The Biological Records Centre is 50 years old!

This year the Biological Records Centre (BRC), based within the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, celebrates its 50th anniversary. A celebratory symposium is being held in Bath this week, and birthday cake will be eaten by past and present staff members, as well as a wide range of people who have been associated with BRC over the last five decades.

It's a good time to look back at why the Biological Records Centre came into existence, and why it is still relevant today.

A rich history of biological recording

In the late 17th century the Catalogus Plantarum Angliae was published. Written by Essex
naturalist John Ray, it was effectively the first catalogue of English plants, drawing on observations from his friends. By the 18th century natural history societies had begun to form across the country which focused on species identification and documenting their distribution. These societies attracted a wide range of members ranging from the self-educated to the academically qualified, a mix that continues to this day.

Plants and data processing 

During the first half of the 20th century there were several attempts at creating a national overview of British species, particularly for plants. Plans for a national plant atlas were published in 1940 but delayed by World War Two. Post-war, both the British Association (in 1947) and the Botanical Society of the British Isles conference (in 1950) resolved to map British (and Irish) species and finally, in 1954, the BSBI’s Atlas of the British Flora project was launched with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, and later from the then recently established Nature Conservancy,

Former head of BRC Paul Harding commented recently:

“The atlas (of the British Flora) aimed to record, and map, each species of vascular plant in the 10km squares of the Ordnance Survey National Grid. Perhaps the most critical aspect of the project was the adoption of data processing equipment using punched cards. This enabled 1.5 million records to be sorted and mapped mechanically and the use of information technology became integral to biological recording.”

An international impact on biological recording

Building on the Plant atlas and the mapping skills developed, the Biological Records Centre was established at Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire in 1964, with Franklyn Perring as its head. Over the years BRC has grown, and moved (to Wallingford, Oxfordshire in 2008), and its work has had, and continues to have, an international impact on biological recording.

Professor William Sutherland, the Miriam Rothschild Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Cambridge recently wrote:

“The BRC has been central to much of UK conservation practice and research. The work on climate change impacts on distribution patterns is especially well known. The detailed distribution information means the BRC is central to much of the routine conservation practice in determining priorities and assessing possible threats. The BRC has also been fundamental to the National Biodiversity Network Gateway, an ambitious plan to bring together the main sources of UK biodiversity information.”

Current priorities

Looking forward, Dr David Roy, the current head of BRC, told me that current BRC priorities include:

• Maintaining existing capacity for recording species across a broad range of taxonomic groups to provide the evidence needed to tackle ongoing environmental issues.
• Sustaining partnerships with expert naturalists to help this capacity to grow and adapt, thus increasing the value of biological recording for understanding environmental change.
• Making innovative use of technology and analytical methods, plus integration with other data sources on the ecology of species and the physical environment to enhance the value of recording data.

Happy Birthday BRC. We look forward to your 100th anniversary celebration in 2064!

Barnaby Smith, Media Relations Manager 


Related links

Biological Records Centre website

CEH News: Biological Records Centre, pioneer of citizen science, celebrates 50th anniversary 

Celebrating 50 years of the Biological Records Centre [PDF, 6.62mb]

Ladybirds spotted on Springwatch Unsprung

Two of our CEH colleagues were live on the Red Button and web this week, appearing with Nick Baker on the Unsprung element of the popular BBC Springwatch series. On Wednesday, Dr Steve Thackeray spoke about nature's calendar and climate change, which he investigates as part of the shifting seasons phenology project he leads. Earlier in the week, Dr Helen Roy chatted about biological recording, citizen science and, of course, ladybirds! Read more about Helen's day on the Springwatch set in her blog post below.

BBC Springwatch provided an exquisite insight into the life history of the 2-spot ladybird, Adalia bipunctata, on Monday night (25 May). The short film was inspiringly beautiful. The detailed perspectives on the secret lives of these familiar beetles were accurately and quite brilliantly portrayed.

The life history of the 2-spot ladybird featured on Springwatch 2014.
Photo: Richard Comont

I had the privilege of providing some information on the ecology of ladybirds to the BBC Springwatch production team during the making of this film. The excitement and enthusiasm expressed by Vicky Webb (Producer) and Rob Morgan (Researcher) throughout the filming was fantastic. I remember Vicky calling after the hatching eggs had been filmed. She conveyed such delight at what is undoubtedly one of the (many) most aesthetic moments of the ladybird life cycle. Rob had spotted some exciting signs of parasitism and we enjoyed discussing the likely parasitic suspects. I was extremely excited just anticipating the broadcast of this film, which I knew would be in the first episode of Springwatch 2014. So imagine my excitement when I was invited to contribute to Springwatch Unsprung - and it was an amazing experience!

The buzz about the Springwatch Production “Village” of portacabins, trucks and marquees is incredible. The passion for natural history and science communication is so apparent. All day people are running around with cameras and sound equipment to convey the brilliance and diversity of all aspects of wildlife from the RSPB Minsmere Reserve. Conversations on booming bitterns, the delightful miniature suffocated clover, stalking stoats, glimpses of hawkmoths and, of course, the magical ladybirds provide an inspiring atmosphere.

The bittern hide - looking for some of the stars of Springwatch 2014 at RSPB Minsmere

During the day I was invited to contribute to Springwatch Extra with Euan McIlwraith and we enjoyed a magical afternoon talking about ladybirds, their predators and the ways in which ladybirds interact with many other species. The Minsmere woodland provided the perfect stage. I joined Brett Westwood for a short walk in which he revealed the delights of some tiny and obscure (and, in some cases, rare) plants exploiting the sandy soils on the reserve. It was great to find an 11-spot ladybird, Coccinella undecimpunctata, in amongst these hidden treasures (I have to confess it was Marcus Brent-Smith of webcam fame who actually, and quite literally, unearthed the ladybird).

In the evening I joined the Springwatch Unsprung team. Springwatch Unsprung gives the BBC audience an opportunity to contribute questions and comments on wildlife. It is broadcast immediately after Springwatch and is a fantastically lively show. For me Springwatch Unsprung provided the perfect opportunity to celebrate the legacy of ladybird recording in Britain in conversation with Nick Baker. The quiz, a regular feature on Springwatch Unsprung, was on ladybirds for the night and enabled some hints on identification to be conveyed. It was fantastic to be a small part of Springwatch and I am looking forward to another contribution from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology when Stephen Thackeray is released on Unsprung on Wednesday night.

I would like to thank Sheryl Bawden, Vicky Webb, Rob Morgan, Brett Westwood, Euan McIlwraith, Marcus Brent-Smith, Anna Place, Nick Baker, Anne Gallagher and many others (catering, security, make-up, film crew...) for such a fantastic opportunity and for ensuring I was so welcome.

Helen Roy

The Springwatch Unsprung episodes are available to view on iPlayer for 3 weeks:

Ladybirds (episode 1)

Phenology (episode 3)

Related links

Details of how to download the iRecord Ladybirds app for Android and iOS

UK Ladybird Survey

iRecord

When and how to use citizen science for environmental projects

Helen's staff page at CEH

Steve Thackeray's staff page at CEH

Shifting seasons and ecosystem consequences project

BBC Springwatch

Behind the scenes at the UK’s Environmental Change Network

Dr Andy Sier, science liaison officer
with the Environmental Change Network

Ahead of an anniversary symposium taking place in mid-May, Dr Andy Sier, ECN’s science liaison officer, looks back on the contribution of 20 years of observation and research by the Environmental Change Network.

"The only thing constant in life is change," wrote French author François de la Rochefoucauld. This is certainly true of the environment, which is in a continual state of flux. But that change may be so slow as to be almost undetectable, so we need long-term monitoring and research programmes to gather rigorous data on our ecosystems. This is exactly what the UK’s Environmental Change Network (ECN) has been doing for the last 20 years.

ECN was established in 1992 in response to calls for more long-term, quantitative information about the state of the environment and how it was changing. Initially set up with 12 terrestrial sites, ranging from lowland farms and woodlands to upland moors and mountains, since 1994 we have also taken data from a network of lakes, rivers and streams.

At each site, scientists make a wide range of high frequency, closely located environmental measurements, using standard protocols that let us compare trends at different sites. These data are a unique resource for understanding patterns and causes of environmental change. They support a wealth of environmental research and policy decisions in areas such as climate change adaptation, air and water quality and biodiversity loss.

All these data are stored in a central database at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology containing millions of records. Since the earliest days of ECN, the data have been freely available for non-commercial use including research and teaching, with a helpful data portal that enables users to explore and plot summary data or access datasets.

What ECN monitoring has told us

So what have we learned from ECN about how the environment has changed in the last two decades? Perhaps the most significant change has been a marked reduction in the deposition of sulphur compounds – so-called "acid rain" – primarily because of changes in energy policy and greater international regulation of emissions from power stations. This is reflected in large reductions in sulphate concentrations in rainfall at ECN sites and corresponding reductions in the acidity of water in our soils, although so far we’ve not seen any clear responses in vegetation.

These aren’t just interesting observations – they have real-world impact through their contribution to policy and regulation. Acid rain observations from ECN, for example, were used in the recent Defra-funded UK Review of Transboundary Air Pollution, which was led by CEH and informs the development of UK air quality strategies.

Defra has long used ECN data on populations of invertebrates like beetles, moths and butterflies as indicators of how ecosystems are responding to climate change. For example, we’ve seen large changes in the abundance of ground beetles at ECN sites. These changes may be linked to the climate but differ in strength and direction between habitats. So we’re doing more work to understand why species respond differently to environmental change, which could benefit local habitat management practices.

A dramatic rainbow over the ECN monitoring site at Cairngorm.
Photo: Chris Andrews / CEH

Although ECN’s 20-year datasets support a wide range of research, we need to be pragmatic. To continuously monitor environmental change at a single place in detail is a major commitment. If we had more sites, took more types of measurement, or made measurements more frequently, we would undoubtedly improve our understanding of these environments, but this is unrealistic in the present economic climate.

The answer is greater integration, and for ECN this means linking up more effectively with other environmental recording programmes, including amateur enthusiasts, citizen science initiatives and socio-ecological studies.

We are therefore looking for better ways to integrate with other national datasets and to share new measurement technologies. It is critical that we work together to develop shared tools so users can easily find, combine and use the data they need. One session of our 20th Anniversary symposium is devoted to the future of long-term ecological observation and research, including coming up with ideas for these shared tools.

ECN has come a long way in the last two decades and is making significant contributions to our understanding of how and why our ecosystems are changing. Our challenge now is to ensure we get as much scientific benefit as possible from all this information in the decades to come.

Andy Sier

More information

Register for ECN’s 20^th Anniversary Symposium (12/13 May, Lancaster)

ECN is coordinated by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. It is supported by a consortium of partners responsible for site-based monitoring, research and analysis.

For full details and to access data see www.ecn.ac.uk.

Related links

CEH Blog: The Moor House Archive

The Moor House Archive

In a new guest post, Steve Prince, CEH's Head of Library and Archives explains how the Moor House ecological research archive came to be maintained by CEH.

The Moor House area of Upper Teesdale in England was one of Britain’s first National Nature Reserves (NNR), designated in 1952, although its potential as a research area was already apparent through the work of scientists such as Jim Cragg and Gordon Manley. In the early 1950s William Pearsall and Verona Conway of the Nature Conservancy oversaw the purchase of the Moor House Shooting Lodge in order to establish a field station where research into ecological relationships in a mountain and moorland ecosystem could be undertaken.

There were many Nature Conservancy research stations; sadly most are now closed, as the Moor House station was in 1982. But few retained the affection of the researchers who worked there like Moor House did, to the extent that, in 2003, English Nature (now Natural England, operators of the Reserve) hosted a 50th anniversary dinner for researchers. In 2013 there was a 60th anniversary meeting at the site.

Moor House was in the first group of National Nature Reserves when it was
designated in 1952. The Nature Conservancy soon after established a field station
at the site.

The site was supported from the Nature Conservancy’s research station at Merlewood, though Nature Conservancy staff were the minority of researchers working at Moor House – most were University-based, particularly at Durham. (The research station at Merlewood then became part of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in the early 1970s after the Nature Conservancy was reorganised.) It is the careers of such researchers that took the name of Moor House around the scientific world.

One major project based at Moor House was the UK contribution to the International Biological Programme (IBP) which ran from 1957 to 1974, looking at ecological productivity and ecosystem function. The level of research decreased after the Programme ended, although the work of monitoring at Moor House picked up again with the creation of the Environmental Change Network in 1993 (indeed much of the work since 1993 is accessible through the ECN website).  Incidentally, ECN's long-term monitoring and data will be featured at a special symposium in Lancaster in May 2014. *

Staff from another research organisation, the Freshwater Biological Association, also worked at Moor House as the site integrated an independent freshwater reserve. In 1989 much of the FBA work transferred to the newly-established Institute for Freshwater Ecology (IFE) at Windermere. In 1994 both the IFE and the ITE (Institute of Terrestrial Ecology) were linked under the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology banner, thus strengthening CEH's ties with Moor House.

Moor House is England's highest and largest terrestrial National Nature Reserve.
The site is part of the Environmental Change Network, coordinated by CEH.

The Moor House Archive is now maintained by CEH at Lancaster. Recently, attempts have been made to make earlier science outputs more accessible, in addition to what was already available. From 1960 through to 1984 an annual report, containing research updates and meteorological reports, was produced and these have been digitized. In addition, an occasional series of 13 reports were issued and these too have been digitized. Full text copies can be downloaded from the NERC Open Research Archive (NORA). Click on the ‘Search’ tab and simply type ‘Moor House’ into the title field.

The final volume of the occasional reports series was a bibliography¹, compiled in 1990, of papers and other works which used Moor House data. Due to the fact that a lot of the work at Moor House was supported by Nature Conservancy and later ITE and IFE centres, CEH Library & Archives hold many of the staff reprints and copies of the journals containing the papers.

In the last year attempts to obtain copies of those papers not previously held have been largely successful. With the exception of the dissertations listed, CEH Archive holds more than 95% of the papers listed and these can be consulted at CEH Archives in Lancaster.

For more information on Moor House material, contact:

Claire Wood and Rob Rose (Moor House Archive), or Steve Prince (CEH Library & Archives)

Steve Prince

¹  Gill, J.P. 1990 A guide to the Moor House collection, Nature Conservancy, 62pp (Aspects of the ecology of the northern Pennines, Moor House Occasional Papers, no 13)

Additional information

Environmental Change Network: Moor House

* To celebrate 20 years of terrestrial monitoring at ECN, a symposium will take place at CEH's Lancaster site in May 2014. Further information and registration details are available from the ECN website.

Ecological processes and resilience - science area at CEH

We're delivering our Science Strategy (2014-2019) through a number of Science Areas and underpinning activities. Find out more about each area as we profile them over the coming weeks in a series of blog posts. 

This post focuses on our Ecological Processes & Resilience science area, which is headed by Dr Allan Watt. Understanding of ecological processes, particularly those that affect the resilience of species, is needed to maintain ecosystems and the delivery of ecosystem services.

The benefits that flow from biodiversity and ecosystem services are increasingly under threat from environmental change. Threats include habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources. The threats are exacerbated by pests, diseases, alien invasive species and other drivers of global environmental change.

We’ll identify early warnings of regime shifts & tipping points in freshwater, terrestrial & marine ecosystems pic.twitter.com/IWEgcAVZGW
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) February 6, 2014

In our research we combine long-term datasets and use citizen science, models and experimental systems to examine the impacts of single and multiple drivers, including socio-economic drivers, on populations, species and ecosystems.

Ecologists get first bumblebees’ eye view of the landscape – news from today’s pollinators symposium at #INT13 http://t.co/Yre1tTTDo7
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) August 22, 2013

Population stability 'hope' in species' response to climate change - @UKBMSLive butterfly data used in new research http://t.co/2uzTEDSlLz
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) January 6, 2014

Other research objectives include assessing strategies to adapt to climate change in forestry, assessing lake restoration techniques, quantifying links between biodiversity and resilience to invasion by pests across a range of ecosystems, and linking time-series data from different trophic levels to assess the degree of synchrony of species interactions.

The Success of the Horse-Chestnut Leaf-Miner Revealed with Hypothesis-Led Citizen Science http://t.co/vmn7ss7cn0 pic.twitter.com/8PkiWSEM6G
— PLOS ONE (@PLOSONE) January 22, 2014

Looking at first results for our #phenology - climate change project (http://t.co/KQ5EoxqSi6). Very excited about bringing this together!
— Stephen Thackeray (@SteveThackeray) October 16, 2013

@SteveThackeray et al use phenological metrics to show #foodweb de-synchronisation in #Windermere http://t.co/bEvkKp0rJd
— Windermere Science (@WinSci) August 5, 2013

Resilience of upland #soils to long-term environmental changes http://t.co/mEARxYG2 Geoderma (£) #chemistry
— CEH Paper Alerts (@CEHPaperAlerts) February 12, 2013

Long-term monitoring activities that help us in this Science Area include the Isle of May Study,  the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme and Loch Leven surveillance.

Loch Leven research by @LacLaurence & CEH Freshwater Ecology group http://t.co/NWxmV2FM46
— globolakes (@globolakes) September 21, 2013

A photo from this year’s Isle of May #puffin count – results out tomorrow #seabirds pic.twitter.com/OASHH0uxKc
— CEH Science News (@CEHScienceNews) May 30, 2013

Find out more about our Ecological Processes & Resilience Science Area, including a Science Area Summary [PDF], on the CEH website.

Additional information

CEH Science Strategy

Lake restoration research at CEH

Staff page of Dr Allan Watt

Biodiversity offsetting: the science behind the policy

The Government's Ecosystems Markets Task Force has put biodiversity offsetting amongst its top five priorities, saying that "it is about regulation, developing a well-defined market which delivers 'net gain' for nature". Dr Bruce Howard, who specialises in Biodiversity Offsetting at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), explains how CEH provides the independent and impartial scientific advice needed by this increasingly important policy measure.

Biodiversity offsetting is the term used for agreements that compensate, in measurable ways, for the losses to habitats and species that result from developments such as housing, railways and airports. It is being used or trialled in more than 20 countries worldwide. There is growing interest in the use of biodiversity offsets in the UK, especially in England. A voluntary approach to biodiversity offsetting was a commitment in the Natural Choice – the Government's environment White Paper published in 2011. In response, here at CEH we are gearing up to ensure that our data and expertise in monitoring and restoring biodiversity play their part in informing decisions about the greater use of offsetting in the UK.

New office development

In its 2010 report on financing nature conservation, the RSPB's economists expressed similar aspirations when they said that a "strong biodiversity offset market has the potential to reduce environmental damage from development, simplify the planning system and increase funding for conservation". Nonetheless, the debate about how offsets might impact on the level of protection that the planning system provides for biodiversity is only just getting going. In a response to a 2011 Government consultation on biodiversity offsets, Wildlife and Countryside Link, a large coalition of conservation organisations, warned that "a poorly implemented offset system could have a negative effect on biodiversity."

Given all the points of view expressed, the independent and impartial scientific analysis by organisations such as CEH should play an increasingly important role. In July 2013, I was awarded a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Knowledge Exchange Fellowship on biodiversity offsetting. Over the coming three years, I will be drawing together expertise from across NERC and beyond to address specific questions important for offset implmentation. These include:

• Most nature conservationists are behind the goal of reversing trends in biodiversity decline, aiming for no overall loss of biodiversity in a particular area, or the country as a whole. Advocates of biodiversity offsetting are motivated by this too. But what role will offsets play in achieving this? The jury will be out for some time yet.
• How can individual species be safeguarded within offset agreements based on habitat? It is not as easy as one might think to establish a population of anything, from adders to yellowhammers, even if an offset site is created and managed by the very best experts.

Working alongside me, Dr Lisa Norton is piloting decision support tools that could be used to inform decisions about how and where to initiate biodiversity offsets. And from September 2013, CEH's Dr Tom Oliver will be developing an indicator of the 'ecological status' of parcels of land. This will consider species that are not on the Government's priority list of species and could help to inform choices about where biodiversity offsets can occur. CEH also has much experience in the area of how the biodiversity value of land can be improved – this is an important requirement for offset creation.

As the UK's Centre of Excellence for integrated research in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, CEH has a unique mix of datasets capable of informing the design and monitoring of offset schemes. For example, our Countryside Survey, which is due to be updated in the next three years, provides the most comprehensive record of the condition of the British countryside. The Biological Records Centre, hosted by us at CEH, holds 27 million records to provide information on the status of and change in UK biodiversity.

Town and countryside

If implementation of offsets is to deliver benefits for biodiversity in many years to come, scientific rigour will be required at every stage. This extends from the methods used to assess the biodiversity present at individual sites proposed for development, through to monitoring the long-term contribution that hundreds of 'offset' sites are making to our national biodiversity asset. After all, biodiversity is just part of a wider suite of ecosystem services which provide everyone in society with valuable natural capital – a resource whose importance is recognised, including by Government.

While the scientific rigour has its place, it should not be forgotten that nature down the street (and over the horizon) matters greatly to people. This is something that is recognised in many aspects of our work at CEH, such as our involvement in citizen science. It appears to me that there is a need to ensure that offset schemes will safeguard biodiversity (and the 'services' it provides) for people, rather than simply for the sake of meeting targets or advancing a new way of financing nature conservation.

Dr Bruce Howard

Additional information

Biodiversity Offsetting activities at CEH

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