#297: Poo

I've previously blogged about the Mammal Society's website. 

This has a section on the identification of animal poo.

Here is a link to the resource. 

This is something which is perhaps an area to use with young people.

We also mentioned poo in quite a few of our missions in the Mission:Explore books - particularly our National Parks book.

This included some creative uses of poo.

Please note that it’s important NOT to touch any poo directly as it can be harmful. In order to break it apart and get a better look, it’s best to use a tool, such as a small stick.

#296: Thought for the Day

"We know nothing. We look daily at the mystery of plain stuff. We stand where any upright food-gatherer has stood, on the edge of our own unconscious"

William Golding (1965), reviewing Gavin Maxwell's 'Ring of Bright Water'

#295: Asian hornet (Vespa velutina)

Asian hornets (Vespa velutina) are being spotted in the UK. 

We need to keep these out to protect our native bees.

This webpage on the Natural England website explains how to report a sighting.

You can report a non-native species on apps and via this website as well, which includes links to posters and other resources to help identify a whol range of native species.

It is important to report any suspected sightings of this species as soon as possible. Vigilance is particularly required in southern parts of England and Wales and around major ports. Asian hornet is active mainly between April and November (peak August/September) and is inactive over the winter.

Recruting all those who participate in the GCSE Natural History as an army of citizen scientists and hornet spotters would be a good thing to have achieved.

#294: Natural History Podcasts #9 - 'Counting the Earth'

The podcast series 'Counting the Earth' is a great series of podcasts.

It was trailed here...

🪱Delve into the vital statistics of earthworms, as we uncover the unsung heroes of our soil - episode 3 of #CountingTheEarth is coming soon!

Check your #podcast feeds next week...🎧

Not subscribed yet? Find out more: https://t.co/Gafd94A3SI @boffin_media @ScienceNelson pic.twitter.com/7LCdSFcD6j

— UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (@UK_CEH) February 22, 2024

& the first episodes are now up for you to listen to...

 

#293: Our diet and Climate Change

Our food has a dramatic impact on natural history at both local and national scales... and global too...

Elon Musk tweets, "Farming has no material effect on climate change."

This is wrong. If you look at the data, you find that a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are due to food production, the majority of these from farming.https://t.co/D7X9tu5Pyg

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) February 12, 2024

How high our emissions from food production are depends primarily on what we eat.

If you would like to see the data on this, you can find it
— here: https://t.co/cdxtINqHzI
— and much more here: https://t.co/nxmzE3lAVK pic.twitter.com/yoXgrtyFUR

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) February 12, 2024

What we choose to eat has an impact because of the water and energy required to produce certain items, and the amount of land that is put aside for its production.

Food should be more of a priority than it is for the government - as should water... we can get by without most things, but not food and water. 

The original draft specification for the GCSE Natural History mentioned the impact of our diet on the countryside. Choices such as organic food, vegetarian diets and alternatives to milk from cows all have an impact on the landscape...

Image: Jersey Royals, Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

#292: 'Wild Service'

I bought this book today, as the reviews suggest it is going to be particular useful for thinking around the themes in the GCSE Natural History. It was purchased from the most excellent Kett's Books in Wymondham.

Here's Patrick Barkham talking about the book in a piece in 'The Guardian'.

I shall post a fuller review and add it to the GCSE Natural History library when I've had the chance to look closer... what other books have you bought recently to upskill yourself in Natural History-related themes?

A radical British politics rooted in nature is spreading – and the establishment doesn’t like it | John Harris https://t.co/DHUDHpD7bM

— Guardian Environment (@guardianeco) April 21, 2024

#291: Natural History Podcasts #8 - Philippa Forester talks to Mary Colwell

Click the link here to go to the Apple Podcasts page.

Philippa Forester talks to Mary Colwell, who led the GCSE Natural History campaign.

How many of you would have taken a GCSE/O level in Natural History given the chance, when you were at school?
We chat to Mary Colwell on this week’s podcast who has successfully campaigned for a new GCSE, being introduced in schools 🌎🙏
Apple podcasts https://t.co/7nfD0GxX5M

— Philippa Forrester (@philippaforrest) March 27, 2024

#290: British Ecological Society

The British Ecological Society is one of the organisations which students may be introduced to.

The BES has an educational section of its website of course called 'Learning and Resources'.

This includes a range of useful materials.

We will add this to our list of relevant organisations that teachers may engage with.

Ecology will be a big part of the final specification.

#289: National Education Nature Park - new resources

There are some new resources available on the National Education Nature Park website.

Over 1000 schools are now signed up to be part of the project, which includes a range of activities and resources for those who are signed up.

Exciting news! 🌟 1000 sites are on the #EducationNaturePark map! Each glowing dot represents a school, nursery, or college championing wildlife, connecting to nature and learning new skills. Want to join them? Get involved 👇 https://t.co/DqOYifM4OC

— NHM Learning (@NHM_Learn) April 18, 2024

Make sure you have added your school grounds to the campaign and signed up for the various updates.

British Science Week 2024 kicks off today and we're super excited to have a National #EducationNaturePark resource in the free activity packs! Download to join in 👇https://t.co/oTK0WOR6hr#BSW24

— NHM Learning (@NHM_Learn) March 8, 2024

#288: RSPB: Nature can't wait

This is a list of logos of organisations that are behind the RSPB's campaign that Nature Can't Wait for us to act on climate change.

They are similar to the organisations that were originally supporters of the GCSE Natural History.

One of the more prominent organisations is the RSPB. 

They have a huge membership and own a number of reserves within and beyond the UK.

I've been a member of the RSPB for well over thirty years.

'Nature can't Wait' is a campaign hub on the main RSPB page.

#287: Cherry Tree Blossom

Phenology is the study of the changing dates when natural events happen.

There's Japanese data on cherry tree blossoming stretching back to 812. Some commitment. pic.twitter.com/YdQx4HepYf

— Stefan Schubert (@StefanFSchubert) March 6, 2024

This year's blossom was a warning. 

This according to National Geographic writer Ayurella Horn-Muller

latest, written on assignment for @NatGeo:

A 1,200-year record of cherry blossoms shows our current climate is historically unprecedented. “We haven't experienced anything like this...it's a new world that we are heading into.”https://t.co/Z8Fz6u1PCO

— Ayurella Horn-Muller (@ayurellahm) March 26, 2024

Image: Blossom, Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license 

#286: Invertebrates: Earthworms

Lumbricus terrestris, the common earthworm

Patrick Barkham explains the importance of earthworms to our food supply and soil health. 

Part of a feature in this weekend's Guardian newspaper. There's a range of stories every Saturday which always connect with the likely contents of the specification when it (eventually) appears.

Update

Earthworms won the vote for the best invertebrate...

#285: Patrick Geddes and nature connectedness

Another person who will perhaps be introduced to students of the GCSE Natural History specification is Patrick Geddes, or at the very least some of his work may influence some of the contents of the final specification after consultation. 

Here's a slide from a presentation I was present at, at the Linnean Society. It described his influence on others and has a nice quote of his as well.

According to this piece in the GA journal 'The Geographical Teacher' (1921), Patrick Geddes was a GA Vice President.

“Editorial.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 11, no. 2, 1921, pp. 3–5. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40555898. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.

I have previously written about Patrick Geddes and his influence on the early work of the GA, and his ideas on nature connectedness. 

This is likely to be an important theme of the GCSE Natural History I understand from the early stages of its development. The disconnection of young people from nature was one of the drivers for the new specification project.

Many people will not be familiar with the work of Geddes. This page provides a useful summary of some of his thinking and writing.

He had some influential views on the environment and humanity's place within it.

Geddes was also involved in the Le Play Society, which was also an early part of the GA's engagement with teachers and networking.

An online archive is now available.

Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a pioneer of the environmental movement. Credited as the father of town-planning, he used biological concepts to develop a holistic view of people and where they live, seeing both as organic and how the balance and imbalance between them affected health and well-being.

#284: OVERT - the open vertebrate project

Developed by Florida Museum.

Five years after its start, the openVertebrate project has made thousands of 3D natural history specimens available for free online. https://t.co/88iy98Yj7W @NewsfromScience

— Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) April 6, 2024

#283: Snufkin - games for nature

 Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley is a game for Nintendo Switch. The trailer is here:

This Geography:Directions blog explores the rise in games which are about restoring nature. 

It was originally posted on The Conversation - a very useful resource to keep an eye on.

Our challenging relationships with nature are becoming more mainstream in social and cultural arenas through video games. There’s a lot of promise in using video games to illuminate and illustrate the complex challenges of our climate and ecological change.

What other games can you think of that work in this way?

Updated - 16th April

The title character of 'Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley' scares cops and destroys park signs in the latest game adaptation of Tove Jansson’s creation. https://t.co/r8hBMitST2

— WIRED Culture (@WIREDCulture) April 16, 2024

#282: Soilscapes

There are 27 soilscapes which have been identified as part of the work of the UK Soil Observatory. 

This sort of classification is important for students to consider. For many, the word soil means little other than dirt, and there may even be the assumption that it is of little value - it's just dirt... but of course our lives rely on a fragile layer of topsoil, and the world's soils are being degraded.

 

Source:

Cranfield University 2023. The Soils Guide. Available: www.landis.org.uk. Cranfield University, UK. Last accessed 02/08/2023

🤎 We rely on soils for9⃣5⃣% of the food we consume.
They are the life support for our food security.
Here are 6⃣ actions farmers can take to prevent ad reverse soil nutrient imbalance👇#Soils4Nutrition pic.twitter.com/H3DgBb4JZx

— UN Biodiversity (@UNBiodiversity) April 8, 2024

#281: Natural History Reading List #17: 'Irreplaceable'

'Irreplaceable' is a book by Julian Hoffman.

It is subtitled 'The Fight to Save our Wild Places' and focusses on a number of locations which are threatened with being lost.

 It has a useful section on ancient woodlands which outlines very clearly what that term means, and the distinction between that and the wildwood.

Each section is relevant to particular types of ecosystems, and the book explores the nature of the threats they face, and the efforts being made to protect them. By the time I read through it, there were lots of post it notes for potentially useful sections.

A very good book as an introduction to the idea of wilderness, and the relationship between humans and nature.

He touches on the plastic threat when he visits the beach in the chapter entitled 'A world within water'.

He describes the discovery of the plastic nurdles which make up a part of any handful of beach sand in most of the world.

"For all its unquestionable usefulness for the human race, a convenience that's turned out to be irressistible to us, plastic places an unearthly burden on the rest of the living world."

My copy was loaned from Norwich Library service.

#280: Graveyards - for the living as well as the dead?

I've previously blogged about the large area of land that is made up of roadside verges and is called 'soft estate'.

Another area of land which is sizeable, but broken up into separate pieces is made up of the land occupied by churchyards, graveyards and cemeteries. There are also crematoria with gardens of remembrance.

The Bishop of Norwich recently called for more churchyards to join the areas which are to be rewilded.

There are already projects targeting churchyards in this way.

The Wildlife Trust has a Living Churchyards project for example.

Some sensitivity is needed about fieldwork in such places, and there is also a small risk linked to the presence of unsafe gravestones. 

They can be a useful indicator of age of gravestones linked to the size of the growth in certain lichens, which can also indicate the degree of weathering.

A UCL Weathering resource on gravestones.

The form of weathering observed on gravestones is a product of four interconnected factors and how they vary both spatially and temporally (i.e., in space and time).

The four factors are:

• Material the gravestone is made from 
• Environment the gravestone is in 
• Process by which the gravestone is weathered 
• Form of the weathering on the gravestone

Image: Snettisham Churchyard, Norfolk - by Alan Parkinson, CC licensed

#279: Tree.fm

Want to hear the sounds of a random forest? Check out Tree.fm.

#278: Yellowstone Trophic Cascade

This is one of the videos that has been shown many times as an example of rewilding and the impact on the wider ecosystem. I remember seeing it being shown at the RGS many years ago.

Yellowstone video on wolves.

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the United States after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable "trophic cascade" occurred. What is a trophic cascade and how exactly do wolves change rivers? George Monbiot explains.

 

#277: Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)

This has been featured on BBC's Countryfile a few times.

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) relates to new housing developments which are of a particular size.

The policy is now live, and Natural England and DEFRA have produced a tool to help developers work out their obligations.

This Guardian article outlines more about the scheme.

This is claimed to help with Nature Recovery.

From the GOV.UK website.

BNG is a way of creating and improving natural habitats. BNG makes sure development has a measurably positive impact (‘net gain’) on biodiversity, compared to what was there before development.

In England, BNG is becoming mandatory under Schedule 7A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as inserted by Schedule 14 of the Environment Act 2021).

Developers must deliver a BNG of 10%. This means a development will result in more or better quality natural habitat than there was before development (allegedly)

Image: Housing being built on the edge of Cambridge - image shared under CC license by Alan Parkinson

#276: James Bradley on our collective futures

 

A powerful piece by James Bradley.

The storm that is upon us will leave nobody untouched. Surviving it demands we build a world that treats everybody — human and non-human — as worthy of life and possibility.

"The anthropologist and philosopher Deborah Bird Rose, who died in 2018, wrote of the impossibility of bridging the gap between our limited ability to affect what is taking place around ourselves and the cost of facing it.

Yet she also recognised that to turn our backs to it was also to turn our backs on ourselves. “To face others is to become a witness, and to experience our incapacity in this position.” It is also an ethical imperative, a way to “remain true to the lives within which ours are entangled, whether or not we can effect great change”."

#275: Sharon Witt and Helen Clarke

I've been inspired by so many people over the years, and particularly by the conference presentations of Sharon Witt and Helen Clarke at GA Conferences, GTE and Charney Manor over the years. 

They recently presented on how we need to give attention to place, and in particular to our interactions with the 'more than human' world.

Here's some ideas for paying attention when out on a field walk, which might be of interest when it comes to planning some walks around the schoool site and immediate area to scope out its potential for a site for fieldwork, or to take part in the various activities suggested by the National Education Nature Park.

I'm reminded of this diagram, which has been shared lots of times over the years. It was taken from a newspaper article, and linked to my local area of Rotherham where I grew up - hence my additional interest in the story. It shows how the area that young people are free to wander in has shrunk over the years. I referenced this in my GA Presidential lecture as well.

Check out the work of Attention 2 Place here.

#274: Placename Mapper - looking for natural influences

A nice mapping project shared by R T Wilson.

Thanks to Alasdair Rae for the tipoff.

I created a cool web app using @OrdnanceSurvey data - British Placename Mapper (https://t.co/lEk7T08Ob9). It allows you to search for place names that match various criteria (starts with 'great', ends with 'burgh' etc) and plot them on an interactive map. #gis #geospatial

— Robin Wilson (@sciremotesense) April 2, 2024

This could be useful to investigate the influence of natural landscapes on place names.

There are also some historical suffixes relating to the origins of settlements e.g. I was born in Wickersley - ley means a clearing in a woodland or forest. I am reminded of this when I visit Iceland, as place names are very descriptive and include elements which tell you about the origins of the settlement.

You can search for particular words at the beginning / end etc. of place names and add several layers in different colours (which you choose) to show comparisons.

Here's a map showing place names with WOOD in their name, for example. What can you come up with?

Why not buy them a coffee for their hard work! 

#273: 'Kill them all'

A recent suggestion from a Conservative MP Richard Drax didn't really help any effort to be seen as a party which cares about natural history.

He has suggested that we shouldn't just stop with culling badgers... but wipe out as many wild animals as we can.

I am REALLY interested to see what sort of political changes have been made to the original documents and consultation on what should be taught in the new specification. It's been sitting on a desk at the DfE for over a year... let's get on with it now shall we?

#272: Mammal Mapper

The Mammal Mapper website is produced by the Mammal Society.

There are some useful videos to go alongside the app.

This would make a good opportunity to get involved in citizen science.

#271: Tipping points

We are starting to see increasing evidence of what I always taught about when I first started teaching in the 1980s... tipping points being approached or reached where we change some aspect of a physical system into a new state which is irreversible.

This will have a dramatic impact on natural systems, and all life, as our food supply will also be impacted.

The one I always used to talk about was with respect to permafrost, which I used to teach about in the old Cambridge 'A' level, before all the hard physical stuff was taken out...

Visit the Global Tipping Points website to find out more about some of the tipping points.

And here's one on a recent full moon's name and why it may become irrelevant...

Look to the sky tonight for March's full moon 🌕 🍃

Also known as the Worm Moon, it marks the shift in seasons as the soil warms, earthworms re-emerge, and nature awakens.

It has many other names including: Lenten, Plough, Crow, & Paschal Moon.

🕖 Moonrise: 19:00 pic.twitter.com/5yivTqVtQ7

— RSPB (@Natures_Voice) March 25, 2024

The soil is warming earlier... and worms are confused... 

#270: Attitudes to Nature

Take a look at this report.

It is from Oxfordshire County Council, and they have a website where people can report problems in their local community.

It's a shame that this could be flagged as a problem. 

I presume one possibility is that the tree will be removed...