogating the communication of resilience within organisational networks, using participatory social network analysis and message passing. Through an examination of the UK water sector organisational network, represented by multiple co-produced network graphs, we identify organisations having a key role in the communication of resilience regulatory and evidence messages, as well as highlighting the potential role of complexity tools in strategy formulation. Animations are presented showing the dynamics of resilience communication, which is discussed. Reflections on the use of participatory social network analysis are explored, as the method opens new doors to potentially examine how network changes could alter communication. Key insights highlight that perceived responsibilities for resilience in the UK water sector rest with a small core of organisations; water customers play a limited role in the two-way communication of resilience and water sector organisations do not communicate widely on resilience with other sectors (such as energy). Additionally, who an organisations' neighbours are and what catalyses a message to be passed are important in determining how quickly messages spread. Results lead to a recommendation that high level governmental and policy organisations should engage to a greater extent with new resilience knowledge and consider the use of complexity tools in policy making. Policy in relation to resilience is not keeping pace with such knowledge, limiting the communication and learning of organisations who ardently follow policy and regulation. For inter-organisational cooperation to make a difference to water governance, such organisations need to be encouraged to communicate and embed the latest approaches in relation to resilience and complexity thinking and practice. ; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

The swamp antechinus (Antechinus minimus maritimus) is a small insectivorous marsupial inhabiting closed heath and tussock grassland in south-eastern Australia. The species is considered 'Near Threatened' on the Australian mainland. Populations persist on coastal islands off Wilsons Promontory, but their current status is unknown. This study investigated the density, diet and reproduction of the swamp antechinus on Kanowna Island. Data were collected by live trapping in different vegetation types during four trips between August 2003 and January 2004. Higher animal densities (47–129 ha–1) were found for Kanowna Island than for previously studied mainland populations (1–18 ha–1). Examination of scats showed that this species eats a wide variety of prey types, with moth larvae a major dietary component, particularly during the breeding season. Births were estimated to have occurred between 28 June and 8 August, which is a longer period than reported for other populations of this species. Factors including reduced predation, restricted dispersal and increased food availability may be responsible for supporting this dense population.

This is the final version of the article. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record. ; Global threats such as climate change, population growth, and rapid urbanization pose a huge future challenge to water management, and, to ensure the ongoing reliability, resilience and sustainability of service provision, a paradigm shift is required. This paper presents an overarching framework that supports the development of strategies for reliable provision of services while explicitly addressing the need for greater resilience to emerging threats, leading to more sustainable solutions. The framework logically relates global threats, the water system (in its broadest sense), impacts on system performance, and social, economic, and environmental consequences. It identifies multiple opportunities for intervention, illustrating how mitigation, adaptation, coping, and learning each address different elements of the framework. This provides greater clarity to decision makers and will enable better informed choices to be made. The framework facilitates four types of analysis and evaluation to support the development of reliable, resilient, and sustainable solutions: "top-down," "bottom-up," "middle based," and "circular" and provides a clear, visual representation of how/when each may be used. In particular, the potential benefits of a middle-based analysis, which focuses on system failure modes and their impacts and enables the effects of unknown threats to be accounted for, are highlighted. The disparate themes of reliability, resilience and sustainability are also logically integrated and their relationships explored in terms of properties and performance. Although these latter two terms are often conflated in resilience and sustainability metrics, the argument is made in this work that the performance of a reliable, resilient, or sustainable system must be distinguished from the properties that enable this performance to be achieved. ; This work forms part of a 5-year fellowship for the first author funded by the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K006924/1) and supported by the Welsh Government, the Environment Agency, the Consumer Council for Water, the Environmental Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Network, the Water Industry Forum, Severn Trent Water, Northumbrian Water, Arup, Black & Veatch, Arcadis, and ACO Technologies.

Context Australian islands have provided a major conservation refuge for many native mammals; however, conversely, island populations may also be highly susceptible to the introduction of novel threats. Nearby islands subject to different arrays of threats or different timing of arrival of those threats may provide a natural experiment, offering particular insight into the relative impacts of different threats to Australian mammals more generally. Aims The present study sought to document the native mammal fauna occurring on the main islands of the Sir Edward Pellew group, Northern Territory, and the changes in that fauna over a ~50-year period, and to seek to identify those factors that have contributed to such change. Methods In different combinations, the five main islands (and three smaller islands) were subject to standard wildlife survey methods in 1966–67, 1988, 2003, 2004–05, and 2009–10. Sampling procedures were not identical in all periods; however, a measure of abundance (trap success rate) could be calculated for all sampling. This conventional survey approach was complemented by documentation of ethno-biological knowledge. Key results For many species, these islands held populations of biogeographic or conservation significance. However, there has been a major loss or decline of mammal species from most islands. Extirpation is difficult to prove; however, we consider it most likely that the important regional populations of brush-tailed rabbit-rat (Conilurus penicillatus), northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus), northern brush-tailed phascogale (Phascogale pirata), common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) and canefield rat (Rattus sordidus) have been lost from these islands, and that northern brown bandicoot (Isoodon macrourus), western chestnut mouse (Pseudomys nanus), pale field-rat (Rattus tunneyi) and long-haired rat (Rattus villosissimus) have been lost from most of the islands on which they formerly occurred. Some species–island combinations are known only from the ethno-biological record, and the loss of these populations probably mostly occurred in the period 30–50 years ago. Many other declines and losses occurred in the period between the second (1988) and third (2003) survey. The loss of the northern quoll from Vanderlin Island occurred in 2008. No single factor unambiguously accounts for the declines, although the introduction of cats (Felis catus) provides the best fit to the pattern of decline. A notable exception is the extirpation of northern quoll on Vanderlin Island, which is closely linked to the colonisation of that island by cane toads (Rhinella marina). Conclusions The Sir Edward Pellew group of islands have lost much of their formerly high conservation significance for native mammals over the past 50 years, mostly because of introductions of cats, and to a lesser extent, natural colonisation of the islands by cane toads. Implications The present study has provided some insight into the relative impacts of a range of factors that have been considered as possibly implicated in the decline of native mammals on the northern Australian mainland, with most support being offered here for a primary role for predation by feral cats. The study has also demonstrated the need for better quarantining of islands with significant conservation values. The comprehensive natural colonisation of these islands by cane toads offers a further lesson, of most importance to managers of islands in north-western Australia currently just beyond the range of toads.

Green infrastructure (GI) has been identified as a promising approach to help cities adapt to climate change through the provision of multiple ecosystem services. However, GI contributions to urban resilience will not be realized until it is more fully mainstreamed in the built environment and design professions. Here, we interrogate five key challenges for the effective implementation of GI: (1) design standards; (2) regulatory pathways; (3) socio-economic considerations; (4) financeability; and (5) innovation. Methods include a literature review, case studies, and interviews with resilience managers. We propose a people-centred and context-dependent approach to advance effective implementation of GI in urban planning. We highlight two underlying currents that run across all of the challenges – (1) the role of political will as a pre-condition for tackling all challenges holistically; and (2) the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving public support, harnessing funding, and maintaining and monitoring GI in the long term