Wee beasties star at Loch Leven Discovery Day

Midge larvae were among the tasty morsels on the menu at the recent Loch Leven Discovery Day, held on Sunday 15 June. Staff from CEH's Edinburgh site were there to join in the fun: they explained the Loch Leven food web to more than 400 visitors and helped local children pick out "wee beasties" from amongst the plants and gravels, and view them under the microscope.



Local children were able to view insects from Loch Leven under the microscope.
Photo: Laurence Carvalho



An exciting new feature this year was a live video feed from the nearby loch that showed several small fish making their screen debut. Overall, the day was a great success, with lots of interest being shown in CEH's work on the loch.

CEH staff were helped by a supporting cast of water boatmen, and of caddis, mayfly and beetle larvae, who all performed admirably to entertain the crowds. A particular highlight was a water mite voraciously eating the head of a midge larva, which enthralled local children whilst disgusting their parents!

Discovery Day is an annual event organised by Scottish Natural Heritage to entertain and educate the local community about the biodiversity living in and around Loch Leven.

Read more about CEH's work on Loch Leven on our website.

Laurence Carvalho

Thanks to Laurence Carvalho, Helen Woods and Bernard Dudley for their efforts on the day.

Scottish Natural Heritage

We're going on a Bug Hunt!

Two of our PhD students, Scott McKenzie and Helen Hicks, were out and about at Brownsover Community School near Rugby this week, where they organised and led a hugely successful Bug Day. Read Scott's account of the day below:

"Why do ladybirds have spots?"

I was stumped. It was all going so well! In the past, I'd fended away probing questions from top academics at international conferences regarding my own PhD. Previously that morning, I had explained why some caterpillars were brightly coloured but others just looked like sticks, but this one had me scuppered. I came up with a few possibilities, avoiding going into too much detail about Natural Selection. The seven-year-old ecological prodigy seemed satisfied with my response and we moved on. Phew! 

I was at Brownsover Community School and in front of me were 60 cross-legged six and seven-year-olds eager for information on the favourite bugs and beasties. Some months previously I had been asked to organise a “Bug Day” at the school near Rugby. With the recent cold weather I realised that undertaking such a venture could be quite a challenge, as not much insect life will be out-and-about. Regardless, I jumped in with both feet. I have worked with children before and it is incredibly rewarding to think (if slightly naively) that you are inspiring the next generation of ecologists – the perfect pick-me-up to the recent miserable weather! I set about organising an action-packed and fun-filled day for the children.

 

Children from Brownsover Community School look for
minibeasts around their school, armed with ID sheets
and pooters.

The morning session consisted of an interactive presentation that illustrated the diversity of insects all over the world, ranging from stag beetles to pond skaters and katydids to termites. The ID skills of many of the children were impressive to say the least, with one child correctly identifying a water scorpion! The same child informed the rest of the class that a woodlouse was not an insect and was more closely related to a lobster. Pupils and teachers alike looked at me expecting to say how wrong he was, but I nodded in agreement, impressed.

Pupils line up to empty their minibeast finds for the whole
class to admire.

A drawing task followed the barrage of questions the presentation had evoked. Using what they had just learnt about the diversity of insects, I asked them to draw their “Ultimate Bug”. I wanted them to tell me where it lived, what it ate and what special features they had. They could draw on all the attributes we had just been discussing; some had huge eyes on stalks and were covered in spines, others lived in water and ate fish (but still had huge wings!). One even had no eyes because it just lived in tunnels eating worms. Needless to say their imagination ran riot and they came up with some interesting and spectacular specimens. 

The next task was a classic “bug hunt”. With pooter and ID sheets in hand they set about stone-turning and leaf-litter-rummaging around the school grounds in search of some of the minibeasts they had seen during the morning. To encourage concentrated searching we had hidden a number of plastic bugs around the school in places where invertebrates might be concealed. If a pupil found one, they were rewarded with a wiggly worm (sweet). After 45 minutes we had amassed an impressive array of bugs and beasties, including 7-spot ladybirds and some impressive looking centipedes. By this time tummies were rumbling and lunch was upon us.

Here's one I made earlier...

The afternoon task was to make themselves a self-contained decomposer community from a 2-litre plastic bottle. In true Blue Peter style, I had taken in “one I had made earlier” (it is now adorning my desk in the CEH student room). The top of the bottle was cut off and filled with a handful of soil and some dead leaves and sticks. The children then added their own detritivorous invertebrates including woodlice and millipedes. I’ve always thought it is easy to enthuse kids about certain minibeasts: colourful butterflies and pretty ladybirds, for example. I think it’s much more difficult to get them excited about drab, dull things.  I had my work cut out, but I think I managed to win them over! Sooner or later they were handling woodlice as excitedly as if they were exotics in a zoo! 

Pupils create their very own decomposer mesocosm,
 with a little help from Helen Hicks.

Pupils inspecting a decomposer community
mesocosm, and realising how awesome
woodlice are!

Whilst some held woodlice, others were peering into water-filled trays containing various aquatic invertebrates we had collected the previous day. There were lots of “wriggly things” and also many things “that looked like some stones”, all of which were received well by the children. Also on this “hands-on” table were some stick insects I had acquired the week previous. Once one child had an insect clambering over their hand they encouraged other, more timid, children to do the same. After a short while the stick insects had made their way over the hands of most of the children (and some braver teachers) in the class. It was great seeing children impart their knowledge onto their peers. This was mainly in the form of “you have to be gentle with them as their legs might come off”. Thankfully, no stick insects succumbed to this fate and all the children were, indeed, gentle.

It was fast approaching the end of the school day and all that was left was to suggest a few things they could do around their own gardens and the school to help insects. This included planting wild flowers and butterfly-friendly plants and building somewhere nice and warm for bugs to overwinter. I had been genuinely impressed with the high levels of enthusiasm and attentiveness shown by all the pupils throughout the day and I rewarded the top entomologist with their own mini-microscope. 

Happy (and exhausted!) ecologists with
satisfied pupils.

It was an incredibly rewarding and satisfying day for all, if quite tiring! I really do think it emphasises the importance of speaking to children about ecology in a fun and informative way. It was an equally educational day for us and I have learnt much from the experience. I'm looking forward to similar opportunities in the future!  

Scott McKenzie and Helen Hicks

See more photos in our Flickr set

INTERACTing at the edge of the world

A guest blog by Dr Andy Sier on CEH's involvement in the EU-funded INTERACT project.

My colleague, Jan Dick, and I have just had the good fortune of travelling to Greenland. This was our first time in the country, and it was a memorable experience. But first, you’re probably wondering "why Greenland?", so let me explain.

We’re involved in a project, funded by the European Union, called INTERACT (short for International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic). This is a network of 33 terrestrial field bases in northern Europe, Russia, USA, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Scotland. INTERACT is designed to build capacity for research and monitoring in the European Arctic and beyond, by increasing  access to these research stations and facilitating cooperation between the project’s partners. INTERACT is actively building a vibrant Arctic environmental research community.

Members of the INTERACT project. 



The UK’s only site in the INTERACT network is in the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland. Long-term environmental monitoring of the site is carried out by CEH and Scottish Natural Heritage as part of the UK Environmental Change Network. It’s also part of the GLORIA programme examining temperature effects on vegetation across alpine Europe. So, there is a history of environmental research in the area. Our site is one of the most southerly in INTERACT, the northernmost site being at 83° N on Ward Hunt Island, Canada. Jan represents the Cairngorms site in INTERACT and we are both involved in the project’s outreach activities.

The Cairngorms ECN site, which is part of the INTERACT network
of Arctic and subarctic research sites.

Each year project members gather for an annual meeting held at one of the research stations. Our hosts this time were the Greenland Institute for Nature Research in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland.

The Greenland Institute for Nature Research, hosts for the
INTERACT meeting.
(Photo by Riku Paavola)

Flying over Greenland for the first time was incredible. My first sight of what is the world’s largest island (at over two million km²) was of spectacular jagged peaks rising up from the surrounding ice and snow. Between these mountains snaked glaciers, deeply scarred by crevasses. Beyond this coastal strip was the Greenland ice cap, a wide plain of featureless ice that is two miles thick in places. The whole scene appeared incredibly beautiful but also fragile; I found myself thinking about the greenhouse gas emissions required to get us to Nuuk, and their effects on this Arctic wilderness.

Mountains in eastern Greenland.
(Photo by Andy Sier)

A glacier in eastern Greenland.
(Photo by Andy Sier)

We touched down at Kangerlussuaq, just north of the Arctic Circle, where the outside temperature was a chilly -29 °C. By comparison, Nuuk, being further to the south and nearer the coast, was a mere -8 °C.



Small iceberg in the waters around Nuuk.
(Photo by Riku Paavola)



Great progress is being made within INTERACT. I think this is largely due to the energy of those involved and the wonderful team spirit. Although I’m a newcomer to the group, I really feel among friends at INTERACT meetings, and we all seem to feed off each other’s enthusiasm. INTERACT can measure its success by the numerous research stations who are now joining as "observer stations". Ten such sites have joined already and more are in the pipeline. They all see the benefits of working together, sharing ideas and learning from other people. To me this is capacity building in action: helping to overcome the challenges of working in extreme environments and creating better facilities for the research that is so vital in this fast-changing region of our planet.

Together with our colleagues Lis and Christer, we presented our outreach work to the team. We’ve been busy on many fronts, including talking to school children and local and indigenous people. While in Nuuk, for example, we discussed hunting and fishing with two residents, a hunter and a government wildlife officer. We’ve also been creating educational hiking routes using the ‘Earthcache’ concept, developing online resources and extending our reach via social media.

A local fisherman and hunter addressed project members
(Photo by Andy Sier)

Greenland encapsulates many of the issues that make projects like INTERACT so essential. Changes are happening fast, with concerns over the fate of the Greenland ice cap and melting sea ice, increasing interest in oil and mineral exploitation, a rising population, impacts on animals and plants and changes to traditional ways of life. It may seem remote, but the Arctic is closer than we think, for its future will affect us all.

The population of Greenland is 56,000 and rising. Nuuk, the capital
is expanding rapidly. There is an acute shortage of housing, so a lot
of new apartment blocks like these are being built.
(Photo by Andy Sier)

Old Nuuk has many wooden buildings.
(Photo by Andy Sier)

Additional information

There is more information about INTERACT on the project website. The Outreach section (developed by Andy) features an image gallery and links to INTERACT’s Arctic Research blogs and Facebook page.

Find out more about the UK’s Environmental Change Network at http://www.ecn.ac.uk/.

Staff page of Dr Andy Sier at CEH

Staff page of Dr Jan Dick at CEH

To tweet or not to tweet, is that the question?

In which CEH Media Relations Manager Dr Barnaby Smith examines how CEH is using social media, and makes a prediction for the future.

Some years ago I was a young academic balancing the competing demands of fieldwork commitments, paper and report writing and grant applications, with the occasional carrot thrown my way in the form of a trip to a conference. At said conference I would share the results of my labours to a usually small, possibly uninterested, audience, who, if I was lucky, asked a couple of relevant questions in the few minutes at the end before everyone headed for the bar.

In 2012 things are different...a young postdoc student winds up their social media accounts, slaps their data and preprints in the institutional repository, and networks their outputs across the web with people they've never met from countries all over the world. Their research is discussed openly by a wide range of audiences and can attract media coverage and interest from policy makers prior to the peer-review publication. Once it makes its way to the pages of the journal the expectation, at least from 1 April 2013 in the UK, is that the paper will be open access for all to read for free.

In ten years we've moved from what could be described as a static, linear, 'closed' system to one that embraces dialogue, proactive and reactive engagement, and an openness to communicate all aspects of the work. There have been many ups and downs during the transition but the science community has, in the main, decided to embrace the rapid changes to how the rest of the world operates, and make the best of them.

Over the last few years CEH scientists have been playing catch up with these new ways of operation. Corporately, we launched our first twitter account just over two years ago (@CEHScienceNews) and supplemented it in 2011 with @CEHPaperAlerts, which is a dedicated feed publishing links to our peer-reviewed paper outlets. The CEHScienceNews blog was launched in January of this year, and CEH also has a presence on flickr, facebook and youtube.

Importantly, however, individual scientists from CEH have also jumped into the social media world.  @UKLadybirds, aka Dr Helen Roy, leads the way on twitter but around 20 CEH staff and students are now regularly tweeting about their activities, with many more participating on a more infrequent basis. A recent convert is Professor Alan Jenkins, Science Director of our Water Programme. Various projects involving CEH are using twitter and facebook to communicate their work. Examples include the Scottish Freshwater Group and the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme. Our scientists have participated in "live reporting" from scientific conferences (becoming the norm, whether speakers like it or not). This development is having an interesting range of impacts on long-held relationships between scientists, publishers and scientific journals, testing the ‘Ingelfinger’ rule to its limits.

The world is changing rapidly and, at CEH, we are changing with it. One could hope that life will go back to the old days, when one could present your latest work at a conference and be confident that it would go no further than the 50 people in the room, at least until you published the Nature paper two years later. This is almost certainly unrealistic. Instead we need to work out how best to use the new ways to our advantage, making sure that the science, the science community and those that pay for and use the results derive maximum benefit.

Scientists have different views on whether the new ways of doing things are good or bad but, unless the Christmas episode of Dr Who is reality rather than fiction, I'm pretty sure we won't be going back in time. Open discussion of our research, in real time, is here to stay.

This is our final blog of 2012. Thank you for reading and Happy Christmas. We'll be back early in 2013 with more news from behind the scenes at CEH.

Barnaby Smith

Citizen science - sharing the excitement

In a guest blog, ecologist Michael Pocock of CEH shares his enthusiasm for citizen science.

There is a buzz of excitement around citizen science currently. At its best citizen science can allow excellent engagement of people with science and nature, and it can be real science.

Last week, scientists at the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and Natural History Museum published a review of citizen science [PDF], which looks at the current state of citizen science, looks back on its history, and looks forward to the future potential of citizen science, including the use of technology.

Knowing all about citizen science is one thing, but knowing how to do it is another – so we also wrote a "how to" Guide to Citizen Science [PDF] which includes really practical advice based on our experience and all the evidence we collected during the review. Both publications were commissioned by the United Kingdom Environmental Observation Framework (UKEOF) and can also be downloaded from their website.

Of course, the things that today we call "citizen science" are not brand new. In Britain, the recording of animals and plants by volunteers has been going on for centuries, especially since the time of people like John Ray (the "father of natural history"). This year is the 50^th anniversary of the publication of the Atlas of the British Flora – with the monumental, magnificent effort of botanists that provided the data. Over the past 35 years, the Biological Records Centre at CEH has been publishing atlases of animal and plant groups at the rate of three per year. Many of those atlases now are repeat surveys, so we can chart the changing distributions of animals and plants. Clearly, volunteer data collection is much older than the term "citizen science".

However, the future of citizen science is looking exciting. There are lots of technological innovations (which especially appeals to the geek in us: how about plugging a pollution sensor into your smartphone, do-it-yourself remote sensing with a camera attached to a kite or harvesting twitter messages to track the spread of tree diseases?). There is a huge diversity of projects that allow mass participation; simply download an app and you can use your smartphone as a handheld data recorder to contribute to real science! But there is also lots of fantastic face-to-face engagement, which provides a quality of engagement almost impossible via the internet. Volunteers can provide data, but they can also get involved with analysing data and interpreting results. And citizen science is not limited to professionals asking volunteers to do something – more and more volunteers are working collaboratively with scientists, so that communities get answers to the questions that are important to them. Finally, the data collected by volunteers (with the appropriate checks and balances for quality control) is becoming increasingly trusted and used by scientists and policy-makers.

I’m passionate about citizen science. It provides us, as society, with the data we need to address important questions around environmental change. It also provides a way in which anyone can get involved in science and, in many cases, to get engaged with their natural world. Citizen science, at its best, is real science and potentially life-changing engagement (oh, and it is great fun!) We hope that our enthusiasm for citizen science shines through the Report and the Guide!

Dr Michael Pocock

Additional information

Dr Michael Pocock is an ecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. He was one of the team of authors on the two new publications about citizen science commissioned by UKEOF and written by CEH and the Natural History Museum mentioned in the article. The Understanding Citizen Science & Environmental Monitoring project was led by Dr Helen Roy of CEH. 

Read more about the new citizen science publications in CEH's news story

National BioBlitz Conference

A guest blog by naturalist, ecologist and entomologist Richard Comont who was a participant at the second National BioBlitz Conference held on 24 October 2012. Richard is working on a PhD in ladybird population ecology at CEH, Rothamsted Research and Oxford University.



Richard on stage at the 2012 National
BioBlitz conference, discussing the
naturalist's view of bioblitzes



Six AM is not a time I naturally choose to be active. But active I am, roused from the depths of slumber by the tail-end of Farming Today and quickly on the road bound for the local railway station.  Once there, the early-morning lethargy is dissipated by a Large Wainscot moth discovered snoozing at the station lights. Not long to admire it though: I’m soon en route to Bristol for the National BioBlitz Conference 2012. 



The question at this point is always the same: “So what’s a BioBlitz?” Probably the best description is that they’re a kind of ‘Time Team for wildlife’ – unleashing expert naturalists, groups of school children, and the general public on an unsuspecting area of land to find and catalogue as many species as possible in a 24-hour period. (Later, one of our conclusions will be that we need to better publicise the name!)

It’s a select group – 43 people are named on the delegate list – but as it’s running as an offshoot of a larger environmental communications conference (‘Communicate 2012’), there’s plenty of people about – TV marine biologist Monty Halls is spotted heading for the coffee stall before giving the final talk of the day, on experiences filming with Cornish fishermen for his series The Fisherman’s Apprentice.

I’m there to give two talks: one on ‘The naturalist’s view of the bioblitz’, and another publicising the Garden BioBlitz (1/2 June 2013), which I co-run with three friends.  Our idea – taking the Bioblitz concept into people’s own back gardens – using available online resources for ID (such as the Open University’s brilliant iSpot website and the Biological Records Centre’s own iRecord software to collect the records) – seemed to go down really well. At least, I’ve never spent an entire conference lunch break chatting about my talk before!
  

Richard leading a ladybird walk at the 2012 Oxford BioBlitz
(Photo: Science Oxford)

The afternoon is workshops – how to improve bioblitzes, and what the future holds – before Monty’s talk and the long train ride home again.  A great day out with enthusiastic people who love what they do – bring on next year’s bioblitz season!

Richard Comont

Additional information

BioBlitzes in the UK

Record, Research, Respond! – Biological recording in a changing world at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2012

CEH is back at the BBC Gardeners’ World and Good Food Show at the NEC in Birmingham this year, hoping to encourage the gardeners and food lovers amongst you to get involved in biological recording. Scientists will also be on hand to explain more about how the records sent in by volunteers get used for scientific research and in policy making.  The show opened on Wednesday 13 June and runs until Sunday 17 June, so still plenty of time to come along for a visit!



Biological recording in a changing world - the CEH stand!



The UK probably has the best recorded flora and fauna of any country in the world. Much of this is down to the invaluable inputs of amateur recorders. Everyone can contribute records of things they see during their everyday lives, from butterflies and bees to flies and fleas – websites and mobile phone apps are making the process even quicker!




Insect specimens can be viewed up close and under the microscope

 

Biological records submitted are used to form initial distribution maps. The first national atlas was the Atlas of the British Flora, published 50 years ago in 1962 – members of the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) are at our Gardeners’ World stand to explain more about this ground-breaking publication and the legacy it created, as well as chat more generally about topics such as wildflowers.



Members of the BSBI were at the stand discussing wildflowers and
historical botany recording.



Scientists at CEH and other research institutes use this wealth of biological data within research projects that look to develop answers to the complex environmental issues facing the planet. Scientists from two such projects, the Conker Tree Science Leaf Watch and the UK Ladybird Survey, are on the stand to discuss their own experiences while our displays of heathland plants in decline and urban plants on the increase represent some of the environmental changes that have been detected thanks to biological records.



Cream-spot ladybird larva under the microscope.

 

Scientific discoveries help to inform, conserve
and restore the environment



Please pop by for a visit to learn more and play biodiversity Jenga! The stand is number GFW3 in Hall 19 of the NEC.

Postscript: added 27 June 2012

We were delighted with the wonderful response and interest from visitors to the stand over the five days of the show. What's more, our stand won a Highly Commended award from the organisers! You can view lots more photos on our Flickr set (link below).

Additional information

View more photos from our stand on Flickr

Biological Records Centre

Botanical Society of the British Isles

BBC Gardeners' World Live

mySoil free smartphone app

Posted by Paulette Burns

Pollinators, the public and putting your MSc project in the hands of the elements

Staff and students from CEH are heavily involved with the first ever national farm pollinator survey on 17 June as part of Open Farm Sunday. In this week’s guest blog, newly arrived MSc student Lucy Cornwell describes the role she will be playing in the survey.

I am an MSc student from the University of Leeds, based at CEH’s headquarters site in Wallingford for the summer. My main role is to assist Dr Helen Roy and Dr Michael Pocock with a citizen science pollinator monitoring scheme, a collaboration between the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), Linking Environment And Food (LEAF) and Syngenta. The data will be collected by the public, and the project will run as part of Open Farm Sunday, a nationwide event organised by LEAF. For the past six years, farmers have been opening their doors (and gates!) to educate the public on food production and modern farming issues. This year around 300 farms are taking part on June 17th, and at least 30 of these will also be participating in the pollinator monitoring scheme. Limited funding in biological recording means that citizen science programmes are now an important tool in gathering large and geographically widespread datasets.


The public play an important role in biological recording.



The pollinator activities will consist of two surveys; one making five minute observations of two habitats; crop and non-crop, recording the invertebrate orders which visit the flowers. The second targets five species which are included in current recording schemes and participants simply note whether or not they have seen them. Voluntary experts will be available for assistance and to identify any interesting invertebrates. On the day I will be based at a farm ten minutes from CEH’s Wallingford site, which has invited children from two local schools. Parents will also be coming and we will welcome their help with the survey, adding extra sets of eyes to the task.

Aside from looking at invertebrates, the children will have a chance to learn about crop production, see some large farm machinery and play with the chickens! The focus at this site is keeping the children entertained so they don’t lose enthusiasm and their invertebrate spotting skills. If the weather doesn’t cooperate then the survey will have to take a back seat to other activities, and I will quietly weep into the redundant recording sheets.

The aim of the pollinator monitoring project is to increase public interest in wildlife and biological recording schemes, whilst collecting scientifically useful data on farmland pollinator communities. Once participants have completed the survey they can either enter their data onsite to see it added to the database, or upload it via the Open Farm Sunday website. Headline results will be released in the days following the event, before we look at the data more closely. If all goes to plan then the data should provide patterns of distribution of certain species, and form the basis for a repeatable survey revealing any changes in this over time.  It may also reveal differences in invertebrate community structure geographically, and between different farm types. Our hope is that a better understanding of how pollinators carry out their work in different habitats will help farmers to grow more food sustainably, and lead to a more wildlife friendly landscape.

There are nearly 300 bee species in Britain, most of them
solitary bees such as this one. Together they provide a large
proportion of pollination services in the country.









Overall it should be a really enjoyable day for everyone involved, and a chance for us all to learn something about farmland invertebrates.

Fingers crossed for sunshine!

Posted by Lucy Cornwell

Additional information

More details about the farm pollinator survey from the Open Farm Sunday website.

Staff pages of Dr Helen Roy and Dr Michael Pocock at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

Watch videos about the pollinator survey on our YouTube channel

Bringing science to the local community

Staff from CEH's Edinburgh site organised several events for the local community as part of this year's National Science and Engineering Week 2012. The events comprised two science "Have-a-go" days on March 10 and 17 in Penicuik Town Hall, and two science public lectures on the same days: "Hunting the Higgs" by Dr Andy Buckley (Edinburgh University and CERN), and "To Breathe or Not to Breathe" by Dr Brian Miller (Institute of Occupational Medicine). In a guest blog, event organisers Sue Owen and Mhairi Coyle reveal how the days went:

"Penicuik is a location where it can be hard to attract big audiences to events like these: we were hoping for 50 visitors minimum for each of the Have-a-go Days, and 25 minimum for the evening lectures, but we weren't confident that we could achieve even those numbers. Happily we were proved wrong!


Creating a tornado in a bottle
















We were delighted that all four events were hugely successful - well attended and well appreciated by the public. Attendance at the Have-a-go days was from a wide age range - from toddlers to older people. The first Saturday attracted more than 130 visitors, and the second around 120. (The second day was particularly warm and sunny, which we think prevented a few more people attending!)

Frequent appreciative comments were heard, including "Isn't it great to have something like this in Penicuik?" The first public lecture attracted a full house of 50, and the second attracted an audience of 41. Thus attendance at all events far exceeded expectations. The audiences for the lectures were also very appreciative and indicated that more science lectures like these would be very welcome in Penicuik.

The events took place thanks to the efforts of a 12-strong group of CEH scientists who met twice to brainstorm ideas and plan details, and a sub-group who met to review draft posters and presentations. Activities on the day were based on previous outreach activities devised by Drs Clare Howard and Marsailidh Twigg, as well as activities from Dr Mhairi Coyle derived from her involvement with the Institute of Physics, plus demonstrations of instrumentation, as well as a very popular offering of paper chromatography from trainee science teacher Dr Paul Murray. We also had crafts and story-telling from local art group "Making Space, Penicuik" as well as posters and displays.

In particular the events looked at how pollution affects us and the environment. Using games and simple experiments, we set out to examine how we can see the effects of pollution,  why we should care and some of what we can do about it. Using the theme, "I'm a nitrogen molecule, get me out of here", the effect of too much nitrogen was illustrated and explained in various ways: on the soil through the use of balloons; on biodiversity (with a butterfly card game); on air (NOx skittles) and on water (gloopy fishing!).

Fishing in gloop to show the effects of nitrogen pollution






















The instrumentation demonstrated ways of measuring pollution, while a simple method of analysing pollutants was illustrated with paper chromatography, separating compounds and making beautiful patterns into the bargain. Further pollution effects were demonstrated by "ozone good guy/bad guy", comparing real ozone-damaged plants to healthy ones, and by examing lichen specimens and their tolerance to pollution. The study of pollution carried by wind and water was made fun by making clouds in a bottle, and making a tornado in a bottle - this proved very popular! We also measured wind with sound, and then sensed sound with our fingers.

In addition, we invited the local craft group "Making Space, Penicuik" to participate in both events, making felt butterflies and using felt animals and a felt landscape to tell a story about pollution from fertilizers. This provide a great balance to the activities, particularly for the younger visitors.

From the feedback forms we received, most responders indicated that they would continue to discuss the science after the event and that they were now more interested in science. Everyone who responded indicated that they would attend a similar event in future. Such outreach work is an important element of the "Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research" from the Research Councils UK (RCUK). Overall, we hope our events in Penicuik succeeded in bringing environmental science concepts to a local community that doesn't normally engage with science, in an enjoyable and fun way."

Sue Owen and Mhairi Coyle, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.


Further information

• See more photos from the science "have-a-go" days in Penicuik Town Hall on Flickr
• National Science & Engineering Week

Have a go at science!

National Science & Engineering Week (NSEW) is now a well-established annual event that aims to celebrate science to the public and inspire the next generation of scientists by showing, through fun activities, how science, technology, engineering and maths relate to our everyday lives.

This year’s NSEW is the 18^th to take place and once again a number of CEH scientists are taking part because they see that having a positive connection with the public, particularly with their local communities, is an important part of communicating about the state of the environment and how it is changing. And if that's not enough to convince you why they are happy to give up some of their free time to take part, well it's also because they find it fun!

Here’s a brief rundown of what our colleagues are up to for this year's NSEW - we hope you might have the chance to support them, or attend one of the other thousands of events and activities that are happening across the country for NSEW 2012.

Scientists from our Edinburgh site have organised two science “have-a-go” days at Penicuik Town Hall, on Saturday March 10 and Saturday March 17. Taking this year’s NSEW theme, “Our World in Motion”, as a basis, the events will look in particular at how pollution affects us and the environment. Using games, simple experiments, crafts and story activities, the days will examine how we can see the effects of pollution, ask why we should care and answer some of what we can do about it.

There will be contributions from scientists at CEH, Moray House of Education (Edinburgh University), as well as science creativity from Penicuik’s own “Making Space” from the Penicuik Arts Association. A feast of fun and information for all ages has been promised!

Our Edinburgh staff have also organised two free (but ticketed) science talks at the West Street Arts Centre in Penicuik on the evenings of Saturday March 10 and Saturday March 17. The first talk on March 10 is from Dr Andy Buckley, a CERN scientist, who will chat about aspects of the work with the Large Hadron Collider. The second talk is from Dr Brian Miller, head of Epidemiological research at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh. Brian will discuss aspects of how the environment and pollution affect human health.

Click here for more information on the Penicuik events.

CEH scientists at Bangor, meanwhile, are among those supporting a project that will be taking eight secondary school groups out on field trips to peat bogs during NSEW to learn about carbon storage and climate change. The Moorland Indicators of Climate Change Initiative (MICCI) has now been operating for more than four years and organises events as part of NSEW as well as  other times of the year. The trips will allow the students to carry out fieldwork and gather samples for laboratory analysis.

Our enthusiastic colleagues at Bangor also help to organise the Bangor Science Café, which is proving very popular in the town. Check out their Facebook page for more information on another great way to learn about science. 

Related links

• National Science & Engineering Week 2012

Posted by Paulette.