A blog providing ideas and resources for those teachers hoping to / preparing to teach the new GCSE Specification announced in April 2022, for potential first teaching from 2026, depending on a number of factors.
Back in 1983-4 I had a lecturer on my undergraduate degree course from a wonderful lecturer called Alan Pitkethly. He is fondly remembered by many of his students.
He would lecture without notes often, sat on the desk, taking us along on a story. One of his lectures was on the idea of the 'Commons' and the changing fortunes of salmon in Canadian rivers.
This Guardian article looks at the decline in migratory fish populations and the impact of human activity.
Another story of collapse - migratory fish populations have crashed by more than 80% since 1970 https://t.co/y3rKQZkrMp
A video from the Royal Society on the value of soil.
Soil is a miracle material providing us with food and medicine, and in one teaspoon of soil there are more micro-organisms than people on the Earth. Despite this, we treat it like dirt. Dig into the magical world of soil with our video with @BBCIdeas. #biodiversitypic.twitter.com/MzReJRA8sP
A recent piece in The Guardian from Sophie Yeo uses the phrase 'nature's ghosts' to refer to some of the lost species which have been the result of modern farming methods. It's an extract from her new book of the same name, and is tellingly part of a series of articles called 'The age of extinction'.
2024 marks the 125th birthday of Wicken Fen: a local nature reserve to me in Cambridgeshire.
Wednesday 1 May 2024 marked 125 years since the National Trust acquired its first two acres of land at Wicken Fen.
Since 1899, when it became the National Trust's first nature reserve, Wicken Fen has now expanded to over 2,000 acres. Today, it is one of Europe's most important wetlands and home to more than 9,000 species.
One of my favourite books - I have a very nice compact edition with sailing ropes on the spine and cover - is 'The Shipping News' by Annie Proulx.
A more recent book is 'Fen, Bog and Swamp', subtitled as 'A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis'.
It covers a great deal of ground, and starts with some useful definitions of the distinction between the three terms, which some people might feel can be conflated.
There are differences between these three landscape (and habitat) types, and the use that people make of them. The index also provides a wealth of links to useful websites.
This Guardian review clearly explains why this should be on the shelf of any GCSE Natural History reading list / departmental library.
"Proulx conjures up the lost landscape, teeming as it was with eels and sturgeon, beavers and water voles, ospreys and cranes and populated by an unmourned fen people who “poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummelled the land edge in storms”. But for all her sadness at the destruction of our wetlands and what she calls “the awfulness of the present”, perhaps what’s most interesting about the book is her refusal to engage in the usual left versus rightpolitical debate."
We are all complicit in this destruction of the natural world.
My copy was borrowed from the Norfolk Library Service, but I shall be purchasing a copy
Hardback, 196pp - paperback version now available.
It's the notion that everything is conscious. It connects with the notion that natural features should have rights in the same way as people have rights...
I am fortunate to live in Norfolk and can be at a salt marsh within 25 minutes of leaving my home. They are wonderful places and last month came into bloom with sea lavender and other plants cloaking them in colour.
You can find their locations using the MAGIC application which I have blogged about here separately.
Image: Flowering plants on salt marsh in Norfolk, by Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.
The Seek Appwas mentioned by Alastair Humphreys in his recent book 'Home' where he explores his local area for a year, rather than looking to go further afield.
Ordnance Survey sell customised OS maps for areas as well - centred on a particular place - I have one for our own home which I won in a competition, and also one for the geography department centred on the school.
Seek is an app which allows you to learn about the nature all around you. Available for iOS and Android.
This is worth a look for those who are starting to think about preparing for some fieldwork as well, perhaps around the GA's National Fieldwork Festival next year - it's never too early to start planning fieldwork.
Solastalgia was mentioned in the Guardian last year in a piece by Damien Gayle.
It's a word I've been familiar with for a while now, as it's a feeling I have had often in the last decade in particular as extreme weather has become more common, and local environments have shown signs of changing, and not always in a good way.
The context was the impact of coal mining on the surrounding area.
Solastalgia can be defined as: the “distress produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment”.
On the VeryWell website, there is also a suggestion that:
"When the places that matter most to us—our homes, our lands, and our communities—are disrupted, changed, or threatened, we may also sustain a less visible but no less damaging impact that is carried with us emotionally"
Here's a TED talk with Albrecht talking about the term:
It also points out quite rightly that other cultures have similar words or expressions, and that they probably predate ours given the various despoilation of the world by colonisation...
Solastalgia is not just a first-world concept. Sri Warsini, a researcher at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia is looking into instances of solastalgia that occur in developing countries such as Indonesia, following natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, finding that the loss of housing, livestock and farmland, and the ongoing danger of living in a disaster-prone area, challenge a person’s sense of place and identity and can lead to depression.
This field—the life it contains & sustains—will soon be gone. Today chirping grasshoppers, twittering goldfinches, a vole’s squeak; pretty grasses, swirling. I got to know this land; to it I let myself attach meaning & importance. But I can’t protect it, so must face up to loss. pic.twitter.com/T9wXXMdNpR
What did the political parties have to say on the matter of nature and natural history? There was little in the manifestos to link to the climate emergency or protecting biodiversity.
The new Environmental Secretary talked about the terrible state that some of our environment is in, and water companies have been fined for polluting the rivers - a starting point, assuming the fines come out of dividends for shareholders rather than being passed on to customers.
Will Labour continue with the GCSE Natural History project as part of their look at the curriculum?
There are a lot of unknowns here. Caroline Lucas, who was a big supporter, stepped down as an MP.
Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license.
Each video explores a different ecological concept.
For example, here is a video on Fens.
Notes included:
Fen are groundwater-fed, base-rich habitats.
They arise where rainwater permeates spongy calcium-rich rocks, resulting in mineral-rich water. Calcium carbonate dissolves to produce bicarbonate, which acts as a pH buffer, keeping the pH neutral. Where the water table in the ground intercepts the ground level the water comes out as springs or seeps into the fen. So fens are wet, ground-fed, base-rich habitats. The seeping water moves slowly so the soil surface has little oxygen- is anaerobic- so the vegetation rots slowly forming peat. This, in turn, means fens are low in the key nutrients of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, as these are locked up in the peat. The calcium can also bind the available phosphorus reducing the fertility further. The fen community includes specialist plants that tolerate low oxygen conditions, calcium carbonate deposits and low nutrient availability. The diversity in geology, hydrology, topology, fertility and disturbance results in a mix of open water, low habitats, dense vegetation and woodland, which provides a huge diversity of habitats and species. Cutting vegetation and grazing no doubt have kept habitats open whilst peat digging has created many habitats we now consider important. Once drained, these well irrigated, base-rich, high organic content soils are attractive for farming. Hence less than 1% of fens remain. The remaining sites are complex to manage. Maintaining the hydrology, water quality and disturbance is key.
Filmed at Thelnetham Fen, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, reserve.
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