Last week, post graduate students from across the UK spent a week in Morecambe Bay getting to grips with biodiversity and ecosystem assessment in the coastal margin. The Advanced Training Short Course was funded by NERC and delivered by CBESS and MASTS.
RSPB
CBESS/MASTS: postgraduate and early career training in Feb 2015
The CBESS team is once again returning to Warton Sands in Morecambe Bay to deliver the second Advanced Training Short Course funded by NERC; biodiversity and ecosystem assessment in the coastal margin (BESA)
CBESS Annual Science Meeting 2015
The CBESS team met in York at the start of January for two days to discuss the best way to incorporate scale and context into our data analysis and how to best approach up-scaling biodiversity and ecosystem services and finally the creation of novel tools for Ecosystem Service Provisioning.
University of St Andrews: Morecambe Bay socio-economic workshop
On 8 May, in collaboration with the Morecambe Bay Partnership, CBESS team members from the University of St Andrews, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology (CEH) were in Barrow-in-Furness to host a participatory stakeholder workshop for local recreational users.
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.
RSPB/BTO: the benefits of birds…
BTO and RSPB research scientists are assessing the value of cultural ecosystem services provided by coastal birds, using data from our Wetland Bird Survey (a national, long-term survey where volunteers count birds on estuaries and other wetlands every month). We contribute to two parts of the CBESS project – valuation experiments and assessment of non-monetary value (through deliberative workshops).
CBESS: science site visit
Stakeholders (Natural England, RSPB and Environment Agency) will be attending a sampling open day in Morecambe Bay on Tuesday 6th August. They will meet the researchers that are collecting data on the salt marshes and mudflats.