Darwin Plus Project DPLUS103

This 3 year Darwin Initiative funded project started in Jun 2020 and is a collaboration between St Helena Government, Connect Saint Helena (the islands utility company), the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK Met Office, Artcium and Maya Blue. The key project objective is to develop and operate a climate and water resource data collection network on St Helena with data management and reporting protocols. The 5 project outputs are:

  1. Collect long term climate and water resource data sets;
  2. Develop a geology and hydrogeology conceptual model for key catchments in the Peaks National Park;
  3. Publish an island stakeholder agreed Climate Change and Drought Warning Plan. This will support development of and island Water Resource Management Plan;
  4. Develop local skills to suport long term climate and water resource data collection and interpretation capacity on island;
  5. Develop new climate and water resource products and services. These include island stakeholder group agreed climate data and weather forecasting report templates and publication of an annual island climate report.

Outcomes will support the development of an island Water Management Plan and the water pillar of The Peaks National Park Conservation Management Plan, to ensure the protection of the islands endemic plans and animals, as well as providing a more secure water supply for the island.

Due to Covid-19, several project activities from Year 1 have been moved into Year 2 in anticipation of international travel starting later in 2021.

DPLUS103 Fieldwork 2022

The international project team finally travelled to St Helena in January 2022 after 18 months of Covid-19 travel restrictions and completed 4 weeks of fieldwork with project partners on the island. Fieldwork included a geology survey of the study area, a deep borehole survey, wellfield surveys, selection of geophysics survey locations, water level, flow and chemistry monitoring and a data archive survey.

DPLUS103 and St Helena Cloud Forest Project

During our time on St Helena the DPLUS103 project team collaborated on a series of short film’s with project partners working on the St Helena Cloud Forest Project. The films were published in May 2022 by the Cloud Forest Project and were funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office with the support of the RSPB. DPLUS103 is featured in the Water Security film, with project team members also featured in the Capacity Building and Project Partner films.