Academic Attention

Aware that I haven’t given much of an update on my actual PhD research recently I thought I’d drop a short note in today. I feel it necessary to emerge from my office on a regular basis to get some stimulation outside of my own research and as such I have attended a few environment-related events, two of which I discuss below:

Species Interactions Workshop, UCL

Jordi Bascompte, an expert on species networks was visiting London from Seville this week and I grabbed the opportunity to attend a workshop hosted by him. Five students each gave a presentation on their research followed by a question and discussion session. The consensus before the event seemed to be that fellow students were a little intimidated by the intense nature of the workshop, but after we finished the talks/discussion and had lunch, I personally, felt that the session was highly useful.

I found it particularly beneficial to discuss quantification of interaction strengths. I have primarily been focussing on the frequency of interactions between trophic (feeding) levels i.e. how many leaves a single caterpillar attacks etc. Advanced techniques however can calculate the ‘strength’ of interactions by accounting for the diet proportions and the amount of biomass consumed. It may be useful to consider this if I expand my research into monitoring whole community networks rather than just small food chain subsections as I am doing now.

Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change Seminar

As part of our fortnightly Grantham Institute student meetings we attend climate related seminars given by external speakers. This week, the talk was given by Dr Sergio Margulis, Lead Environmental Economist at the World Bank who was presenting the findings of a report detailing the 'Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change'. In order to quantify the exact costs of adaptation they looked at both the global scale and country scale (of 7 chosen nations). A fairly simple approach was then taken:

1. Input the climate shock (using climate projections using an A2 IPCC scenario)
2. Look at the physical response (consider economic social and environmental impacts)
3. Fight back (Identification of adaptation)
4. Calculate the cost of adaptation

The figures estimate that the overall cost of adaptation will be between US$70-100 billion a year between 2010 and 2050. He suggested that although this cost will increase over time (transport having a major influence over this), when accounting for the assumed increase in GDP (countries wealth) then the proportion of cost in relation to overall wealth will diminish. The report also suggests that in some countries the GDP will improve if adaptation measures are put in place.