July 2010: Rob Raiswell elected as Fellow of the Geochemical Society
July 2010: We want to welcome Dr Bridget Wade as a New Member of EBI
July 2010: Insect Pollinators Initiative
July 2010: Biodiversity effects of organic and conventional agriculture at field, farm and landscape scale
June 2010: EBI Biologists awarded funding for important work on pollinator declines
Feb 2010: EBI student publishes review on UK urban gardens in prestigious journal TREE
December 2009: The EBI INSTITUTE REPORT 2004-2009 is now online- Read it here!
August 2009: Heather burning and the Yorkshire uplands
July 2009: EBI's Lianne Benning wins prestigious award
June 2009: EBI's Lianne Benning involved in development of new cleaning protocol for probes in future "Search for Life' missions
June 2009: EBI member Paul Wignall leads paper in Science on Volcanoes, Mass extinctions and Climate perturbation
Spring 2009: Work by EBI scientists features in NERC’s quarterly magazine 'Planet Earth'!!
April 2009: EBI research impacts science funding policy at the highest levels
March 2009: EBI member Mark Reed wins prestigious Michael Young Prize!!!!
March 2009: EBI's Oliver Phillips leads paper in Science on the effects of drought on Amazonian forests
Feb 2009: EBI's Simon Lewis leads paper in Nature on long-term carbon storage in African tropical forests
Dec 2008: A new MASTER's program in 'Climate Change and the Biospshere'
Nov 2008: Two EBI members win prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prizes!!!!
Oct 2008: Matt Box is the second EBI Phd Graduate!!
Aug 2008: Symposium on Global Biogeochemical Cycles
June 2008: First EBI PhD Graduate Dominique Tobler
June 3rd 2008: A Mini-Symposium on Biomineralization
Apr 2008: water@leeds funded
Mar 2008: EBI's Mike Krom is named Oceanographic Expert on ambitious water project
Dec 2007: EBI launches Network Seminar Series EBINS
Oct 2007: EBI Member Joe Holden wins prestigious award
Feb 2007: 'Life on Mars' and Astrobiology Conference
Autumn 2007: Voyage to the bottom of the sea
Nov 8th 2006: EBI hosts Ecohydrology Conference
|July 2006: Bee and flower decline linked?
May 2006: Tropical veg holds clues to climate change
May 2006: Researchers take the high road
News from sunny Antarctica
Ouse to twin with Indus
Rob Raiswell elected as Fellow of the Geochemical Society:
We would like to congratulate Rob Raiswell who has recently been elected as a Fellow of the Geochemical SocietyBack to top
We want to welcome Dr Bridget Wade as a New Member of EBI
I'm interested in the palaeobiology of extinct calcareous microfossils, mainly planktonic foraminifera and their response to climate change. I use their geochemistry and abundances to determine mechanisms of extinction in the pelagic realm and changes in marine community structure. Recently (2009) Richard Twitchett and I co-edited a special volume of Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology concentrating on size changes associated with extinction events (Extinction, dwarfing and the Lilliput Effect, vol. 284, issues 1-2).Back to top
Insect Pollinators Initiative
We have collectively had tremendous success in the LWEC "Insect Pollinators Initiative". Koos Biesmeijer's (FBS) project ("Sustainable pollination services for UK crops") involves Andy Challinor and Mette Termansen (SRI), as well as colleagues at Reading and Fera. I'm leading a project as well ("Linking agriculture and land use change to pollinator populations") - which involves Koos (FBS), Chris Needham in Computer studies, and colleagues at Bristol, Reading, CEH and Fera. Finally a third project, led by Jane Memmott at Bristol ("Urban pollinators: ecology and conservation") also involves Koos and Bill Kunin. Overall, the Leeds component of the three projects is nearly £1.5 M.Back to top
Biodiversity effects of organic and conventional agriculture at field, farm and landscape scale
Also recently there's been important news coverage of a paper on biodiversity effects of organic and conventional agriculture at field, farm and landscape scale (Gabriel D, SM Sait, JA Hodgson, U Schmutz, WE Kunin & TG Benton 2010. Scale matters: the impact of organic farming on biodiversity at different spatial scales. Ecology Letters, 13: 858-869.). It comes from the RELU Scales project - which was initially cross-faculty (although Sigrid Stagl who runs it has since left Leeds). Press coverage has largely been about matters not really covered in that paper, but rather in two other submitted manuscripts on the tradeoffs between biodiversity conservation on farms themselves and the extra land required to grow food in such wildlife friendly ways -- dubbed the "land sharing vs. land sparing" debate.Back to top
Projects to address decline of honeybees and other insect pollinators
EBI Scientists have been awarded nearly £1.5m to explore the causes and consequences of threats to bees and other pollinating insects in the UK. Dr.Koos Biesmeijer leads a team that will provide the scientific underpinning for 'Sustainable pollination services for UK crops'; Professor Bill Kunin's project, 'Linking agriculture and land use change to pollinator populations', aims to elucidate the causes underlying the parallel declines in wild pollinators and flowering plants. Both are also involved in a third project 'Urban Pollinators: their ecology and conservation', led by Professor Jane Memmott of the University of Bristol. These projects are part of the Insect Pollinators Initiative, a project under the "Living with Environmental Change' program of several UK funding agencies, which aims to ensure that the pollination of agricultural and horticultural crops in the UK is protected and biodiversity in natural ecosystems is maintained. Insects pollinate around two-thirds of the agricultural crops grown globally and the total loss of insect pollinators could have huge economic and social costs- about 13% of the UK's income from farming.Improving our understanding of the decline of populations of bees and other insect pollinators - and what can be done to halt it - is critical because of the potential threat to agriculturally-produced food supplies and wider damage to the environment.
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Gardeners must unite to save Britain’s wildlife
A review paper in this month's issue of journal 'Trends in Ecology and Evolution', led by EBI student Mark Goddard, suggests that householders in the UK should be looking beyond their own garden fence to protect vulnerable British wildlife. To encourage urban biodiversity, neighbours should co-ordinate their gardening efforts to create a network of interlinking habitats where birds, bees and mammals can flourish. The idea is simple and common sense. Urban green spaces such as gardens and parks are an increasingly important refuge for wildlife as towns and cities encroach further into the countryside. But gardens don't exist in isolation, they link together to form interconnected habitat networks that should be planned and managed in conjunction with parks, nature reserves and the surrounding countryside.
According to the researchers, actions by individuals within the boundary of their own back garden are unlikely to make a meaningful contribution to the conservation of biodiversity at larger scales. One person may plant a tree or create a pond in their own back garden, but the survival of many of the mobile species that live in towns and cities, such as birds and mammals, is dependent on the provision of larger areas of habitat. They suggest that if neighbours in a street were all to coordinate the management of their gardens in a complementary way, for example by planting a continuous strip of trees throughout a swathe of gardens, the benefits to local and landscape biodiversity will far outweigh the contribution made by one or two households alone.
Access this paper here
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Does heather burning for grouse in the uplands impact peat soils and water quality?
Prof Joe Holden and colleagues have been funded to the tune of 600,000 pounds to investigate questions relating to the ecology and economy of the Yorkshire uplands. For over a century, gamekeepers have annually burnt the heather to maintain healthy grouse populations. Grouse preferentially eat new shoots which grow after fires, but use mature heather to nest in, and burning regimes in the region have been developed to meet all grouse needs in a relatively small area. However, little is known about the larger ecosystem impacts of such burning. Burning may have the potential to change the highly sensitive, carbon-rich peat soils of the region and in turn to alter neighboring stream and river dynamics and impact water quality, but little data exist on these links. The group will begin collecting extensive and detailed data on both burnt and unburnt sites in the area and in different stretches of water in the region. Given that this is a sensitive question in the region and one that is closely linked to its economies, the scientists will be running workshops in the upland communities and involving the local knowledge as much as possible, so that people will know what the research is really about understanding their ecosystem in depth.Read more
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Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award for Prof Lianne Benning
Many congratulations to EBI’s Lianne Benning who has won a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. Only 25 awards are made each year and they are given by the Royal Society ‘to individuals of proven outstanding ability to undertake independent, original research’. Back to top
New cleaning protocol developed for future "Search for Life" missions
Work by EBI’s Lianne Benning and fellow scientists on the AMASE (Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expeditions) project, has resulted in the development a new cleaning protocol for space hardware, such as the scoops of Mars rovers, which could be used on future “Search for Life” missions on other planets. The decontamination protocol, tested in the lab and the field, sterilizes and cleans sampling devices such that they have null levels of detectable organic signatures before any samples are collected. The fieldwork that led to this work was partially funded by an EBI small grant to Lianne Benning! For more details click here
Read the paper published in the journal Astrobiology
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Ancient volcanic eruptions caused a global mass extinction.
EBI scientist Prof Paul Wignall is lead author in a recent paper in Science (29th May 2009), which links the Guadalupian (Middle Permian) mass extinction event, as recorded in the marine fossil record for this period, with a massive volcanic eruption in the Emeishan province of South –west China. The study was able to pinpoint the timing of eruption and the subsequent extinctions, because the eruptions occurred in a shallow sea, such that the lava is today sandwiched as a distinct layer of igneous rock between sedimentary rock layers containing fossil records. The layer of fossil rock just after the eruption shows mass extinction of life forms, clearly linking the two events together in a cause-and-effect relationship. This eruption precedes the onset of a major negative carbon isotope excursion, and links to a severe subsequent disturbance of the ocean-atmosphere carbon cycle. This was a collaborative project between scientists from UK and China. Read the Science article here
Read the BBC news item here
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EBI student's work is featured in the university's latest press release!
EBI student Claire McDonald’s PhD work on patterns of herbivory in Antarctic forests from the Eocene period, inferred from insect feeding traces in fossil leaves is featured in the latest press release from the university Read the article here
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Work by EBI scientists in NERC’s Planet Earth Magazine!
The Spring 2009 issue of Planet Earth, NERC’s quarterly periodical, which highlights some of the most important and high impact work in environmental and earth sciences across the UK, features a news item on recent work on carbon sequestration in African tropical forests led by EBI’s Simon Lewis, and an article on the state of the UK uplands by EBI member Mark Reed. Read the articles in Planet Earth here
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EBI research impacts science policy at the highest levels
In 2006, EBI scientists Koos Biesmeijer and Bill Kunin , along with several international colleagues, published a paper in Science where they reported parallel declines in insect pollinators and the plants they pollinate across Europe over the past quarter-century. This highly cited paper was the one of the first pieces of evidence for the global scale of declines in pollinator abundances, warned of the economic impacts of such changes, and noted the need to work urgently towards understanding the reasons for such declines. A recent funding initiative from NERC reflects the importance of this work and highlights how the high-quality work by EBI members is impacting funding and policy at the national and international levels. On April 23rd, NERC in collaboration with a number of funding agencies announced that up to £10 million is to be invested to help to identify the main threats to bees and other insect pollinators. The funding will be made available to research teams across the UK under the Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership, the major initiative by UK funders to help the UK respond effectively to changes to our environment. This is a joint initiative from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Defra, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Wellcome Trust and the Scottish Government.
To see NERC announcement, click here
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Mark Reed of Sustainablity Research Institute win prestigious award!!!!!
Many congratulations to EBI member Mark Reed who has been awarded the ESRC and Young Foundation's Michael Young Prize for 2009 in recognition of the high impact of his environmental change research in Kalahari and UK uplands.
This prestigious prize rewards "the very best early career social scientists whose research has the potential to make a positive and far-reaching impact beyond academia”. Mark's research will enable communities that live and work in the Kalahari and UK uplands to respond adaptively to predicted changes in these ecosystems under changing climate regimes. Back to top Drought negatively impacts the ability of the Amazon forests to store carbon
The March 5th 2009 issue of Science carries a multi-author paper led by EBI's Prof Oliver Phillips on the sensitivity to drought of the Amazon forests. The 30-year study, involving 68 scientists from 13 countries, uses long-term censuses of tree populations (growth and death)in more than 100 plots across Amazonia to show that drought causes massive carbon loss in tropical forests, mainly through killing trees. In normal years the Amazon absorbs nearly 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The drought of 2005 reversed this process and caused an estimated loss of more than 3 billion tonnes of carbon, with tree deaths accelerated most in locations where drought was strongest, and locations subject even to mild drying affected. For more details, click here Back to top
Increasing carbon storage in African rainforests
Research led by EBI member Simon L. Lewis, in collaboration with several international co-authors, shows that carbon storage in mature tropical forests has increased across the African tropics, similar to a pattern found in the Amazonian rainforests, with major implications for the role of tropical forests in carbon storage in a rapidly changing earth. This work is reported in the Febuary 19th 2009 issue of the journal Nature. For more details, click here
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The EBI and the School of Geography are now offering a new MRes (Master in Research) Program entitled 'GLOBAL CHANGE AND THE BIOSPHERE'
In an exciting development, the EBI and the School of Goegraphy are offering a new masters course specifically targeted at enabling interested students onto the first step of a career in global change research.. This master's course offers the opportunity to work alongside leading researchers as part of an active group of some 25 global change scientists and doctoral students, led by Professors Jon Lloyd (plant physiology-biosphere interactions), Oliver Phillips (tropical forest dynamics) and Chronis Tzedakis (Quaternary palaeoecology). The one-year programme involves a mix of subject-based learning, skills training, and extensive research experience. If you are passionate about research and want to contribute new knowledge about global change, this could be the place to start. Click here for details of the course
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Alan Haywood of Earth and Bill Hughes of Biology win prestigious awards!!!!!
Many congratulations to Alan Haywood of Earth and William Highes of Biology, both EBI members who have just been awarded the prestigious Philip Levehulme Prize in recognition of their outstanding research in their respective fields. Each prize brings with it £70,000 for the awardee to spend on their research !!! Back to top
Matt Box is the second EBI student to get his PhD!!!!
Very special congratulations to Matt Box, who in Oct 2008, became the second EBI PhD student to graduate!! Matt's project used Strontium isotopes of pre-Aswan dam River Nile sediment, which is a mixture of both the the Blue and White Nile sediments, as a proxy record for paleaoclimate in this region, and has produced some exciting results.
Good luck and keep up the good work, Matt! Back to top
"GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES- A 'LEED'ING VIEW"- AUGUST 27-29, 2008, LEEDS
Our international symposium in honour of the retirement of Professor Rob Raiswell from the School of Earth and Environment, jointly funded by WUN, the University of Leeds and EBI was, we like to think, a great success. The speakers, both established and upcoming scientists in this field gave some great talks over two and a half days. The informal poster session attracted almost 30 high-quality poster presentations! The delegates, a mixture of students, post-docs and faculty had a lot of interactions and networking over this period, well aided by generous amounts of food and beverage! The details of the event, the talks and posters can be viewed from the link below: Symposium Talks, Posters and Photos
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Dominique Tobler is the first EBI student to get her PhD!!!!
Very special congratulations to Dominique Tobler, who in June 2008, officially became the first EBI PhD student to graduate!! Dominique’s work on the ‘Molecular pathways to biosilicification in Icelandic geothermal hot springs’, has produced some exciting and novel results, and is a great example of the top-quality research generated by the EBI inter-disciplinary PhD studentship program! As of this writing, Dominique's work has been published or is in press in high quality journals. Everyone at the EBI is thrilled to congratulate her on her achievement!! Back to top
EBI Hosts Mini Symposium On Biomineralization
On June 3rd, for our last session of this academic year, EBINS co-hosted with PROF LIANE BENNING of Earth, a mini-symposium on ‘Biomineralization’. This half-day event brought in international, national and local speakers whose presentations covered various aspects of biomineralization in systems where phosphates, carbonates, iron or silica are important. And once again, we rounded off the evening with our now ‘traditional’ Indian buffet dinner. For more details, follow this link Back to top
water@leeds funded!!!!
Congratulations to Professor Joe Holden and colleagues who have been successful in their water@leeds transformation fund bid. water@leeds will bring together more than 50 members of staff at the university to form the largest UK university based research group working on water research. This funding highlights the strategic and policy importance of water related research across the university, and will makes it possible for the group to fund several new faculty and post-doc positions under this research theme.Back to top
EBI Director Mike Krom in a high-profile feasibilty study
Prof Michael Krom has been appointed as the Oceanography expert to take part in a feasibility study, funded by the World Bank, to develop a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. A primary aim of the project is to reverse the present shrinking of the Dead Sea.Back to top
EBI launches a Networking Seminar Series!
Initiated by 2007 EBI students Claire Hutchins and Mark Goddard, the EBI had an inaugural launch for a new seminar series- THE EBI NETWORK SEMINAR, or EBINS series. EBINS aims to bring together EBI members from different member departments to speak on common topics that they address from their different perspectives. More than that, the idea is to create occasions where EBI members from different departments can get together at a common venue and have casual conversations over dinner and refreshments. On this launch event, a series of speakers spoke on the topic of 'Inter-disciplinary research'. While some talked about what this meant and why it is challenging, other speakers presented results from interdisciplinary projects that are ongoing at Leeds. We rounded off the evening with some fantastic vegan food from our local favourite restaurant, Hansa.Back to top
Joe Holden of Geography wins prestigious award!
Congratulations to Joe Holden of EBI who has just been awarded the prestigious Philip Levehulme Prize in "compelling recognition of his research achievements". The prize brings with it £70,000 for Joe to spend on furthering his research! Back to top
'Life on Mars' and Astrobiology Conference in February 2007
Photo: Mars Rover Competition prize giving at The Light, Leeds. The winning entry was from Horsforth School.An exciting programme of events with a Martian theme took place in Leeds in February 2007. Events in the city centre and University were part of the Celebrate Leeds 2007 programme, and all the activities stemmed from the Astrobiology Workshop on 15th to 17th February, led by Liane G. Benning. See links below for details of the events:
- International Astrobiology Workshop more details
- 'Life on Mars' events Build a Mars Rover Competition, Public Talk in Church...more details
- AMASE Art Exhibition in The Light shopping centre, Headrow, Leeds more details
- See the special edition newsletter: EBI Marsletter
Voyage to the bottom of the sea
EBI's Cris Little is on a voyage to the bottom of the sea this autumn. Palaeontologist Cris, ably supported by geochemists Liane Benning, Rob Raiswell, Simon Bottrell and Rob Newton, has been awarded a three year Natural Environment Research Council grant to design and build seafloor fossilization experiments.Photo: Three fossilization experiment cages stacked on top of one another sitting on the Ty hydrothermal vent chimney. Note the high temperature black smoke surrounding the cages and the sulphide chimneys to the right of the image.
Hydrothermal vents communities are dependent on geochemical rather than solar energy sources and this buffers them from almost all major events (e.g. mass extinctions, global climate change). The evolutionary history of vent animals and communities is likely to be very different to almost all other marine biotas, but the only direct evidence for this evolutionary history comes from the fossil record of vent animals, which is sparse. Why do some ancient vent deposits contain fossils which are absent from other vent deposits in the same state of preservation?
In order to investigate this fundamental process, 12 cages made out of biologically non-reactive titanium mesh were deployed in 2005 by manned submersible at vent sites with different chemistries and temperatures in a well known active hydrothermal vent field at 9°N on the East Pacific Rise. Within each of the cages there are identical sets of biological and control materials. The plan for the current cruise is to retrieve subsets of these experiments during a research cruise to 9°N. More fossilization experiments will be placed at nearby vents for collection on subsequent visits during 2007 and 2008. The retrieved experiments from these cruises will be returned to Leeds, where they will be analysed to investigate the nature of the mineralization that has occurred. The new data will allow the scientists to make a model explaining how modern vent fauna become fossilized and allow proper interpretation of the vent fossil record and substantially increase our understanding of evolutionary patterns in this extreme habitat. It will also enable them to find more ancient vent communities to increase the present poor record.
How is the cruise going? Visit the cruise web site
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Ecohydrology Conference: 8th November 2006
EBI hosted an Ecohydrology Conference on behalf of the Pennines Hydrology Group of the British Hydrological Society on November 8th 2006.Conference Programme
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Bee and flower decline linked?
The diversity of bees, and of the flowers they pollinate, has declined significantly in Britain and the Netherlands over the last 25 years according to research led by the University of Leeds and published in Science this Friday (21 July 2006). The paper is the first evidence of a widespread decline in bee diversity. Concerns have been raised for years about the loss of pollination services, but until recently most of the evidence has been restricted to a few key species or a few focal sites. To test for more general declines, an international team of researchers from three UK universities (Leeds, Reading and York) and from the Netherlands and Germany compiled biodiversity records for 100s of sites, and found that bee diversity fell in almost 80% of them. Many bee species are declining or have become extinct in the UK. (See examples of bee decline here.)Lead author, EBI’s Koos Biesmeijer said: "We were shocked by decline in plants as well as bees. If this pattern is replicated elsewhere, the ‘pollinator services’ we take for granted could be at risk, and with it the future for the plants we enjoy in our countryside." The team examined pollinator and plant data, collected by professional and volunteer researchers and naturalists in Britain and the Netherlands, comparing records from before and after 1980. The results showed bee diversity had declined consistently in both countries, whereas the diversity of hoverflies (another group of pollinating insects) stayed roughly constant in Britain, but increased in the Netherlands.
Loss of bee diversity in itself might not be too worrying, so long as other surviving insect pollinators are similar, and capable of pollinating the same flower species. However, this is not the case. The research found for both bees and hoverflies, the 'winners' and 'losers' were consistently different; insects which pollinate a limited range of flower species or which have specialised habitat needs were most often lost. Overall, a small number of common generalist pollinators are replacing a larger number of rarer specialist species. Stuart Roberts from the University of Reading pointed out: "In Britain, pollinator species that were relatively rare in the past have tended to become rarer still, while the commoner species have become even more plentiful. Even in insects, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
There have been parallel shifts in the plant world, with the plants that depend on pollination by bees disappearing too. Bill Kunin, coordinator of the project at the University of Leeds explained: "We looked at plant changes as an afterthought, and were surprised to see how strong the trends were. When we contacted our Dutch colleagues, we found out that they had begun spotting similar shifts in their wildflowers as well."
In Britain, where bee diversity has fallen and hoverflies have at best held steady, there have been declines in 70% of the wildflowers that require insects for pollination. However, wind-pollinated or self-pollinating plants have held constant or increased. The pattern is slightly different in the Netherlands, where bees have declined on average but hoverfly diversity has increased. In that country there has been a decline in plants that specifically require bees for pollination, but not in plants that can make use of other insect pollinators. Thus the plant declines closely mirror those of the pollinators.
This difference between the countries suggests the declines in pollinators and plants are causally linked. The research can’t tell us whether the bee declines are causing the plant declines, or vice versa, or indeed whether the two are locked in a vicious cycle in which each is affecting the other. It’s also not clear as of yet what the ultimate causes of the declines are, although land use change, agricultural chemicals and climate change may be important factors. The researchers hope to clarify these issues with follow-up studies. Dr Biesmeijer said: "Whatever the cause, the study provides a worrying suggestion that declines in some species may trigger a cascade of local extinctions amongst other associated species."
See also BBC news
For more information, contact Koos Biesmeijer Tel: 0113-3432837
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Tropical veg holds clues to climate change
Rainforests and savannas contain 70% of the world’s plants and are critical to the health of our planet. EBI researchers Jon Lloyd, Liane Benning, Pippa Chapman, Doug Parker and Oliver Phillips are involved in a new £1.6m international project, looking at the impact of global warming on these sensitive areas. They think we may be at the start of a cycle of positive feedback, where global warming causes the rainforests to shrink, so increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, raising the Earth’s temperature and magnifying the impact on the rainforests.In an article for the Reporter, Jon Lloyd said "The two major vegetation systems in the tropics are rainforest and savanna. As it gets warmer and drier the rainforest gets invaded by savanna, which has fewer trees and holds less carbon in the soil. Savanna also doesn’t recycle water in the same way as rainforest, so the carbon loss from the savanna is greater and the atmosphere becomes drier."
The project aims to find out under what conditions rainforest and savanna are able to thrive. It’s not a simple question of rainfall: areas in Africa with 1800mm of rainfall a year are rainforest; in South America, areas with the same rainfall are savanna. Other issues such as soils, fertility and drainage must play a part. They will make measurements in Africa, Australia and South America, focusing on ‘zones of tension’ where rainforest and savanna currently grow side by side.
Computer models will be created to look at the impact of changes in tropical vegetation on the Earth system in terms of carbon emissions, temperature and rainfall. These changes will then be fed back into the models to determine their cumulative impact and ultimately predict global climate change. They hope to complete their calculations within five years. If this shows that the level of carbon in the atmosphere is set to increase beyond current estimates it could force a change in international targets for reducing carbon emissions.
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Researchers take the high road to understand changing uplands
Scientists from the universities of Leeds, Sheffield, East Anglia, Durham and Sussex are embarking on research projects worth over £1 million in the Peak District to understand what rural policy changes mean for the future of rural livelihoods and the countryside.Much of Britain's drinking water comes from uplands. They are important for tourism, farming and hunting, and are home to threatened plant and animal species. But the face of our uplands is changing. Farm subsidies have been overhauled; new EU rules regulate land management impacts on water quality; additional public rights of way have been opened; and traditional management practices like heather burning are receiving increasing scrutiny. The potential impacts on rural communities are huge, and nowhere more so than in the Peak District, which lies within an hour's drive for about a third of the UK population. The projects in the Peak District aim to understand how upland communities can respond to these changes. The research is funded by the government's Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme, a research initiative that brings together diverse teams of natural and social scientists with local stakeholders and policy makers. The goal is to identify a choice of options for the future of the countryside that could never have been developed by any of these groups in isolation.
The RELU projects in the Peak District have been launched in collaboration with the Moors for the Future partnership. One project, led by Leeds University, will look at changes to the uplands with respect to moorland burning. In a successful scoping study in 2005, the researchers already uncovered a range of sometimes controversial views about moorland burning, which they fed into Defra’s consultation on burning regulation. The team suggested that by getting people involved in negotiations about the way land managers can respond to future change, it may be possible to reach agreement more easily and with wider acceptance.
Read the press release here.
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News from sunny Antarctica
Jane Francis, Rob Raiswell and Vanessa Thorn recently returned from field work in Antarctica. Sporting tanned faces, they apparently basked in sunshine while we suffered the Leeds winter. See their field report here.Photo: A spectacular ammonite fossil (Grossouvrites gemmatus) from the Late Cretaceous sedimentary sequence on Seymour Island. Size approx 30cm in diameter.
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Ouse to twin with Indus
The River Basin Processes and Management research cluster in Geography led by Joseph Holden and Pippa Chapman have agreed a Twinning agreement with Centre of Excellence for Water Resources Engineering, in Lahore, Pakistan.
Photo: The river Wharfe at Gill Beck Mouth, in the Ouse basin. (Joe Holden) The agreement allows us to twin the River Ouse basin of Yorkshire with the Upper Indus River basin in northern Pakistan. It is funded by the European Commission with support from partners across the world. It allows our staff to visit the Indus and for staff from Pakistan to visit the Ouse to exchange ideas and research approaches. The mission will foster international collaboration with major organisations within both countries and encourage the sharing of knowledge and resources.
Rizwan Nawaz of the School of Geography, who is leading the twinning arrangement said "Over the coming years both river basins will face similar challenges particularly as a result of climate change. Extreme events such as the 1992 Indus flood resulting from the highest intensity of rainfall ever recorded in the subcontinent, and the 2000 Ouse flood are expected more often in future. Due to changes in weather patterns, extended drought periods are also set to rise in both basins increasing the pressure on water resources. The problems facing the Indus basin will be particularly severe due to population growth. Over the years, both basins have seen the implementation of various river basin management plans - some have been successful whilst others have not, and it is hoped that sharing such information will benefit both sides. I am confident that the River Basin Processes and Management research cluster's expertise in the School of Geography on environmental monitoring, flood/drought prediction and water resource management will ensure a very successful twinning"
Photo: River Indus. (Marco Prins, Livius) Joseph Holden said "The Indus basin is a very important region for water resources with an estimated 90 million people depending on it and it is a great privaledge that we will be able to share the water expertise and cutting edge science that we are developing at the University of Leeds not only with the whole of Yorkshire but also with our partners in Asia."
The approval to fund this twinning agreement was made by an international panel of experts who met in Mexico during the 4th World Water Forum in March 2006.
JH, April 2006
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Research grant success
Here's a selection of the many recent EBI-related research grant successes.Emanuel Gloor, our very own EBI fellow, is lead investigator on the AMAZONICA NERC consortium grant , funded to the tune of over £3 million. The objectives of this large project are to (i) quantify the carbon balance of the Amazon Basin and its associated contribution to global atmospheric change. (ii) apportion and understand the processes contributing to the net Basin-wide flux observed and (iii) allow improved assessments of the likely role of the Amazon Basin in contributing and/or alleviating future planetary change.
Quantifying the Role of Tropical Forests in the Global Carbon Balance and Future Climate Change. Oliver Phillips and Jon Lloyd have just received a new grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which brings international recognition of the important work being done by their Amazon Forest Inventory Network (RAINFOR) group here at the University of Leeds. The foundation has just awarded them £2.2 million for their propsed work on the role of tropical forests in the global carbon balance.
TROBIT is a multidisciplinary consortium investigating tropical biomes and climate change. Worth a total of £1.6M, it will bring approximately £500k into Leeds University. The consortium includes partners in five other UK universities and research centres, plus institutions in Africa, Australia and South America. The partners from Leeds include EBI members Jon Lloyd, Liane Benning, Pippa Chapman, Simon Lewis and Oliver Phillips.
Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU)
RELU is an interdisciplinary social and natural science approache to UK rural land use research. Out of 10 bids funded nationally, two are led by EBI researchers from Leeds: ‘RELU Organics’, worth £850k, and ‘RELU Uplands’, worth £666k.The aims of the programme are to enable researchers to work together to investigate the social, economic, environmental and technological challenges faced by rural areas, encourage social and economic vitality of rural areas and promote the protection and conservation of the rural environment. EBI members include Tim Benton, Steve Carver, Pippa Chapman, Stephen Cornell, Joe Holden, Klaus Hubacek, Brian Irvine, Bill Kunin, Steve Sait and Andy Turner. RELU is jointly funded by NERC, ESRC and BBSRC.
Mineral Interface Reactivity MIR Project
The Mineral-fluid Interface Reactivity Early Stage Training Network (MIR-EST) is comprised of five universities located in Germany, France, Spain, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. Liane Benning is Vice Coordinator, her area of responsibility being Nanobiogeochemistry. The project is worth approximately 2.3 M Euro divided among 5 teams. 464k Euro will come to Leeds together with 2 PhD students and 1 MSc student.
WUN Weathering Science Consortium WSC
The WUN Weathering Science Consortium is a UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded grouping of 3 UK Universities in partnership with government agencies and international institutions. Liane Benning is the Leeds coordinator, and is responsible for biological weathering interactions. The grant is worth a total of £1.7M of which 460K comes to Leeds.
Assessing the impacts of the Amazonian drought more details
Oliver Phillips and Jon Lloyd have won a NERC Urgency grant to study the impact of the 2005 Amazon drought on the forest. Sandra Patino (visiting research fellow) and Tim Baker (NERC research fellow) are also involved, together with Simon Bottrell and Rob Newton in Earth Sciences, colleagues from Oxford, and numerous collaborators across South America and Europe. It was only submitted in November and approved within 6 weeks through the Urgency route, and means that Leeds Geography is now the proud holder of the first ever 'Full Economic Cost' grant that NERC have awarded. £139k to Leeds.
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Our students win awards!
Congratulations to our EBI students who have gained awards recently.Congratulations to Dominique Tobler who has recently been awarded a WUN (World University Network) Research Mobility Programme grant to spend 3 months (Sept - Nov 2008) in the Geosciences Department at Penn State University in the group of Prof. Kate Freeman to learn about organic geochemistry and to carry our research related to her proposal 'Biomarkers preserved in silica sinters as proxies for biogeochemical paleoenvironments'.
Congratulations to Claire McDonald who has won the prize for best talk at the Royal Entomological Society Postgraduate Forum 2008, Rothamsted Research Institute.
Claire McDonald has been successful with five applications for fieldwork costs. She was awarded £1000 from the Glasgow Educational & Marshall Trust and gained another £1000 by winning the Sylvester Bradley Award from the Palaeontological Association.The Geological Society of London have also given her £1070 from the Timothy Jefferson Field Research Fund.
Claire has won a place with the Tropical Biology Association on their course in Tanzania in the summer. These one month long courses highlight up to date concepts and techniques in tropical ecology and conservation. The TBA selects equal numbers of European and African participants (approximately 24 participants on each course) representing around 12 or 13 different countries. The courses include lectures, seminars, and field work, which aims to demonstrate how current concepts are being approached and the techniques used in the field. The latter half of the course focuses on project research design. Participants get the opportunity to design and undertake their own research project, which is written up and presented as a paper at the end of the course.
These awards, together with £2325 from Antarctic Science and £1000 from the Transantarctic Association, will enable Claire to complete her fieldwork in Chile.
Congratulations to Dominique Tobler who has recently been awarded a WUN (World University Network) Research Mobility Programme grant to spend 3 months (Sept - Nov 2008) in the Geosciences Department at Penn State University in the group of Prof. Kate Freeman to learn about organic geochemistry and to carry our research related to her proposal 'Biomarkers preserved in silica sinters as proxies for biogeochemical paleoenvironments'. Dominique Tobler has been awarded a prestigeous scholarship to participate in the 2006 International GeoBiology Summer Course. The course is funded by the Agouron Institute, the US National Science Foundation and the Wrigley Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Dominique is one of only 20 students who have been awarded this scholarship and also one of the few international students accepted.
The course consists of an 5 week summer school (June 9th and July 14th) which offers intensive interdisciplinary training and practical experience at the interface between the fields of biology and earth sciences on an advanced level. Participants will get hands-on experience on modern research methods in geobiology and participate in small research groups solving current questions relevant to the field. The lectures and laboratory work will be complemented by field work to be carried out in the Yellowstone National Park and Cataline Island Research Station.
Dominique has also been awarded a Sir Eric Rideal Travel Bursary towards attendance at the 16th Annual V.M. Goldschmidt Conference to be held in Australia from 27 August to 1 September 2006.
Luciana Génio has been successful with an application to the Synthesis scheme to work for 10 days in the autumn on the extensive collection of mussels in the Museum of Natural History, Paris. The Synthesis scheme is an integrated European infrastructure for researchers in the natural sciences to give access to collections in 11 major museums. It is competitive and successful applicants get their research and living costs paid while working at their chosen site.
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EBI Students: where are they now?
Matthew Box (supervised by Michael Krom and Bob Cliff)
I finished my PhD in the winter of 2008 and formally graduated the following summer. My thesis title, ‘Response of the Nile and Sahara to Millennial-Scale Climate Change’ examined how the mass flux from the river Nile and the Saharan desert reaching the eastern Mediterranean Sea have fluctuated since the last glacial maximum and how this related to past changes in vegetation and climate.After my PhD I worked as a graphic designer and fieldtrip demonstrator for the University of Leeds before gaining a position as a Research Assistant in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The Open University. My work at the OU is focussed on constructing a comprehensive set of multi-proxy climate records from a series of stalagmites from Flores, Indonesia. The work will examine climate variability and corresponding vegetal responses via stable isotope and lipid biomarkers analysis at around the time of the extinction of Homo floresiensis at the turn of the Holocene. In addition, we will extend the record back into the Pleistocene and look for the influence of hominims in the region as Flores lies in a key migration pathway from Asia to Australia.
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Nicholas Berry
After finishing his PhD in 2008 Nicholas started work as an ecosystem analyst, and was a founding member of Ecometrica, an independent company working at the interface between science, policy, and action. Nicholas leads a team that provides technical support for the quantification and assessment of ecosystem services. Recent work has included the use of remote sensing, forest inventory, forest change modeling, and participatory methods to assess the benefits from projects aiming to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). In the last year he has worked on REDD and community-based agroforestry projects in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, and is currently involved in a real-time evaluation of Norway's International Forest and Climate Initiative, a fund which contributes around $500 million per year to support global REDD efforts. Nicholas chairs the Plan Vivo Technical Advisory Group, supporting the development and implementation of payments for ecosystem service projects that benefit forest dependent communities.Back to top
Mark Goddard
Mark is just at the end of Year 2 of his studies and has received much positive publicity over his first publication (cover story in February edition of Trends in Evolution and Ecology). This was featured on School and University webpages and the press release etc. It can be found in the SEE news archive.At present Mark is wandering around gardens in North Leeds doing his fieldwork.
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Sophie Fauset – (supervised by Tim Baker and Keith Hamer) "Two decades of change in Ghanaian forests"
The aim of my project is to capitalize on the unique dataset available from Ghanaian forests to investigate potential global threats to the carbon sink stored in tropical forests. Tropical forests are known to be a crucial component of the global carbon cycle, containing around 40% of terrestrial biomass. Therefore any changes to this system may have crucial consequences for the global carbon balance. A twenty year data set is available from Ghana with broad spatial coverage of a wide range of climates. Using this data it is possible to address the effects of global changes on the carbon sink in Ghana’s forests, providing a model system of the tropics as a whole. The key questions to be addressed concern the abundance and distribution of lianas (woody vines), changes in forest species composition due to drought and the effects of forest fires on forest regeneration. These questions are relatively understudied given their global importance, with research particularly lacking Africa. Research from the Neotropics has shown increases in liana abundance but very little data is available. As lianas are known to reduce tree growth rates and increase tree mortality, it is vital to understand whether this increase in liana abundance is occurring globally and what impacts it may have. Changing temperature and rainfall patterns may affect the species composition of tropical forests, perhaps leading to increased abundance of species with a dry habitat preference. This compositional shift, if it is occurring, may also affect the carbon sequestration function of tropical forests. Due to increasing activities in tropical regions, such as farming and logging, as well as climate change, the occurrence of fires in tropical forests has increased in the past decades. These fires are known to have a negative impact on forest biomass, however only shorter time scales have been assessed before. Overall, this project aims to assess the occurrence of these threats in Ghana, as well as the impacts these threats cause in order to give insight into the future of tropical forests and the consequences for the global carbon cycle.Since the beginning of the project in October 2008 two successful field trips have been completed collecting data for 15 permanent sample plots from seven forest reserves across a rainfall and soil fertility gradient. With past data dating back to 1990 20 years of forest dynamics can be analysed. Two of the plots have suffered wildfires, one in 1983 and another in 1995, and both are linked to unburnt control plots in the same reserve. An additional field campaign is planned for September 2010 to expand the fire dataset. Strong collaborations have been made with the Forestry Commission of Ghana and the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG). Presently data is being analysed to assess spatial and temporal trends in liana abundance, the relationships between lianas and host trees and the impacts of forest fires on dynamics and species composition.
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