At Queen’s University Belfast, Prof Mark Emmerson, Dr Nessa O’Connor (of CBESS) , Prof Jaimie Dick and Dr Tancredi Caruso recently won an award from NERC, part of their Summer of Science and 50th anniversary celebrations.
Outreach
Winter 2014/15: grappling with data
Over the winter months, the CBESS team has been busy finishing processing the vast amounts of data collected in the filed during the winter and summer field campaigns in 2013. I am very happy to report that we are nearly there! As reported in the Autumn up-date this is producing an increasingly complex data-set that will be explored in Theme 2 and 3: scale effects and context dependency on biodiversity and ecosystem service relationships.
University of St Andrews: a summer of outreach
June presented two excellent opportunities to share our passion for science with young students from the Fife area.
Summer 2014: a summer of socio-economics
This has been a summer of socio-economics for CBESS, with the second recreational stakeholder workshop being held in Barrow-in-Furness in May. The workshop was ran in collaboration with the Morecambe Bay Partnership, who found us the amazing Art Gene venue and did an excellent job of recruiting participants and promoting the event. Representatives from multiple recreational sectors attended from around the Morecambe Bay area and helped us understand how they use the bay recreationally.
Spring 2014: and the sample processing continues…
This Spring, CBESS partners have continued full steam with processing of the 20,000+ ecological samples that were collected during the field campaigns last year. Both Bangor and Southampton Universities have provided updates which give an insight into the processing process.
CBESS/MASTS: post-graduate training, feedback from last year’s participants
Applications for the 2015 ‘Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Assessment’ training course are open until 14th November 2014. In February we hope to build on the success of the 2014 course and we have made some additions and improvements to the program based on the feedback we received from students. We are also lucky to have an international component in the form of Professor Stefano Lanzoni from the University of Padova.
Autumn 2013: ecological data collection is over
In August 2013, the CBESS Team began the final push to collect data for the Summer Field Campaign in Morecambe Bay and the Essex Marshes. Conditions were very different to winter with fieldworkers suffering sunburn and dehydration, compared to suspected frost bite!
CCRU: the salt marsh experiment
Salt marshes as sea defences
Salt marsh ecosystems are important to the local, regional, and global community for many reasons, these include providing a buffer against waves and tidal currents.
BESS-ESPA: framing ecosystem services
The UK’s Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) and Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) programmes are holding a one-day event in London to bring together our research communities and users of research to discuss ways of framing the ways that ecosystem services deliver benefits to society.
You will be able to stream the event live, if you are unable to make it. Please go to the BESS News Page for more info.