Recently, one of our PhD students – Fatai Ilesanmi has been on field trip.. Nigeria Field Expedition in the month of March and April 2023
Nigeria National Geographic expedition phase 1. This is a caving expedition to identify and map stalagmite-bearing caves in Nigeria (initial reconnaissance expedition).
The photograph shows Fatai exploring Itankpini cave and looking for stalagmites in hiding entrances
One year has now past since Dr Gillian Taylor was involved in the installation of a weather station at Fort Magna. It is not just a weather station but also monitors ground chemistry to help us understand seasonal changes. The data has been fascinating and watch this space for updates on conference presentations later in the year..
https://www.vanwalt.com/projects/soil-research-equipment-for-the-vindolanda-trust/
Not content with one weather stations, in April 2023, the team also installed a similar system, provided by Van Walt across the Vindolanda site, monitoring more chemistry, more conditions and importantly watching those anaerobic areas very carefully, as we all know by now, the anaerobic conditions are important for the preservation of artefacts.
There are two other blogs posts, whom have written about the adventures of putting in the new system, so enjoy the link
https://www.vindolanda.com/blog/monitoring-the-buried-archaeology-of-vindolanda
https://www.vanwalt.com/dubois/2023/04/23/whisky-and-paracetamolepilogue/
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
On the 26th April, Dr Ambroise Baker gave a fascinating talk about ‘What came after the Woolly mammoth’
The talk introduced some of the questions surrounding the late-Quaternary extinctions and their relevance when considering ecosystem management today. There was a focus on the consequence of this wave of megafauna extinction. Importantly, studying these consequences furthers our understanding of the ecosystem function that megafauna preformed before extinction. Understanding the loss of this function is increasingly relevant when managing ecosystems, especially when considering megafauna introduction as is the case with rewilding strategies. However, there remains many unknowns regarding the lost megafauna functions, how to re-introduce them and the benefits that can be achieved with re-introduction, pointing to the need for a thorough monitoring of current rewilding projects.
Great news article about Dr Jamie Bojko research which involves providing genomic and pathological advice on the emergence and understanding of seal diseases across the UK.
https://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/news/pressreleases_story.cfm?story_id=8197
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:
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.
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.
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.
As part of ongoing work to better understand and monitor seal populations in the Tees and surrounding areas, the Tees Seal Photo ID Project (TSPIP) is a new citizen science initiative giving members of the public (that’s you!) the opportunity to get involved in conservation research. Photo ID involves taking photographs of seals to capture the unique patterns on each seal’s fur. These patterns can be used to identify individual animals and monitor them over time. We can then get a clearer idea on population numbers, see which sites seals prefer and whether this changes over time, learn how far they travel and which other populations they interact with, and even see which seals here in the Tees like to hang out together. The non-invasive nature of photo ID means it’s possible to get all this information without ever having to touch or disturb a seal.
Students at Teesside University are already at work photographing seals and compiling catalogues of individuals which show their markings from different angles, allowing us to efficiently compare new photographs to animals we’ve seen before. There’s only so many places we can be at once though so we’re reaching out to the community to ask you to consider taking photographs of the seals you see and sending these to us. In doing so, you’ll be helping us to expand our catalogues and build upon our understanding of the seals we’ve already logged. At the time of writing, our catalogues contain 132 local seals.
Any picture of a seal could potentially be useful, but the easiest photographs for us to match show the whole left or right side of the animal. If the seal is swimming and you just capture the side of its head, don’t worry – we can use those images too! Photos of seals’ undersides are also helpful as they can allow us to record the sex of the animal.
Want to get involved? Simply send your seal photos to F.Pellie@tees.ac.uk. Please include the date and location the photos were taken in the email.
Want to learn more about the project? This project is coordinated by Freya Pellie, an environmental science PhD student at Teesside University; feel free to drop Freya an email with any queries you may have: F.Pellie@tees.ac.uk.
TSPIP is part of a wider PhD study of the Tees seals, made possible by a studentship funded by Graham Construction and Teesside University.
Dr Adrian Dye (Lecturer in Environmental Science, Teesside University) and colleagues report an increase in proglacial lakes in Arctic Sweden as glaciers have retreated. These lakes have grown in size and extent over time, which now form an important store of water (previously unmapped) in mountainous catchments. Some lakes have also enhanced glacier retreat rates… Glacial lakes in the southern region (Sarek) are significantly smaller than those in the northern region (Kebnekaise), so it cannot be assumed that glacial lakes will develop uniformly across an area. More work needs to be done to predict where proglacial lakes are likely to form, particularly where populations currently depend on glaciers for water resources.
Access the publication through the publishers website with this link.
MSc Microbiology students Orakan Jones and Nathalia Thompson with Drs Paul Dean and Jens Holtvoeth collected brines for extremophile research 1,000m below the surface in the Boulby salt mine.
In October, a team from Teesside University took part in the 10th annual field event on astrobiology, robotics, and planetary exploration (MINAR X), organised by the UKRI Underground Laboratory at the ICL salt mine at Boulby. Dr Jens Holtvoeth was joined by Dr Paul Dean and two microbiology MSc students, Orakan Jones and Nathalia Thompson to travel 1.000 meters down the shaft and underneath the North Sea, together with scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, York, Manchester, and Newcastle, the California Institute of Technology, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena).
The aim of our team was to collect samples of salt and brine for biomarker and DNA analyses to produce a geochemical fingerprint of fossil and living microbial communities and to gain information on cellular adaptation mechanisms of halophile microorganisms to the extreme conditions. This will help to interpret fossil biomarker distributions found in the salt with regard to environmental conditions at the fringes of the evaporating Zechstein Sea about 250 million years ago.
While the team were able to collect brines from a disused part of the mine, aptly named Billingham Bath, the collection of salt samples by coring the salt with sterilised drill bits had to be postponed due to a technical fault of the corer. Thus, the team is looking forward to going down the shaft later this semester, again.
