#633: Europe's soils are drying out...

And that is not good news...

Rivers are running low across Europe, cutting the generation of clean hydropower and restricting cargo ships. The Rhine at Lobith in the Netherlands is now lower than the minimum level seen in the hot summer of 1976. The scientists warned that this disruption could push up the price of food and energy, hitting low-income households hardest.

The original research is here. 

#598: Biodiversity Heritage Library - an amazing resource

The Biodiversity Heritage Library was featured in The Guardian yesterday.

There is a very large Flickr library of images which are scanned from the original documents and arranged in albums. These are from expeditions such as Erebus, and into the Antarctic.

There are some excellent images from historical manuscripts.

As well as published biodiversity literature and journals, there are letters, illustrations, climate records, field diaries, ecosystem profiles, distribution records and manuscripts containing the original collecting stories of a particular species or detailing voyages of discovery.

The story was linked to a suggestion that AI might help save endangered plants.

Check the website of the library for more details.

What are your favourite albums in the collection?

#465: Bugs Matter Survey - take part

Until the end of September you can take part in the annual Bugs Matter survey to measure the presence of insects. This uses a smartphone app now, rather than a paper template which used to be the case. Contribute to this citizen science initiative.

The Bugs Matter citizen science survey is an important initiative measuring insect splats on vehicle number plates as a marker of insect abundance. In previous survey years, with the valuable contributions of citizen scientists across the UK, we have made significant strides in understanding the challenges facing our insect populations.

This year, we need your help, once again, to build on our knowledge and make our impact even greater. Sharing the findings from your journeys will help us understand more about our insect populations, as growing evidence highlights their declines on a global scale.

Your participation in this nature survey is vital for us to monitor population trends, address causes of insect loss, halt and reverse them.

This is how the survey works:

 

And here's why it matters...

#420: The National Trust's Annual Review for 2024

This has been getting a lot of coverage 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. 

#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. 

#403: Pond sounds

This album came out last year, and I've just got round to finishing the blog post I started back then, as we pass 400 posts on the blog.

A new album out today showcases the rhythms of pond life.

Musician Tom Fisher, aka Action Pyramid, has teamed up with ecologist Dr Jack Greenhalgh for Mardle, which will appeal to curious nature lovers and those who enjoy unwinding to soundscapes 🐸🎶➡️ https://t.co/NM5NPLN5FG pic.twitter.com/jZmXLtkWFC

— University of Bristol (@BristolUni) October 24, 2023

#354: Saltmarshes

An interesting piece in Geographical magazine looked at the vital role that saltmarshes will play in mitigating sea level rise caused by Climate change.

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.

#318: LEAP - our diet and the environment

LEAP was involved in the creation of the Meat the Future exhibition at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in 2022.

The LEAP project (Livestock, Environment and People) at Oxford University studies the health, environmental, social and economic impacts of meat and dairy production and consumption.

The LEAP website includes an excellent image... Check the tabs to see more. 

The proposed specification was originally down to include something on the impact of our dietary choices on the environment e.g. meat eating has a high carbon footprint.

Image copyright: LEAP 

#313: Lichens and Gravestones

Following a previous post from April.

This Guardian article describes a Church of England project.

It is a Citizen Science project.

The article includes the following really useful information:

Graves are a haven for lichen, with more than 700 of the 2,000 British species having been recorded in English churchyards and cemeteries so far. According to surveys by the church, many sites have well more than 100 species on the stonework, trees and in the grassland.

This summer, the church is running a nature count in burial grounds across the country. 

Between the 8th and the 16th of June, they are asking people to visit their local graveyard, record which species they find and send them in.

A lichen is a complex life form, made up of a stable symbiotic association between a fungus and algae or cyanobacteria. They are very important as habitat for small invertebrates, and they stabilise soil pH as well as carrying out water and nutrient capture and cycling. They play a crucial role in the environment but many of their preferred habitats, including ancient trees, are under threat.

In order to take part:

To submit records during the week, the easiest way is to use a free app called iNaturalist and join the Beautiful Burial Grounds project. This doesn't appear to be ready quite yet.

The app enables you to take a photo and it helps with identification.

I've got this app myself.

See the previous project outcomes.

A useful guide to Lichens has been produced and can be downloaded as a PDF.

Top image: Gravestones in Lexham Churchyard, Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license.

#230: 'Geographical' Magazine

When the draft specification (finally) emerges, there will be a need to resource it for the teachers who are going to teach it. This will need to be done with some urgency.

One option that should be considered by those who have back issues of relevant journals is to revisit those to identify suitable articles. 

One such journal is the RGS-IBG's 'Geographical' magazine. 

I've had a departmental subscription for many years.

In many issues there is an article which is linked to some of the likely themes in the new specification, and as they are written for a general audience, this is going to be of value to both staff and students. A limited amount of content is also on the website.

You can also arrange for a subscription to print or digital. The digital option includes access to an archive of past issues. This would be a particularly valuable way to build up a library of suitable articles.

#185: Origin of Species

Today marks the anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' (shortened version of full title). Cambridge University Library has a large archive of Darwin's papers.

This can be viewed via this link.

There are links from here through to Darwin's correspondence.

#179: Chalk Stream Challenge

A cross posting from my LivingGeography blog.

It refers to the latest (at the time of posting) episode of the Geographical Association's GeogPod podcast - hosted by John Lyon. I've posted about that previously. This is the 70th episode of the PODCAST, which is an impressive achievement.

This talks about an opportunity for those living near a Chalk Stream to take part in the Chalk Stream Challenge.

This has been developed with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust.

From the website:

The challenge is suitable for Scouts, Guides, and similar groups. It involves activities that can easily be customised to suit different age ranges. There are several set routes to choose from, all of which are 'off-road’ but close to public transport, parking, and places to find refreshments and toilet facilities.

The Chalk Stream Challenge was created by two brilliant volunteers, Hazel and Sarah, as part of the Watercress and Winterbournes Landscape Partnership Scheme. 

The scheme features many projects focused on the Rivers Test and Itchen headwaters, including free education sessions for young people.

This might make a suitable field activity for GCSE Natural History students in time.

I shall post about the Watercress and Winterbournes project separately. There's a whole lot of geography in there too.

The Podcast can be listened to below:

#171: 'Two million species at risk of extinction'

... and many of them are insects which form the basis of many food chains...

Number of species at risk of extinction doubles to 2 million, says study https://t.co/3pc4OUMuVW

— Guardian Environment (@guardianeco) November 8, 2023

97% of all animals are invertebrates. Of that group, about 90% are classified as insects. They provide vital ecosystem services: pollinating crops, recycling nutrients into soils, and decomposing waste.

 “Without insects, our planet will not be able to survive.”

This is further worrying news in a week of worrying reports. And all the while, the government just rearranges the deckchairs on the Titanic...

Image: Leaf Hopper, Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license

#166: Dudley Stamp's maps revisited

Cross-posting from my GA Presidents blog. Dudley Stamp was a former President of the GA.

Thanks to Steve Brace for the link to a new research project making use of Dudley Stamp's Land Utilisation Survey UK project. This involved thousands of school students mapping the area around their school and home.

We scanned Dudley Stamp maps & compared them with modern satellite data to record the extent of land-use change across Britain in mid-20thC. Our map outlines land conversion for every 10km x 10km sq. @andysuggitt & @AGAuffret#geographyteachers #NEA https://t.co/UIEk3Sw9Lj

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) November 5, 2023

The full piece in 'The Conversation' explores a new project. 

The outcomes are reported in this research paper. (Open Access at the time of posting).

We estimate that roughly 90% of lowland meadow and pasture has been lost. Land was converted either to arable farmland, which saw a 22% increase, or to agriculturally improved grassland, which now occupies 27% of Britain’s land area.

Urbanisation saw the nation’s built area expand from 4% to 5%. And woodland cover doubled from 6% to 12%, largely due to a concerted effort to increase the country’s reserve of timber. For better or worse, the nation’s land use became less mixed and more consolidated.

All of this environmental change is thought to have had a profound effect on biodiversity. According to the recent State of Nature Report, the abundance of UK species has declined by an average of 19% since 1970. Some 1,500 species (or 16% of those analysed) are now threatened with national extinction.

The full piece outlines further changes affecting particular species and how the data can help to identify species at particular risk from climate change.

All the maps are available for free download.

#164: Dr. Margaret Bradshaw - wildflower advocate

I hope that students will be introduced to a diverse range of people who have worked in the field of natural history - specialising in discrete aspects of the various sub-disciplines - and not just the usual suspects of dead white men.

Margaret Bradshaw is a legend in the field of wildlfower research.

The Guardian has profiled Margaret, who has spent many decades researching the flowers in Teesdale in North Yorkshire. At 97, she has just had a book published outlining the results of her research into the local flowers which developed in a unique mini-ecosystem of Arctic-Alpine flora.

She has also been featured on Countryfile.

This part of the uplands is a seemingly empty landscape, heavily grazed by sheep, but it hides botanical treasures that have been here for more than 10,000 years. Some of the plants can’t be found anywhere else in the UK and – until Bradshaw arrived on the scene – many were unaccounted for.

Bradshaw is the chief caretaker of some of the country’s rarest flowers. She has spent seven decades obsessively studying the unique Arctic-Alpine flora of Teesdale, in the north of England.

We just loved reading this profile of Margaret Bradshaw - deserving winner of our 2023 H. H. Bloomer Award.

Margaret has spent decades studying the plants of Teesdale, and campaigning to preserve them.https://t.co/8stQfR3P4K pic.twitter.com/z6q4ZRNrfC

— The Linnean Society of London (@LinneanSociety) November 3, 2023

On her Countryfile appearance she was asked if it 'mattered' that the flowers were disappearing.

In response, Margarets said: 'Well, does it matter that we have Durham cathedral? Does it matter that we have Stongehenge?'

'What would happen if Durham cathedral was falling down, bit by bit? They'd want to build it up again because it's part of our heritage.

'This is part of our heritage. Much older than Stonehenge. It's 10,000 or 12,000 years old.'

#154: Natural History Reading List: #12: Professor Mark Maslin's guide to saving the world

One of the aspects of the blog will be to showcase people whose work should form part of any lesson thinking, or whose books should be on a reading list. The creation of that reading list will also be part of the work I will do, along with others.

Mark Maslin writes regular pieces for newspapers and works for UCL.

He is well worth following on Twitter.

His book here is of particular value as it is very easy to digest. 

It starts with a useful summary of the Earth.

I turned it into a short video for our Year 4 students to start their unit on the Earth. There are chapters on various earth systems which are important to consider when teaching about how the interconnections between nature are easily disrupted.

There is a need for some hopeful messages in the teaching this specification given the deluge of negative stories which seem to be developing every day. These will need to be part of the thinking.

#147: Previous assessments in Natural History

The GCSE in Natural History is a brand new course - one of the first new GCSEs for many years. It takes a lot to get to this stage.

The latest issue of Cambridge Assessment's 'Research Matters' journal explores previous occasions when Natural History has been assessed.

The link will also provide access to further links to see previous issues of the journal.

The journal is published by Cambridge Assessment. This is Issue 36

The article is written by Gillian Cooke.

As is says at the start of the article:

Concern about our natural environment is at an unprecedented level. It permeates through all levels of media as the effects of climate change and fluctuations of biodiversity manifest throughout the world. There is a thirst for knowledge to understand our environment better and the impact of humans on the natural world. But while the introduction of a new GCSE in Natural History by OCR chimes with our times, natural history itself is not a new qualification, as shown from an archive of over 160 years of qualification documentation from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), a predecessor of OCR, which contains a rich resource of natural history type qualifications available to children at all levels and ages.

There is also a useful definition of natural history suggested:

Natural History is variously defined, but commonly described as “a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study”. 

Fuelled by curiosity and, in some cases, imperialistic vanity, wealthy explorers of the early modern period sought to dispel images of fantastical creatures and flora from folklore with accurate scientific observation. So began a trend to collect and display natural history findings, and a rise in the popularity of natural history museums, which was at a peak in Britain between the 1880s and 1900s (Rader & Cain, 2015).

Source:

Rader, K., & Cain, V. (2015). From natural history to science: display and the transformation of American museums of science and nature. Museum and Society, 6(2), 152-171.

#130: The Dasgupta Review

"Nature is our home. 

Good economics demands we manage it better."
Professor Partha Dasgupta

The Dasgupta Review was published in 2021.

The Dasgupta Review was an independent, global review on the Economics of Biodiversity led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta (Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge). 

It is subtitled: The Economics of Biodiversity.

The Review was commissioned in 2019 by HM Treasury and been supported by an Advisory Panel drawn from public policy, science, economics, finance and business.

The Review called for changes in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world. 

Grounded in a deep understanding of ecosystem processes and how they are affected by economic activity, the new framework presented by the Review set out how we should account for Nature in economics and decision-making.

There are various video introductions to the report.

This is the longer version of the videom which features a conversation with the lead author and Hetan Shah, who is a former Honorary Vice President of the Geographical Association.

The Report can be downloaded in various formats and languages and also in summary and full forms.

While students may not be expected to have this plonked in front of them, they should certainly be made aware of it, and its key findings.

#115: Unequal access to the countryside

My local news magazine programme featured this report last week, which was also in the Guardian newspaper in a piece written by Patrick Barkham (who will feature a number of times on this blog)

It reports on work by The Ramblers to explore the variations in access to the countryside.

It seems that there is substantial variation in access to the countryside which varies in areas with greater ethnicity or lower income levels.

The path network adds over 3,000 healthy years of life to the nation, worth an estimated £2 billion – more than £33 for every person in England and Wales. That’s the cost of 8.5 million ambulance call outs or 10 million outpatient procedures.

But our access to paths is not equal. There is significant imbalance between the number of paths available to the most and least deprived communities. And the health and wellbeing impact of this inequality is stark.

Our path network has the potential to help transform Britain’s declining health and wellbeing, but right now the benefits are primarily being felt by the old, the wealthy, the healthy and the white.

Residents of the wealthiest areas in England and Wales have 80% more paths in their local area than the residents of the most deprived areas.

The most white-dominated areas have 144% more local paths than the most ethnically diverse.

Where health is the worst, the number of paths is the lowest.

Doubling the average length of paths in a neighbourhood would result in an additional annual 78.5 million walks in nature across England and Wales. And help harness the potential of our path network to transform Britain’s health.

This is also a reminder that all the resources that are going to be used to teach the GCSE Natural History also need to reflect the diversity of the UK: its landscape, communities, people and cultures.

#110: The State of Nature? Not good...

Cross posting from my LivingGeography blog.

Earlier this week, a report on the state of the UK's nature was released. It makes for grim reading... 

This is the latest in a series of reports exploring the steady decline in the UK's biodiversity, and the likely risks to other species as food chains and webs begin to break down. The decline in insects is vital, for example.

State of Nature Data is also available from the same website.

Here we present the data underpinning the State of Nature report. For the first time we are excited to include an interactive app (below) where you can explore the data in more detail, at a UK and country scale. We also include the metadata file with the full references and a guide to interpretation of the data and data files to download.

Some headline figures:

Download the infographic from here.

Humanity has now impacted every part of the Earth System

Atmospheric carbon dioxide ⏫ >50% and methane ⏫ >150% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

We have warmed the planet by 1.2˚C

All due to capitalism, colonialism and global consumer culture.#Anthropocene pic.twitter.com/vDxBWLdE0d

— Professor Mark Maslin 𝕏 🙄 (@ProfMarkMaslin) September 28, 2023