#418: The Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian Explosion is the name given to an important period in the development of life on Earth. 

Around 530 million years ago, a wide variety of animals burst onto the evolutionary scene in an event known as the Cambrian explosion. 

In perhaps as few as 10 million years, marine animals evolved most of the basic body forms that we observe in modern groups. This added massively to the biodiversity of the world.

The Oxford Museum of Natural History has a display on this period.

There is some debate of course about whether it actually happened as many think. Nobody was around to see it of course, and the fossil record is sometimes open to debate.

One of the most important sites is the Burgess Shale, where much of this activity can be traced. This was mentioned in books by Richard Fortey.

Image copyright: Brittanica

Publisher
Encyclopædia Britannica
URL
https://www.britannica.com/science/Cambrian-explosion#/media/1/90620/124131
Access Date
October 21, 2024

#417: Natural History Reading List #21: Cairn

The latest book by Kathleen Jamie explores the relationship between man and nature as we age. She is the same age as me pretty much, and has reflected on her life and the breakdown in the natural world that she has observed in that time.

Cairn is the new book by the poet and author Kathleen Jamie. In 2021, she was appointed as Scotland's national poet or Makar.

Cairn is a book where she reflects on turning 60 and the changes that have happened to nature in her life, and the challenges to come from the climate breakdown. It is a book made of fragments and stories - each one comprising a stone of the cairn which is built during a life, and which is hopefully 

From the publisher:

Jamie’s intent noticing of the natural world is suffused with a clear-eyed awareness of all we endanger. She considers the future her children face, while recalling her own childhood, and notes the lost innocence in the way we respond to the dramas of nature. With meticulous care, she marks the point she has reached in life and within the cascading crises of our times.

For me, the most wonderful piece of writing in the book comes towards the end in a short piece called 'Erratic'. This is well worth reading and reflecting on.

My copy was published by Sort of Books in 2024

Paperback, 144pp

ISBN: 978-1914502002

#416: Norfolk Wildlife Trust - case study

I think a useful focus for some of the work that goes on once the new course is taught will involve the work of the many Wildlife Trusts that there are in the UK.

These are often based on activity within counties. It may be worth checking whether you have a local Wildlife Trust.

I have put together a list of the Wildife Trusts - and a link through to a website where you can visit them easily. Along with that, I've put together a case study of my local Wildlife Trust.

I have just received my new membership card and parking permit for my local wildlife trust for 2024-5. I thought it might be worth adding a case study.

Case Study: Norfolk Wildlife Trust

I've got quite a few pictures of Norfolk Wildlife Trust locations as well, which will be in the Flickr folder of images I'm creating - all CC licensed for teachers who will perhaps need to create their own resources as they may not have the budget for class sets of any official textbook that emerges - and there is likely to be at least one of course.

The Norfolk Wildlife Trust's website is here.

The trust was actually the first local wildlife trust to be founded.

The original land was at Cley next the Sea in North Norfolk. This is the NWT Reserve I have visited the most over the years that I have lived in the county.

It had previously been used for wildfowling: the shooting of wild fowl such as geese.

Duck decoys can still be seen marked on local maps. Where is your nearest duck decoy?

Like all Trusts, they publish an annual Impact Report - these would make useful resources to interrogate to see the sort of work that is carried out to develop and protect habitats.

The most recent Imapct Report for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust is here.

Their 2023 strategy is called Wilder Norfolk for All.

#415: River pollution

 A Ben Jennings cartoon from just before Christmas.

#414: The National Trust's Weather and Wildlife Review

This has been getting a lot of coverage today in the news: the charity's annual review.

Each year the Weather and Wildlife Review looks back on how weather has impacted wildlife through the seasons at the places the National Trust looks after.

One in six species in the UK are currently threatened with extinction and we're seeing the impact that the climate crisis is having on both common and rare species.

The review shows that our changing climate has led to the slow loss of predictable weather patterns and how traditional seasonal shifts are causing chaos and confusion for wildlife and people.

The incremental shifts we’re experiencing in terms of our seasons extending may not feel like much in a 12-month period, but over a decade the changes are extremely significant.

Ben McCarthy: National Trust Head of Nature Conservation and Restoration Ecology

With 2024 declared the world’s hottest year on record, it signals a red alert for nature. As global temperatures rise, scientists have previously said that the UK is likely to experience a wetter climate. That reality is now playing out in real time, impacting landscapes, nature and the places we look after. 

Following record-breaking warm years in 2022 and 2023, 2024 was mild and very wet by comparison, with unsettled weather dominating forecasts across the UK in the past 12 months.

2024 has seen record-breaking warm and wet months as well as temperatures see-sawing from one extreme to the other within a matter of days. 

Storms, flooding and multi-hazard weather events bringing snow, rain and wind simultaneously in different pockets of the country have caused destruction and disruption. Unusual sightings in the natural world from across the year also act as warning beacons for what’s happening to our wildlife and seasons. 

#413: Thought for the Day on the solstice

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts… There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

Rachel Carson

#412: Birdsong matters... and it's disappearing

A piece in The Guardian from a few days ago talks about the slow disappearance of birdsong from the landscape.

Biodiversity is rapidly declining, reducing the quantity and quality of human interactions with nature and constraining its contribution to human health and well-being. Natural sounds are a key component of our experience of nature, but biodiversity losses are reflected in soundscapes, which are becoming less diverse and quieter.

There are various terms here which may relate to the changing relationship we have with our surroundings. The soundscape is changing, and shifting baseline syndrome means we are not necessarily aware of what we have lost. Landscapes emanate a collection of biological, geophysical and anthropogenic sounds which together form ‘soundscapes’

Check out this academic paper which is mentioned in the piece. It's accessibly written. On the extinction of experience.

#411: Encounter app - now available to download

I've been following the progress on Melissa Harrison's nature recording app since it was first announced. I was one of the beta testers of the app when it came out a month or so ago, and was excited at the features it offers and the ease of use and the opportunity to record encounters with nature easily, sitting alongside some of the other apps I have on my phone such as MerlinID to identify birdsong.

The app is now available to download, free of charge from the various app stores. This is a soft launch for the app. There is more to come, but any use you can make of the app will help generate data.

It is called Encounter (Nature).

It is a useful companion piece to her recent book 'Homecoming'.

As Melissa said in a recent email to those involved in the testing:

It’s not perfect. We still need to build the search function (weirdly, far more complicated – and expensive – than you’d think); there are some UX (user experience) niggles I am itching to improve; we need to build relationships with nature charities and environmental NGOs so that we can feature their content; and it’ll take a while until the nature tips and information it contains can be properly targeted to users by location: we need to wait for good numbers of people to tag the things they see before we can start turning that data into useful content. But I think we’ve made a really good start, and I hope you’ll stick with us as the app grows and improves, bit by bit.

This is Encounter’s ‘soft launch’. We hope to build our user base over the winter, ahead of its formal launch in April. That’s when we’ll be trying to get press coverage: when Christmas is over, spring is happening, and people are going outdoors again. I’d be very grateful for any help with that when the time comes.

For now, please download the app, play around with it and most of all, enjoy using it: that’s what it’s for! 

I built it to help people notice nature, and to get into the habit of jotting down the things they encounter. The benefits that flow from that simple habit are hard to overestimate: both to us, as humans, and to the natural world itself.

#410: Don't make an enemy of an anemone

I liked this piece in the Guardian today on the anemone from Helen Sullivan.

A lovely quote from George Henry Lewes is included:

We must always remember the great drama which is incessantly acted out in every drop of water, on every inch of earth. Then and only then do we realise the mighty complexity, the infinite splendour of nature. Then and only then do we feel how full of life, varied, intricate, marvellous, world within world, yet nowhere without space to move is this single planet, on the crust of which we stand and look out into shoreless space peopled by myriads of other planets, larger, if not more wonderful than ours.

#409: Soil and its parents

Soil is one of the most important substances on the planet, and there will definitely be a focus on soils in some way in the final specification as the soil partly determines the climax vegetation, along with other factors.

A definition from Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Soil is the biologically active and porous medium that has developed in the uppermost layer of Earth’s crust. It serves as the reservoir of water and nutrients and a medium for the filtration and breakdown of injurious wastes. It also helps in the cycling of carbon and other elements through the global ecosystem.

The study of soil is called pedology.

Soil is also an important carbon store.

A short film on soil from the Royal Society.

Any look at Natural History will need to concern itself with the soil beneath our feet, and the rocks (parent material) that lie below that. I would imagine that the specification will refer to biomes, ecosystems and various other options which will require an understanding of the abiotic and biotic components.

Soil is made from four ingredients: weathered rock, organic material, water and air.

Soil is a nutrient store and is featured on Gersmehl diagrams of ecosystems.

#408: Experiments showing our changing oceans

 From Sylvia Knight via our Facebook page.

#407: Thought for the Day

 

#406: Important update and story in 'The Guardian'

“We need nature education at the heart of school life so everyone has access to it, not just middle-class people who go to the countryside at the weekend and have big gardens. 

It’s the kids in very urban areas who I had in mind because the whole idea of the GCSE is to make natural history on your doorstep something you are fascinated by. 

We have such a crisis in the mental health of our young people and nature is known to be a very healing thing.”

Mary Colwell

The Guardian has a piece from its Environment reporter on the continued delay.

It's a great pity if this is seen as 'political' and something that the new Government can't get behind and move to the next phase with. It has the potential to offer something distinctively different from other curriculum offerings.

As Mary says at the end of the piece:

"Nature can’t afford to be a political football. We need future generations to understand or care for the natural world.”