Category: Environment

On 8 December 2023, our Earth & Environment Research Group joined up with Teesside University’s student-led Environmental Research Society, to host a virtual talk by Durham University’s Professor James Baldini. Professor Baldini’s talk entitled ‘Meltwater, meteors, and volcanoes: the elusive cause of the Younger Dryas Event’ tackled the still hotly debated cause of the Younger Dryas Event (YDE).

Following the Last Glacial Maximum, the Northern Hemisphere was steadily warming until an abrupt return to near glacial conditions around 12,870 years ago. This abrupt cold event is a subject of intense debate with three hotly contested theories: glacial meltwater flooding into the North Atlantic, a meteor impact, and a high-magnitude volcanic eruption.

During the talk, Professor Baldini skilfully navigated through the pros and cons of each potential trigger, providing a balanced perspective, and debunking some common misconceptions about the Younger Dryas Event. Whether you’re a seasoned enthusiast in Earth and environmental sciences or simply curious about our planet’s intriguing history, this talk offers a captivating exploration into not only this, but the many similar events that occurred over the past 80,000 years of Earth’s climate.

The recording of Professor Baldini’s talk is available on our research group Teams site but anyone can catch a similar talk by Professor Baldini on the Northeast Geological Society’s YouTube Channel here https://youtu.be/Gqj0M8DpfoE?si=0IwZKqq7ZJlsdxZA. Don’t miss the chance to unravel the mysteries of the past and gain a deeper understanding of the forces that have shaped our planet.

The Centre for Biodiscovery was pleased to welcome Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott OBE to the National Horizons Centre. Prof. Lappin-Scott gave a talk detailing her journey from early career researcher to professor (and beyond!). As Hilary is from Middlesbrough her story resonated with many of the team. We were inspired to hear of how she became the first female professor at Exeter University and how she has used her subject knowledge and position to help highlight issues of inclusivity within the sciences. Hilary then met specifically with our microbiology based researcher to offer advice to them. We hope to welcome Hilary back to the NHC soon.

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On Thursday 18 May the TU Earth & Environment Research Group hosted external speaker, Professor Phil James, based in the Department of Engineering at Newcastle University.

Phil leads the Urban Observatory programme in Newcastle which is a multi-million pound investment in sensing infrastructure providing millions of observations about the city. According to Phil, his expertise and research interests lie in the fusion and integration of data for analytics and visualisation.

Phil’s brilliant and well-attended talk ‘Smart, sustainable cities: Challenges in new urban data and realising future cities for citizens’ focused on the wealth of data that the Urban Observatory programme has compiled over the past seven years, how it is used, and the challenges faced when dealing with large and, at times, sensitive data. Because the data that Phil’s team are collecting are applicable to a range of disciplines (e.g., environmental management (air quality, noise), public health (social distancing during Covid), sustainable urban development, and big data), TU Earth & Environment extended the invitation to our TU colleagues in Engineering and Public Health.

You can read more about Phil and his research interests on his profile page https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/philipjames.html and the publicly available data and visualisation tool that Phil presented is available here https://newcastle.urbanobservatory.ac.uk/. If you intend to use the data, Phil has recommended accessing the Archive Data option.

On Monday, 24th April 2023, our TU Earth & Environment Group welcomed guest speaker, Professor Mike Rogerson of Northumbria University whose talk entitled ‘When and Why does it rain in the Sahara? (on orbital timescales)’ addressed his ongoing NERC-funded stalagmite palaeoclimate research in Tunisia and Libya.

According to Mike, the Greening of the Sahara which entails conversion of large, currently hyperarid areas into grassland during warm phases of the northern hemisphere, is one of the most spectacular examples of past climate change we have. Previous studies have revealed that the Sahara was not always the sun soaked hyperarid landscape with iconic rolling sand dunes that much of it is today. Instead, there is evidence that it was once much greener.

Future changes in Earth’s hydroclimate under greenhouse gas forcing are notoriously difficult to predict yet people living in global drylands such as along the desert margins of the Sahara,  are incredibly vulnerable to changing water availability and at risk of acute humanitarian crises under human caused climate change.

Climate models used to predict future change over large parts of African and West Asian dryzones tend not to ‘converge’ which means that different climate models subject to the same climate forcings will give different answers as to whether the region will be wetter or drier in the future. Globally, models seem to predict that wet regions will get wetter and dry regions will get drier but how accurate is this? Also, according to Mike, this pattern does not match our understanding of the Sahara under previous warm periods such as the mid-Holocene around 5000 years ago when a greener Sahara prevailed.

Mike is leading a large team of researchers from the UK, Tunisia, Libya, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, to achieve a step-change in the confidence of climate forecasts for the northern margin of the Sahara by examining the representation of rainfall in Tunisia and Libya general circulation models, and testing how consistent this representation is with new records of rainfall built from stalagmites from Tunisian and Libyan caves. Cave stalagmites preserve a record of past temperature and rainfall in their mineral chemistry as they grow. Depending on their size and growth rate, they have the potential to give us insight into seasonal scale climate variability many thousands of years into the past.

Mike gave an interesting and engaging talk that explained why this is such a difficult – and important – bit of climate science to solve, and provided us with an update on the team’s progress so far.

Mike directs research in Northumbria’s Geography and Environmental Sciences Department and has a wide range of research interests himself with a particular love for karst processes and landscapes. Mike and I have worked closely on several projects over recent years including my National Geographic Explorer project seeking to reconstruct West African Palaeoclimate and as founding members of ‘Karstaways’, a North England research collective of karst and cave researchers. You can learn more about Mike and his work here https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/r/michael-rogerson/.

written by Dr Lisa Baldini

Teesside University, the School of Health and Life Science, and the Earth, Ecology and Environment research collective are welcoming expressions of interest in Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships.

The research areas of existing strength are as follows:

• Climate change Impacts and palaeoclimate reconstruction
• Archaeological advances in preservation and outreach
• Sustainable agriculture and aquaculture
• Rewilding for ecological recovery and sustainability
• Sustainable food supply chain and environmental impact
• Microbial biotechnology and bioremediation

Contact point for inquiries: Dr Ambroise Baker (A.Baker@tees.ac.uk)

Our environmental group is delighted to announce 1 fully funded and 1 fees-only funded PhD opportunities. See below and follow the links provided for further information.

Investigation of moorland management practices and carbon dynamics for climate change mitigation (fully-funded)

• Deadline: 01/02/2023 5:00PM
• Studentship code: RDS
• Staff name: Dr Cat Pschenyckyj
• Contact: C.Pschenyckyj@tees.ac.uk
• Research centre: National Horizons Centre (Biosciences)
• Start date: Successful applicants will be expected to start May or October 2023.

Peatlands are increasingly being seen as part of nature’s solutions to deal with the environmental challenges of today, from tackling climate change through to flood protection and enhancing biodiversity. However, while all peatlands provide these services, research and conservation efforts have focused largely on deep peats (>40cm depth). Therefore this project will investigate the impact of different management practices on shallow peatland carbon balances. A field campaign will enable multiple sites across the North York Moors to be surveyed and monitored for peat and pore water chemistry, microbial communities and carbon dynamics.

Above and below ground carbon stocks and biotic changes during rewilding

• Deadline: 01/02/2023 5:00PM
• Studentship code: RDS
• Staff name: Dr Ambroise Baker
• Contact: a.baker@tees.ac.uk
• Research centre: National Horizons Centre (Biosciences)
• Start date: Successful applicants will be expected to start May or October 2023.

This project will quantify changes in biodiversity, ecosystem function, carbon stocks and their interactions during the initial phases of rewilding. At the primary field site, some 66 experimental fixed plots are set up within formerly agricultural land comprising a variety of arable, improved, and natural grasslands. Rewilding was initiated in 2022, with the cessation of agricultural activities which will be followed by large herbivore re-introduction (eg hardy free-ranging cattle and pigs). The analysis will quantify ecosystem changes in time, against baseline data collected in 2021-2022, and enable an assessment of rewilding contribution notably to net-zero and nature recovery policies.

We anticipate the project to be a unique opportunity to work with a range of collaborators inside and outside academia. We are looking for candidates with a strong interest in combining biodiversity, microbiological and environmental science, to develop novel evidence contributing to the UN decade of ecosystem restoration.