Adele Rackley
On 17 May a team of researchers will be setting off on the Changing Oceans expedition, spending a month looking at the impact of warming and acidifying oceans on marine ecosystems.
Before heading into international waters, the RRS James Cook is visiting sites around the UK and Ireland. This week it stops at in Benbecula, in the western Isles of Scotland.
Member of Scottish Parliament Stuart Stevenson, Minister for Climate Change and the Environment, will be visiting the ship today, 15th May, together with a number of film crews. And a group of school children from Sgoil Lionacleit will get a chance to go onboard to meet the rearchers and find out what they'll be doing during the cruise.
Lophelia coral.
A highlight will be the chance to check out the remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) – basically submarines fitted with cameras and other equipment. ROVs are crucial for studying cold-water corals and deep-sea sponges. As they tour the ship the pupils will find out how samples of sea life will be transported back to land for further study.
But this won't just be a day out of school – the children are there to work. They will be part of a group which includes staff from the Dynamic Earth Centre in Edinburgh, which will be developing teaching resources for schools across Scotland.
So as well as learning about the effects of climate change on ocean ecosystems, they will be discussion who it's going to affected. They'll be contributing to a resource for running workshops about conservation issues that considers the social and economic implications of environmental change on everyone, not just people who live near the ocean.
You can hear more about the expedition in a Planet Earth Podcast which will go live on May 22nd. Plus the team will be blogging daily from the ship, and recording an audio diary too.
The expedition is part of the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme.
Posted on 15 May 2012 | Comments (0)
Marion O'Sullivan
Scientists have flown through the turbulent storms being experienced in the UK at the moment to try and understand what causes such stormy weather.
Flying through these extreme storms is really the only way to collect this information and the research team has been carrying out similar flights over the past few months under the DIAMET project, which is partly funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
DIAMET is short for DIAbatic influences on Mesoscale structures in ExTratropical storms and aims to accurately forecast the high winds and heavy rain typical in north-west Europe.
NERC, the University of Leeds and FAAM (Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements) worked together to get television crews from the BBC and Channel 4 to get on board the research aircraft, a specially converted BAe146, during a flight yesterday.
View from the FAAM aircraft.
Project leader Professor Geraint Vaughan from NERC's National Centre for Atmospheric Science was on board. He said, 'In extreme weather the condensation and evaporation of water are thought to play a crucial role in storm development. These processes transfer energy within the weather system, changing the way it develops.'
Professor Vaughn explained to the BBC's David Shukman that the research team is trying to focus on small scale processes that are not captured in current weather forecast models.
He said, 'The instruments we carry give us details of water droplets and ice particles we can't get any other way - these are very important for understanding the way a storm evolves.'
The DIAMET project is a great example of good UK research collaboration as there were several universities involved - Manchester, Leeds, Reading and East Anglia - all working together under the watchful eye of NERC's National Centre for Atmospheric Science. The Met Office is a project partner for the forecasting side of things and they, together with NERC, manage the aircraft.
If you're in the UK, the television news reports will be broadcast this evening (10 May) on the BBC1 Six o'clock News and on Channel 4 at 7 o'clock.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that Envisat, its long-serving environmental observation satellite, has finally given up the ghost.
Envisat had only recently passed its tenth year in orbit when all contact was lost with it on April 8. After trying repeatedly to re-establish the link and investigate possible causes of the problem, ESA has now declared the end of the mission.
Envisat satellite.
The satellite's done so well and proved so reliable in its decade in orbit that many scientists thought it still had several years of life in it. It wasn't to be, but given that Envisat had already gone well past double its planned lifespan, it's put in a good shift. Its observations of the Earth's land surface, atmosphere, oceans and icecaps have enabled an estimated 2500 scientific publications.
It was used to monitor everything from changes in polar ice cover to sea-surface temperatures, sea height, air pollution, carbon dioxide and methane concentrations, glacier speeds and the progress of deforestation.
Engineers have spent the last month trying to work out what had happened, consulting other sources of information like ground-based radar and other satellites. They'll keep trying, but they now concede they're unlikely to succeed.
Envisat has no immediate replacement in orbit; its demise gives extra urgency to the upcoming launch of the Sentinel satellites, its successors. These will be part of the European Global Monitoring for Environmental Security (GMES) programme, of which Envisat also formed a part.
Posted on 9 May 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
More evidence of the harm fossil-fuel emissions do to people's health comes from a paper showing they cause some 13,000 premature deaths every year.
The study in Environmental Science and Technology looked at the effects of emissions from cars, trucks, planes and power stations in 2005, the latest year for which data is currently available. The researchers discovered that car and truck exhaust did the most harm to human health, accounting for an estimated 3300 people - more than road accidents over the same period.
They also found that emissions from sources elsewhere in Europe cause another 6000 annual early deaths in the UK, while UK emissions that travel abroad cause 3100 premature deaths in other EU nations. In some areas around the edges of Britain, such as northern Scotland, almost all air pollution comes from continental Europe.
The paper's authors, Professor Steven Barrett and Dr Steve Yim of MIT, were prompted to do this study by the news that London is currently breaching EU air-quality standards, and that the British government could be fined if the situation doesn't improve. They wanted to see if the nation could reasonably be expected to solve the problem itself, or whether it was suffering the effects of others' pollution. The results show a bit of both, but confirm that pollution from elsewhere is contributing significantly to Britain's air-quality problems.
The researchers analysed UK government statistics on emissions from different sectors, and then used a wind and temperature model to understand how the weather spreads these emissions around. Finally, they used a chemical transport model to examine the interactions between these different emissions sources, and then mapped the results onto population maps to understand how many people the resulting patterns of pollution affected over the long term.
Shipping and aviation were the second-worst category behind road transport in terms of causing premature deaths, accounting for 1800 a year, while power plant emissions were close behind with 1700 victims.
Posted on 27 April 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
Over the last few year's there's been an increasing volume of fascinating research on the possible impact of nanoparticles on people and the environment. It's not a hypothetical concern; these tiny particles are already being used in commercial products ranging from sunscreen to antimicrobial socks.
Professor Richard Handy of the University of Plymouth is a leading researcher on the subject who wrote about it for Planet Earth magazine in 2007. He and his colleague David Boyle gave two talks on the subject at a recent conference at Dublin that are available on the web. The videos aren't casual viewing, but they provides a good introduction to some of the pressing concerns in this area, and to what scientists are working on.
The first video deals with concerns about how various kinds of nanoparticles could affect not just humans but also different animals. It addresses questions about the possible ways nanoparticles could harm brains and nervous systems, and about whether this is really a concern for our health.
It's too early to be sure, but Handy summarises some findings of recent research that suggests that there could be problems - for instance there's been research that shows nanoparticles can accumulate in fish and mouse brains, and that this can affect behaviour in subtle ways, particularly over long periods of exposure. Carbon nanotubes can also build up in the respiratory system, potentially leading to a risk of harm to the brain over time due to oxygen deprivation.
The second video goes into more detail on the potential impact nanoparticles on animal behaviour. Here Boyle gives the results of recent work on what these particles do to fish. The results suggest the effects could range from impairing reproduction in zebrafish to slower swimming, gill injuries and breathing difficulties in rainbow trout.
Other talks at the conference covered a wide range of topics about nanotechnology and health - everything from the risks of nanoparticles in the air in the workplace to how we should be going about testing nanoparticles for potential toxic effects.
Posted on 24 April 2012 | Comments (2)
Adele Rackley
Ever wondered what to do with the leftovers from your last knitting project? If you're as clever as Sarah Moller and Felicity Perry from NERC's National Centre for Atmospheric Science, at the University of Leeds, you could use it to make a prize-winning video.
NCAS artwork 2.
Sarah and Felicity have won the British Science Association's 'Prove It' competition, part of this year's National Science and Engineering Week. The theme was 'our world in motion' and their brilliant 30-second movie uses stop-motion animation to explain how pollution is spread around the globe because of the movement of the Earth's atmosphere.
NCAS artwork 1.
The film got lots of public votes, and was then crowned winner by a special panel of experts, including Professor Robert Winston, British-born astronaut Richard Garriott, TV scientist Dr James Logan and Dr Yan Wong, presenter of the BBC's Bang Goes the Theory.
'We are all really excited here,' said Felicity. 'The judging panel is made up of some really big names and it's a real honour that they have recognised the hard work we put into our entry.'
Incidentally, Sarah recently recorded an audio diary during fieldwork on BORTAS, a project studying the polluting effects of North American forest fires, and she's written about the project in Planet Earth magazine – see links on the right.
Posted on 20 April 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
The exceptionally warm and dry UK springs we've enjoyed over the last couple of years may have been terrible for water stocks, but to look on the bright side they've been great news for butterfly life.
The State of the UK's Butterflies 2011 report shows that some of the nation's rarest butterflies staged a recovery in 2011 after years of decline. Unusually summery weather let them emerge weeks earlier than usual and spend more time on the wing looking for food.
.jpg "Duke of Burgundy butterfly (Image: Alan Barnes/Butterfly Conservation)")
Duke of Burgundy.
Estimated populations of the endangered Duke of Burgundy butterfly rose by 65 per cent compared to 2010. Others prospered even more; numbers of the splendidly-named Grizzled Skipper rose 96 per cent, and those of the Pearl-bordered Fritillary grew 103 per cent.
The overall picture's hardly rosy, though. When it comes to butterflies, the UK hasn't met the 2010 EU target to stop the loss of biodiversity. Almost three quarters of species have declined in abundance over the last decade, and common garden species like the Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and Common Blue all suffered badly in 2011's chilly summer. 54 per cent of butterfly species are now found in fewer areas than ten year ago.
Some species that depend on particular habitats are declining particularly sharply. Scottish butterflies have done better than those south of the border, where there have been greater declines in farmland and woodland. So the woodland-dwelling White Admiral recorded a 51 per cent fall, and the threatened Black Hairstreak, which recorded a substantial increase between 2009 and 2010, declined last year.
The report is produced by the United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), jointly led by NERC's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The UKBMS has been running since 1976 and depends on data collected every week by thousands of volunteers from all over the UK.
Posted on 19 April 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
The latest hydrological summary from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) is out, and shows the drought facing much of south-eastern England isn't going away any time soon. The rain we've seen so far in April helps but isn't anywhere near enough to turn the situation round.
The report shows this was the driest March in the UK since 1953, and reservoir stocks in England and Wales fell at the steepest rate for that month since 1993. Anti-drought measures meant water stocks rose at some reservoirs, but at many others early April stocks are at their lowest levels on record.
Most of the country had less than half the average March rainfall, both worsening the drought and extending its range. Cumulative rainwater deficits are now of a magnitude that's expected on average only every 20-30 years.
The drought's most worrying consequences aren't likely to appear until later in the year; not just damage to crops and natural habitats, particularly groundwater-fed wetlands and streams, but a much higher risk of wildfire on heaths and moorlands.
'The early April rainfall was very welcome for farmers and growers but with record late-March soil moisture deficits and accelerating evaporation losses, a continuing decline in runoff rates and groundwater levels may be expected in the drough-affected regions,' Terry Marsh of CEH says. 'Model analyses indicate that even above-average rainfall is unlikely to see a return to normal river flows before the autumn, and the recovery of groundwater stocks will be heavily dependent on rainfall through the 2012/13 winter.'
Posted on 19 April 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
Fisheries managers need to do more to protect small fish like sardines, herring and anchovies from overexploitation. In many areas catches need to be halved.
And where there are gaps in our knowledge about the biology and ecology of particular species, much sterner precautionary measures are called for. Otherwise, we risk catastrophic collapses in several vital species.
These are among the conclusions of a recent report from the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a committee of 13 scientists including Professor Ian Boyd, director of the NERC Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews. They say that these so-called 'forage fish' account for more than a third of world's total catch, but they don't get the attention their ecological importance warrants.
The report tries to correct that, focusing on these small and medium-sized fish, which form large schools and live on microscopic plants and animals. They play a vital role in ocean ecosystems as they eat plankton and are in turn eaten by bigger predators. This makes them the main route by which energy gets from microscopic plants and animals up the food chain to big fish, marine mammals and seabirds. Some species also help clean the water by eating tiny food particles and helping prevent the growth of algal blooms.
It's the most comprehensive analysis of the state of research on global forage fish management yet. It finds they have been badly served by existing practices, which don't take into account how easy they are to catch, due to their dense schools or 'bait balls', and how widely their populations fluctuate even without human interference. Also neglected is just how important they are to more glamorous and profitable fish like tuna, salmon and cod.
Fishing fleets catch multitudes of forage fish, but few of them get eaten directly by humans - 90 per cent are processed into feed for fish farms, poultry and livestock, or made into dietary supplements for people. The report's authors calculate that even from a purely self-interested perspective, these species are worth more to us left in the ocean as prey for more valuable fish than they are caught and landed to be fed to other animals.
The forage fish commercial catch is worth an estimated $5.6 billion a year, but these species also contribute some $11.3 billion in supporting other marine life.
Little Fish, Big Impact - full Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force report.
Posted on 17 April 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
Scientists have produced the first continuous, near-global record of temperature at the end of the last ice age, which shows that carbon dioxide did rise ahead of rising temperatures. Their findings are published in Nature.
British Antarctic Survey scientist with a newly drilled ice core.
The work addresses the fact that Antarctic ice cores record a rise in temperature ahead of a rise in carbon dioxide, so people have questioned how the greenhouse gas could been responsible for warming.
Recognising that regional records may not tell the whole story, a research team led by Harvard University combined 80 temperature records from around the world covering the past 22,000 years, which included evidence from ice cores, pollen and microfossils.
This clearly shows that carbon dioxide did rise ahead of temperature, as would be expected if the greenhouse gas helped bring about the end of the ice age.
Posted on 11 April 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
There's an interesting feature on the Guardian online by researchers from Cardiff University about the effect of 'biassed assimilation' on people's beliefs about climate change. It's about how we filter information based on our views and beliefs about the world, so whether we 'believe' in climate change isn't to do with how well we understand the scientific evidence – in fact the more scientifically literate people are, the more they tend to apply their filters.
Climate change headlines.
So communicating climate change is more the domain of social scientists than environmental scientists.
The work echoes earlier research we reported in Planet Earth Online – the string of comments it prompted shows how emotive the subject is.
The research has just been published in the journal Climatic Change.
Posted on 3 April 2012 | Comments (4)
Adele Rackley
New research on uranium isotopes is updating the geological clock scientists use to attribute absolute dates to geological material. This means scientists can work out much more accurately the absolute date of ancient rocks and geological events, from the oldest material in the solar system to much younger rocks on Earth.
Meteor impact.
Dating accuracy is crucial for geologists to chart the history of events on our planet and in the solar system, including things like extinctions or climate change events. Getting the dates wrong could mean we get the sequence of events wrong and misinterpret cause and effect – for example whether a meteor struck before or after an extinction event.
Dr Joe Hiess from the British Geological Survey is interviewed in the Science podcast about the work, in which he and colleagues studied uranium isotopes in zircon, one of the first minerals to solidify on Earth, and one of the most resistant.
The work updates the average figure for uranium isotope ratios commonly used for dating, and suggests that the accepted ages for the oldest known rock samples are off by hundreds of thousands of years.
The full research paper is published online in Science today.
Posted on 26 March 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
Most people understand the concept of a carbon footprint, but now researchers in the US and the Netherlands have created a nitrogen footprint calculator. This uses information about your food and energy use to work out your nitrogen footprint. If you live in the US, the Netherlands or Germany you can directly compare it with the national average too.
But why would you want to know?
Nitrogen fertiliser being scattered across the land by tractor.
Nitrogen is essential for life – 78 per cent of the Earth's atmosphere comprises N2 gas. But Earth's growing population is releasing way more of it than the environment can cope with. Burning fossil fuels and food production are the main culprits. The use of artificial nitrogen fertilisers to improve crop yields releases lots of surplus nitrogen into the environment.
'If carbon and climate change seem to top the public agenda, consider that nitrogen pollution affects both, while also causing air and water pollution that reduces life expectancy and threatens biodiversity,' writes Mark Sutton in his recent Planet Earth article, Distilling Nitrogen Science.
But once you've worked out how your behaviour is influencing nitrogen pollution, what can you do about it? As Sutton explains: 'the European Nitrogen Assessment shows that only 15 per cent of the nitrogen in crop harvests goes to feed people – with the rest feeding the European livestock herd. At the same time, the average European citizen eats 70 per cent more protein than is needed for a healthy diet.'
So for the meat eaters among us, cutting back on our red meat intake could be a simple place to start.
Posted on 23 March 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
Last night Eyes in the Sky, chapter one of the second volume of Sciencebook was launched at the International Space Innovation Centre in Harwell.
Sciencebook is an online resource to inspire and excite young people about science and its applications, and the Eyes in the Sky is a collaboration between NERC and the Oxfordshire Independent and State Schools Partnership (OISSP).
The launch event at ISIC was for teachers and people who visit schools to talk about science and technology. It aimed to illustrate how they could use this resource in the classroom – local teacher Chris Flaherty covered how he uses Sciencebook in his teaching and what parts his pupils particularly like.
There was a series of talks by researchers introducing work that is currently taking place. Vicki Smith talked about her role tracking satellites and measuring Earth's gravity; Chris Davis covered space weather and the recent solar flares and coronal mass ejections; Jon Blower looked at how satellites can be used for earth observation purposes. Finally Jeremy Curtis introduced some more educational resources developed by the UK Space agency for teachers and STEM ambassadors to use.
'Eyes in the Sky' was inspired by a careers clip we produced in 2009 about Vicki Smith's work. Vicki works at the NERC Space Geodesy Facility in Herstmonceux, Sussex. Vicki is absolutely passionate about the research she does and this comes across both in person and on film - it's this enthusiasm for the area of science she works in that has driven the creation of this resource.
OISSP have scoured Planet Earth online for up-to-date research and exciting news stories and worked with teachers and local school pupils to understand exactly what they want to know about and how they want that information presented to them. Eyes in the Sky looks at satellites, how we monitor and control them and what we use them for. There is also lots of background information too - images of Newton's telescope, information about lasers, the speed of light, and an outline of some environmental issues that we can understand better by using satellite observation.
(This is a guest post from Poppy Leeder, NERC's head of public engagement.)
Posted on 22 March 2012 | Comments (1)
Adele Rackley
We're proud to announce that our fortnightly podcast has come runner up for the UK in this year's European Podcast Awards.
Thanks to everyone who voted for us.
Since 2008 the Planet Earth Podcast has been bringing listeners the inside story on everything from sea birds to synchrotrons, all recorded on location.
We send our intrepid interviewers and producers, Richard and Sue from Boffin Media, around the UK and sometimes further afield – including out to sea and up in the air (Sue still hasn't forgiven us), to find out from the researchers themselves the benefits their work brings and why they love doing it.
Over the last year we've also had some wonderful audio diaries made by researchers in weird and wonderful locations around the planet, some you can only dream of visiting – and others you're glad you don't have to.
If you've yet to discover the Planet Earth Podcast, catch up with us now – our latest podcast has Richard's favourite audio diary so far.
Full competition results will be posted soon on the European Podcast Awards site.
Posted on 16 March 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
The drought that's already settling over much of southern and eastern Britain continued to worsen over last month despite a little rain over the last few weeks, the latest update from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) shows.
CEH's February 2012 Hydrological Summary notes that water reserves are well below average in southern areas, most notably the south-east, where the Ardingly and Bewl Water reservoirs are at their lowest levels for early March since 1988.
River flows throughout much of the affected area are below those normally expected in late summer, and in a few places are even lower than they were during the extreme drought of 1975-1976.
'Rainfall in early March was very welcome but in the absence of truly exceptional rainfall, in excess of 150 per cent of average, over the next 6-8 weeks – by which time evaporation demands will be rising rapidly – no early termination of the drought can be expected,' comments CEH's Terry Marsh.
Water companies have already announced that hosepipe bans likely to come into effect across the south east over the next few weeks. Soils are the driest on record for late winter at some places, affecting farmers' prospects for a good harvest and putting watercourses and wetlands under enormous stress.
There's plenty of water elsewhere in the UK; levels in major reservoirs in Wales, Scotland, the north of England and Northern Ireland are within ten per cent of their capacity, and this is also true of the major pumped storage reservoirs in the Thames basin.
The report is produced by the National Hydrological Monitoring Programme, which CEH operates alongside the British Geological Survey.
Posted on 15 March 2012 | Comments (5)
Adele Rackley
Most people would agree that scientific evidence is important for policy-makers, but the two camps still have a long way to go before they understand each other's processes well enough to work together effectively. How can the gap be closed?
That's the question posed by a new research paper, whose authors decided the first step is to identify the most important unanswered questions about the relationship between science and policy. Participants with experience of both areas whittled 239 suggested questions down to the 40 which the paper lists.
They include questions about the effectiveness of science-based decision-making structures; the nature and legitimacy of expertise; the consequences of changes such as increasing transparency; choices among different sources of evidence; the implications of new means of characterising and representing uncertainties; and ways in which policy and political processes affect what counts as authoritative evidence.
Posted on 14 March 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
We're in the midst of the biggest solar storm in five years after an enormous solar flare yesterday - one of the biggest since the sun entered the low-activity phase of its cycle in 2007.
Wednesday's X5.4 flare followed a smaller episode on Monday. The resulting cloud of charged particles, known as a 'coronal mass ejection' (CME) is now reaching Earth.
As Adele explained earlier in the week, these particles cause geomagnetic storms that are potentially one of the biggest threats to modern society. They can knock out power grids, communications satellites and other vital infrastructure.
Multiple-wavelength view of the March 6 X5.4 solar flare, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.
NERC-funded researchers at the British Geological Survey (BGS) issued a space-weather alert yesterday, providing advance warning of the CME's arrival . They've said that the geomagnetic storms could increase in intensity for the next couple of days, and that it's possible that more flares could come from the active solar region responsible for the last couple.
It's not all bad news; the storm is set to produce spectacular polar auroras, according to the excellent Aurora forecast page of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, though it probably won't be visible throughout most of the UK - Scottish skywatchers may be able to see the 'extreme' aurora low on the horizon.
Check out NASA's story on the same topic to watch incredible footage of the X5.4 solar flare yesterday, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, which also produced the image reproduced here.
Posted on 8 March 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
The EU has just launched a new system to forecast space weather. Led by researchers at NERC's British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the €2.54m SPACECAST project will help satellite operators protect their expensive kit from radiation damage. The forecasts will be available on the project website.
SPACECAST helps protect satellites on orbit by modelling and forecasting high energy particle radiation.
Magnetic storms in space are caused by changes in the sun's activity, and with more sunspots predicted over the next two or three years this new system could save a huge amount of money and disruption.
One storm in 2003 caused more than 47 satellites to malfunction, including the total loss of one scientific satellite valued at $640m. The largest magnetic storm ever recorded – the Carrington storm of 1859 – happened long before we became so reliant on satellites for our communications. If something on that scale happened now it could cost us as much as $30bn – not to mention the disruption to our TV viewing. It may be worth pulling your board games out of mothballs just in case.
The international SPACECAST team uses satellite data, ground-based measurements of the Earth's magnetic field, and state-of-the-art computer models to generate the forecasts, which focus on the Van Allen radiation belt where most of our satellites are in orbit. This 'belt' is a doughnut-shaped ring of charged particles trapped in the Earth's magnetic field which encircles the planet high above the equator.
The BAS website has more details.
Posted on 5 March 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
There was an interesting paper last week suggesting that 'weeds' like thistles, cow parsley and buttercups are a lot more important to UK farms than you might think.
Cow parsley.
A farm's long-term productivity depends on a multitude of ecological interactions between species, from pollinating insects to birds and parasitoids. By analysing these relationships, the researchers behind the Science paper showed that seemingly minor losses can have very wide ramifications, and that many plants that are generally unloved by farmers are connected to a disproportionate number of animals throughout the food web.
The team spent two years looking at 1501 interactions between 560 different organisms on a 308-acre (125-hectare) Somerset farm, finding that the complexities of these interactions mean that simple changes like the removal of just one species could have unexpectedly profound consequences for the whole system.
Some groups of animals are more sensitive to the loss of plants for others, and what's bad for one group isn't necessarily bad for others. Worryingly, pollinators like bees and butterflies turn out to be one of the most fragile parts of the network.
The upshot is that if we're going to manage farmland so as to create biologically rich and varied landscapes, we need to make sure we understand the links between species; these can make a crucial difference in how the overall community responds to changes in conditions. It's important to look at the whole system, rather than concentrating only on a few species that are most obviously at risk.
'We already know that some wildlife groups such as pollinators and birds are declining on our farms,' explains Dr Michael Pocock, one of the paper's authors. 'Our research suggests that focusing on the sustainability of one group of animals may not bring benefits to others. However we did find that restoring particular plants such as buttercups, thistles and clover could, theoretically at least, rapidly increase biodiversity across the farm.'
The whole paper is available on the Science website. The research was funded by our sister research council BBSRC, but Michael has since moved to NERC's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology from the University of Bristol, where (among many other things) he did some fantastic work increasing public awareness of the insidious thread that the invading leaf miner moth poses to the honest British conker tree.
Michael has also recorded a Science podcast on interacting food webs and ecological restoration.
Posted on 27 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Marion O'Sullivan
There is an interesting project starting at the National Oceanography Centre. Royal Navy submarines have been routinely collecting climate change data for the past two decades and the MOD is now, for the first time, making this information available to scientists.
According to the MOD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Navy submarines patrolling the Arctic Ocean have collected a whole range of scientific readings and measurements from both the ice-covered and ice-free bodies of water.
Royal Navy submarine in the Arctic ice.
The Arctic is considered to be the planet's most sensitive region to environmental changes - so any increases in temperature or changes in salinity levels could have quite an effect. And changes here also provide a good indication of what's going on in the rest of the world.
During summer months ice-free shipping routes are beginning to open up but, until very recently, the Arctic was a more difficult place to travel through. It would have been challenging and expensive to place sensors under the ice in what is known as the 'turbulent boundary layer' of water, so it seems that the Navy has given us a service.
I asked Dr John Allen from the National Oceanography Centre what having the MOD data means for science. He said that it could be a fantastic resource as it is potentially providing a 20-year record of environmental changes.
'The Arctic plays a key role in global climate', he said. 'It's essential to develop a better understanding of what may happen if more of the water there is covered by ice for less of the year, in terms of physical, biological and other changes to the ocean itself and their knock-on effects.
'I am hoping that once we start analysing the data, which is usually highly classified and kept under wraps, we'll be able to split down the more routine information into categories that will make it more accessible to everyone', he added.
The Royal Navy has been collecting data from the boundary level just beneath the ice, and deeper, for the past 20 years so this should certainly give scientists more knowledge of how the Arctic is responding to changes in sea-ice cover, and what the future might hold as the ice reduces further.
Posted on 22 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
Computers and sophisticated scanning technology are combining to transform the discipline of palaeontology. Where researchers once had to dissect the delicate remains of long-extinct living things using hand tools like scrapers and dentist's drills, they can now look directly inside a fossil and visualise the intricate details of its internal structure.
The results are an amazing combination of the traditional techniques of fossil analysis with computer science and 3D art. NERC recently provided some funding for one of our researchers to develop a resource for public engagement based on this exciting new discipline, known as virtual palaeontology. The project is explained on this blog.
The site's the creation of Dr Imran Rahman, a postdoctoral research fellow in the University of Birmingham's School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. It's still early days, but the blog already has some stunning images and a great video introduction to the subject. Check it out for more like the picture reproduced here, showing a computer reconstruction of a fossil echinoderm called Enoploura popei from the Upper Ordovician period (around 460 million years ago), found in Ohio, USA.
'In fact, the entire structure in the image is a fossil; the white part is the body, composed of different skeletal plates, and the blue/purple part is an appendage - scientists are still arguing over whether this is a tail used to move the animal, or an arm used in feeding,' Imran explains.
'There is also a lot of debate about whether this animal is an ancient ancestor of living echinoderms such as crinoids, or whether it is something even more primitive,' he adds. 'I'm visualising the inside of the fossil using CT scanning to try and work out what it was like when it was alive and what its closest evolutionary relatives are.'
Posted on 21 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
Rising sea levels could destroy as much as 11 per cent of the Severn Estuary's intertidal areas in the next century, according to a new report. These comprise some of the UK's most important habitat types, including rare biogenic reef systems, seagrass beds, mudflats and salt marshes, which in turn support plentiful wildlife.
The Severn's unique geography effectively funnels tides into a relatively narrow area, giving it a huge tidal range – up to 14 metres at Avonmouth – which is usually considered the second-biggest in the world, second only to places in Canada's Bay of Fundy. This helps create the aforesaid plenitude of habitat types, but also gives rise to periodic interest in harnessing all that untapped energy with a tidal barrage.
These plans returned in earnest a few years ago, partly because of EU obligations to increase the percentage of electricity that comes from renewable sources. It's a dilemma, because such a project could meet a significant proportion of the UK's power needs with negligible carbon emissions, but it would also risk destroying whole swathes of irreplaceable landscape and habitat. I was born and raised on the banks of the river, so this is a subject close to my heart. For the moment the prospect of any such project getting state funding seems to be on hold – a 2010 study described it as expensive and high-risk – but there are still private groups with big plans for Severn tidal energy.
The State of the Severn Estuary report comes from the Severn Estuary Partnership and Cardiff University in collaboration with the Environment Agency (Wales), and incorporates input from academics, businesses, locals, NGOs and others with a stake in the Severn. It's the first of many, and establishes a baseline against which we can judge future changes. It's also full of fascinating facts about the area - everything from its geology and hydrology to its plant and animal life, economic importance, tourism value and the depredations of invasive species.
(Corrected on March 14 2012 - due to a printing error in the original State of the Severn Estuary report, the first sentence of this blog post originally stated that rising sea levels could destroy as much as 77 percent of the Severn Estuary's intertidal areas over the next century.)
Posted on 16 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
On-the-ball readers may have noticed Planet Earth Online has been looking a little different over the past week or so. Most obviously we've revamped the home page to let us make the most of some of the wonderful images we receive, and to showcase a wider range of content.
There are lots of less noticeable improvements too. For example, we've relaunched our blog section to let us cover more of the multitude of stories that turn up daily, and we've improved the way stories are tagged to help you find other content you might find interesting.
Like it? Let us know what you think.
Posted on 9 February 2012 | Comments (2)
Adele Rackley
How do you feel about wave power? It could be crucial if we're to achieve 15 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2015. So could wind power; yet around 70 per cent of proposed wind installations over the last decade have been hotly disputed by local residents. So are we all nimbys, or are people just as concerned about the effects of new technology that's 'out of sight'?
A project carried out last year revealed the public has a very positive view of large-scale wave-power developments, based on a survey of 352 people living near the Cornish Wave Hub – a test site for wave energy which is under construction. Within that support, the stats reveal some interesting concerns about impacts on everything from wildlife to climate change and the quality of Cornwall's famous surf.
Identifying areas of potential conflict at an early stage gives developers the chance to address public concerns and make sure lack of trust doesn't derail beneficial new technologies. But it can't be a one-off exercise; the researchers point out that public opinion could swing the other way if wave-power fails to deliver its economic potential or clear benefits to local communities, or is found to produce adverse long-term environmental effects.
The research was published last year in Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning.
Posted on 7 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
A new study provides compelling evidence that the invasive, non-native harlequin ladybird has led to a rapid decline in other ladybird species across Europe.
A frosty Harlequin (Harmonia axyridis).
The study, led by Dr Helen Roy from the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, involved widespread public participation. An international team of scientists used thousands of ladybird distribution records collected through public surveys to show that five (Belgium) and seven (Britain) out of the eight species studied have declined substantially since the arrival of the Harlequin.
The 2-spot ladybird has declined particularly dramatically - 30% in Belgium and 44% in Britain in the five years since the Harlequin arrived. Good news, though, for one common species, the large 7-spot ladybird, which is still abundant across Europe.
The Harlequin was first found in Belgium in 2001 and in Britain and Switzerland in 2004. Its arrival had been predicted to threaten native biodiversity but, until now, the effect on native species had not been quantified.
A cluster of ladybirds.
Helen Roy says this new analysis, published today in Diversity and Distributions, would not have been possible without the participation of so many members of the public. The Ladybird Survey has lots of information about ladybirds, including the Harlequin, and ways you can get involved.
Posted on 6 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
The BBC website has a great story about the discovery of gigantic amphipod crustaceans – up to 34cm long – in the Kermadec Trench north of New Zealand by an international team of scientists. I, for one, welcome our new amphipod overlords.
Toyo Fujii, Alan Jamieson (University of Aberdeen) and Ashley Rowden (NIWA) with the supergiant amphipods.
The team, from Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen and New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), took some amazing pictures of the 'supergiant' creatures, some of which you can see on the BBC story and a couple more of which are here.
We're no strangers to hot trench action here at Planet Earth Online; Dr Alan Jamieson, one of the team responsible for uncovering this bruiser of a crustacean, is an old friend of ours and has sent in updates from several of his voyages to drop landers into the Pacific Ocean's deepest trenches.
Several supergiant amphipods.
Highlights range from filming what are still the deepest living fish and the tragic loss of Alfie, the lander that caught them on camera, to accounts of animal impersonations in the field and cutting-edge research into important questions like what storm petrels smell like – not unlike a talcum-powdered baby, apparently. Alan's also managed to gain immortality by having a new type of shrimp named after him.
His blogs are an entertaining window into the triumphs and frustrations of doing top-class research while cooped up on a small boat in the middle of the ocean – you can check them out via the links to the right.
We're hoping to arrange more reports from Alan in the mid-Pacific when the team returns for their next voyage – watch this space!
Posted on 3 February 2012 | Comments (1)
Tom Marshall
NASA has released the latest incarnation of the famous 'blue marble' image of the Earth from space, taken by its recently-launched Suomi-NPP earth-observation satellite.
The image is a beautiful thing. It's available on Flickr at a variety of resolutions, right up to an eye-poppingly huge and detailed 8000x8000 version that's unlikely to be much practical use to anyone whose screen doesn't take up the best part of a wall.
The image is a composite stitched together from several swaths - paths over the Earth's surface - taken with the satellite's Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on January 4. Suomi-NPP is named after Verner E. Suomi, the late 'father of satellite meteorology'.
Posted on 1 February 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
Mary Beth Day from the University of Cambridge was interviewed on BBC's Material World about her recent work at Angkor in Cambodia. Angkor was the seat of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to 15th centuries AD – it's a vast complex of monuments, reservoirs and canals covering around 1000km2.
By analysing sediments from the largest reservoir, the West Baray, Mary Beth and colleagues found evidence for a pendulum of extreme droughts and heavy rainy seasons that might just have proved too much for the Khmer's sophisticated hydro-engineering system, and could be associated with the decline of the Angkorian kingdom.
Mary Beth's research paper is published in PNAS, Paleoenvironmental history of the West Baray, Angkor (Cambodia). Her Material World interview starts at 22:12, but if you listen from the beginning you'll also hear from earlier interviewee Howard Falcon-Lang, who recently found a 'lost' collection of fossils – including some collected by Darwin – in a cupboard at the British Geological Survey.
Posted on 31 January 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
It's not yet formalised as a geological term, but many scientists are using 'Anthropocene' to define the era we're living in now – one in which human activities rival the power of geophysical processes in shaping our planet. The Holocene, the geological epoch which began around 10,000 years ago, has provided a relatively stable environment which has supported the rapid development of human life – and we're steadily moving away from these conditions.
Our generation is the first to understand the power of its own influence on the environment and this paper argues that recognising the significance of the Anthropocene moves us on from defining environmental problems, towards finding solutions.
The authors set out various ways in which human economic and social developments are moving us away from the supportive environmental conditions of the Holocene, and asks whether the Anthropocene could see us redefine ourselves as stewards of our environment, or if it could be a one-way trip to an uncertain future.
Steffen, W et al. The Anthropocene: from global change to planetary stewardship. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2011.
Posted on 30 January 2012 | Comments (0)
Tom Marshall
The newly-published National Hydrological Monitoring Programme update recaps last year's bizarre UK weather.
It was the second warmest on record across Britain, and there were strange discrepancies in rainfall from place to place - drought in lowland England went alongside Scotland's wettest year since records began.
England now needs substantially above-average rainfall over the next two or three months to bring water reserves back up to comfortable levels.
Stocks in reservoirs rose over the month after desperately-needed rain, particularly in the southeast, but are still below average across much of the south. That's because although upland areas had a stormy month, lower-lying regions were largely untouched, with only average rainfall overall - certainly not enough to relieve the built-up drought stress afflicting many areas.
Groundwater is also a concern; it's still at unusually low levels across much of southern England and the west midlands, though some of the southern chalk aquifers made a modest recovery in December.
The National Hydrological Monitoring Programme is operated by Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and the British Geological Survey.
Posted on 27 January 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
British Antarctic Survey fieldcamp on Pine Island Glacier
Today is Pole Day, celebrating 100 years since Robert Falcon Scott and his team reached the South Pole. Though his expedition ended in tragedy, Scott's journey has inspired generations of polar scientists and explorers.
This week scientists and support staff at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will be commemorating the event, and BAS has contributed to two exhibitions which open in London this week.
Visitors to 'Scott's Last Expedition' at the Natural History Museum can see objects used by Scott and his team, including their diaries.
'With Scott to the Pole: the Terra Nova Expedition, 1910-1913', at the Royal Geographical Society, contrasts modern Antarctic exploration to that of Scott's day, with photographs of the expedition alongside pictures of modern-day science being carried out by BAS.
Message from the PM
To mark the anniversary and celebrate Britain's continuing achievements in Arctic and Antarctic research, the UK's prime minister David Cameron sends a message of support to polar scientists.
Posted on 17 January 2012 | Comments (0)
Adele Rackley
Tractor train taking equipment to Lake Ellsworth.
Lake Ellsworth advance party success
This week a team of four British engineers has successfully completed a gruelling journey to Antarctica to deliver equipment and supplies for the exploration of subglacial Lake Ellsworth later this year.
Enduring temperatures of minus 35oC, the advance party used a powerful 'tractor-train' to tow nearly 70 tonnes of equipment across Antarctica's deep snow and steep mountain passes. In December a science and engineering team will begin the project to collect water and sediments from the lake, which is buried 3km under the ice.
Ellsworth will be the first Antarctic subglacial lake to be measured and sampled directly through the design and manufacture of space-industry standard 'clean technology'; scientists have been planning the project for more than 15 years.
Chilly addiction
Rothera from North Bay.
Projects like Ellsworth can sound like pure science fiction, but drama aside, what is it really like to spend time in the icy wastes? On Radio 4's Saturday Live last weekend, BAS communications manager Athena Dinar owned up to her Antarctic addiction, and painted a vivid picture of the fascination the white continent holds for her and its many other temporary inhabitants. Athena's feature runs from 17:40.
Posted on 17 January 2012 | Comments (0)
