'Big Nature Day' or a big nature summer?

Interested in Nature? I imagine you may be if you have found this blog. If you can make it to the Natural History Museum next weekend (27th May 2012), there is an environmental treat in store for you. They are running a BIG NATURE day. There is so much to explore with British wildlife and this event allows you to meet nature groups, get involved in surveying and listen to fascinating talks throughout the day. If you can’t make it on the 27th then there are a number of other events running throughout the summer such as the Big Seaweed Search, Bioblitz and BugCounts which can be found on the Natural History Museum and OPAL websites. No, I haven’t been paid by these organisations to promote the events, they just look fascinating! Once I have got the first draft of my thesis to my supervisor (almost there!) I will surely be getting out and enjoying all that the British countryside has to offer!

Carbon cut conquest or climate COP-out?

Given the seemingly vast periods of time I’m spending writing up my thesis at present, I thought I would change topic somewhat and comment upon the up and coming UN climate change congress. In five days, twenty three hours and nine minutes the 17th annual meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP17) will convene in Durban, South Africa to assess the effectiveness of the climate change Convention.



With the general air of disappointment in the progress made in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancun (2010) the South African president, Jacob Zuma, states that "The low level of ambition in this regard is cause for concern," and that the delegates should come to Durban “expecting a credible, sustainable and implementable outcome."

There are five key achievements that are hoped to be met in this conference:

- One: that the progress should embrace multilateralism, environmental integrity, fairness and the honouring of all international commitments under UN climate change negotiations.
- Two: that the key outcome of the Cancun agreements—the establishment of a Green Climate Fund—were developed.
- Three: that a legal framework for a future climate change agreement is determined to find a resolution to the disagreement over the 2nd Commitment period under the Kyoto protocol.
- Four: That adaptation remains a fundamental focus for developing countries.
- Five: that the outcome in South Africa is adequate to maintain environmental integrity.

This event has of course stimulated interest in the steps South Africa is taking in mitigating climate change. Top of the list are the proposed commitment to create a “green” economy. Interesting, as here in the UK the current coalition have expressed the desire to becoming the “greenest government yet”. Here’s hoping Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change minister, will support the second commitment period from the Kyoto protocol and keep pressure cutting carbon emissions.

You can voice your support for this motion through the campaign website, 38 Degrees.

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.

Committee on Climate Change

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) panel of nine members was formed in 2008 with the aim of advising the UK Government on ‘setting and meeting carbon budgets and on preparing for the impacts of climate change’. I have a particular interest in their activities because firstly, my research into climatic constraints on biodiversity requires current knowledge of broad scale climate information and secondly, one of the committee members, Brain Hoskins is the director of my funding body, the Grantham Institute of Climate Change.

This week CCC launched a new energy review at my University to which I attended. The session was chaired by Lord Adair Turner who clearly set out the findings of the report. A clear statement was made, renewable energy resources such as wind, solar and geothermal heat as well as nuclear and CCS (carbon capture and storage) could contribute a significant portion of the UKs energy demands by the year 2030/2050. I would paraphrase the rest of the talk but he summarises rather succinctly:

"The focus now should be creating a stable investment climate for renewables, making longer-term commitments to support less mature technologies, and putting in place incentives to deliver significantly increased investment in renewable power and heat generation required over the next decade."

Most of the crowd at the Imperial-hosted event were politicians however scientists were also present. Forging a strong link between the two disciplines will enable pioneering research to be implemented into effective climate policies. More information on CC and their recent report can be found at the CCC website.

'Environmental Vandalism' Prevented

Whilst away on fieldwork, I was keeping an eye on the recent consultation on the future of England’s forest estate. Concern for future public access, sustainability of national resources, impact on biodiversity and the loss of English heritage fuelled public action and stimulated an extensive campaign to halt the sale of 258,000 hectares of public forest estate.



In this current challenging economic period the government understandably have to make cut backs and raise revenue, this is where the coalitions ‘Big Society’ approach comes in. As I understand it, this privatisation of the forest to commercial bodies and NGOs was an effort to bring environmental management into the Big Society domain.

This however sparked public outrage, with the term ‘environmental vandalism’ conjuring up visions of industrial take over, widespread deforestation, disregard for the wildlife residing within the forest, loss of a valuable commodity, destruction of ecosystem services (such as pollination etc) and decimation of carbon sinks to many a concerned citizen. Campaign bodies such as 38 Degrees mounted petitions and within a few weeks rallied half a million signatures stimulating many to write to their local MPs. Of course with my background working in forest ecosystems both in my PhD and through forest ranger roles I felt the need to express my thoughts on the matter. Upon writing to my local MP I was impressed with the speed at which they replied but highly disappointed that they were planning to vote for the sell off.

Assessments were carried out and it was found that the sell off was neither popular nor economically viable. When ecosystem services, recreation, biodiversity, landscape and carbon sequestration were calculated the entire forest estate in England was valued at a whopping £1,800 million per year.

Luckily other MPs felt differently and in February the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman announced a U turn on the Governments plans stating that:
"I have taken a decision to end the consultation on the future of the public forest estate and I take full responsibility for that," Spelman said. "I am doing so because it is quite clear from the early responses to the consultation that the public and many honourable members are not happy with the proposals we set out."


My MP also wrote to inform me of the Governments actions to:

- “Remove clauses from the Public Bodies Bill which would permit publicly owned forests to be transferred into different ownership.
- Close the consultation on the Future of the Public Forestry Estate.
- Set up a panel of independent experts to consider ho we can better protect our woodlands for the future as part of a broader forestry policy”

Good news eh?! So, this is now going ahead and on the 31st March the panel convened for the first meeting. The 12 members on the panel have experience in a variety of sectors from the RSPB to the ramblers association to the Confederation of Forest Industries (ConFor). First moves are apparently to liaise with grassroots campaigners and stakeholders to decide upon appropriate approaches. The role will ultimately be to advise upon the future direction of forestry and woodland policy and to advise on the role the Forestry Commission should play in implementing this. Comments are required on how to increase woodland cover, enhance public benefits, how to manage spending on forests and the role of Forest Enterprise for commercial resource gains. The panel are due to report to Ms Spelman in the Autumn. Watch this space….

Back to the field...

It has been a while since my last post, inexcusable really as there has been a whole wealth of issues going on in the environmental world. PhD work recently however has had to prevail, with my last bout of fieldwork taking precedence.

So yes, I was lucky enough to head back to New Zealand’s South Island to collect the last of my data from the field experiments I set up at the end of last year. Just a three week trip but enough time to allow me to visit all 15 sites (from Nelson down to Dunedin), record how many plants were dead, how many had frost damage and how much herbivory had been going on. Currently my host plant (Macropiper excelsum) has a natural distribution down to s southerly limit at Banks Peninsula. This experiment was designed to investigate whether this plant could exist south of its current distribution. If so, it may indicate that the environment is climatically suitable and there is the possibility that it is not found closer to the poles because its dispersal is being constrained by isolation (i.e. fragmentation) of its associated native forest habitat.


Photo provided by Ben Rodriguez

Having the help of my field assistant Ben was invaluable, he was an absolute star throughout the three weeks, not only assisting with the work in the field but also with all the post-field processing. All of the data was collected in over a whorl-wind tour of the sites and we managed to get a significant amount of the herbivory assessments done at Lincoln University (thank you to all of those that helped at this Uni during my time of need). Although, the statistical analysis still needs to be done, on first appearances we noticed a few trends. Surprisingly we found that the kawakawas planted in the novel locations were very healthy, far more so than in the other locations. Interesting. Obviously I do not want to jump to any interpretations without the statistical analysis but I am looking forward to seeing what kind of trends we get from these data.

So, back in the UK now and on to the analysis and write up, will keep the blog posted with any interesting findings and any relevant environmental issues going on in the news…

Pitching Biodiversity Against Climate Change, Really?

Continuing the events going on in the 2010 year of biodiversity, Biodiversity Loss vs. Climate Change is the title of the debate between a panel of experts convening in the Kew Gardens temperate house this week.



Personally, I find the very question of which is more important futile, as in many ways the two are inexorably linked. The three videos are most definitely worth a watch however, click on the photo to link you to the CNN page. The four speakers; Ahmed Djoghlaf, UN Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Paul Smith, Director of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank , Jon Williams, Head of Biodiversity for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Phillipe Cousteau, Environmentalist from the renowned Cousteau family raise some important points about what biodiversity is, why it is important and how its loss will effect our economies, health care and perhaps even survival.

Here are some key points they raise:

-‘Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth at all levels—from genes to species to entire ecosystems—it’s essential for sustaining the systems that provide us with food to fuel and other vital services’ (Earths Frontiers)
- “Going to reach tipping point where irreversible damage will be done to biodiversity.” (Djoghlaf, A)
-“(Biodiversity Loss) is one of greatest threats going into the 21st Century” (Costeau. P)
- Pharmaceutical companies which are worth US$6-700 billion are 40-60% dependent on biodiversity for medicines that come from natural species
- Biodiversity services are worth 2-4.5 trillion/per year, which makes it a bigger and more immediate cost than climate change.

CNN have produced a whole range of reports on Earths Frontiers from renewable energies to pinpointing the worlds biodiversity hotspots to bar-coding marine life. There’s even a facebook page if you want to keep up to date with their shows or comment on any of their documentaries.