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Rural affairs secretary visits Climate-Positive Farming Initiative at Glensaugh

"Farming and land use in general is facing several major challenges as a result of the climate and biodiversity crises and the work that we are doing at Glensaugh aims to support the land use sectors as they transition towards a sustainable future" The Scottish Governmentā€™s Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands, Mairi Gougeon MSP, visited the James Hutton Instituteā€™s Glensaugh Research Farm, near Laurencekirk, site of our Climate-Positive Farming Initiative. Climate-positive farming is a transformational approach to farming that achieves net-zero or even negative carbon emissions

How to collaborate in a crisis: lessons from Scottish wastewater testing

A lunchtime webinar on Wednesday April 27 th 12.30 to 14.00 will discuss findings and recommendations from the Scottish Government funded Lessons Learned project which has reviewed the development of the SARS-CoV-2 wastewater screening programme in Scotland. As part of this event, we will be sharing learning about how to be more prepared for rapid response collaborative research in future crises. The webinar will be introduced by Professor Andrew Millar, former Scottish Government CSA ENRA. This will be followed by short presentations from Dr Isabel Fletcher and Professor Catherine Lyall of

Scotland's flux tower network improved for better understanding of impact of peatland restoration

ā€œThese will be vital observations to improve not only the reporting of greenhouse gases from peatlands but also will serve to enhance our ability to understand regionally different impacts of land management decisions and climate change on peatland resilienceā€ The flux tower network in Scotland is to be extended and enhanced to better understand the carbon and climate impact of restoring peatlands. Supported by over Ā£1 million of Scottish Government funding, three additional flux towers to be operated by the James Hutton Institute will join the current network and all nine of the towers

Comparing Biodiversity Predictions by People and Computer Models for Woodland Management

Combining local, contextualised knowledge with generalised, scientific knowledge is seen as best practice in decision making for biodiversity management. However, there is the potential for conflict if these two knowledges do not concur. We compared peopleā€™s predictions for biodiversity change under different woodland management scenarios with those from a simple ecological model. We found general agreement, but stakeholders were more optimistic about the benefits of some scenarios compared to the models. We highlighted the potential differences in predictions that could be the focus of

Going underground: testing the potential of citizen science and DNA to explore alpine soil biodiversity

Soil biodiversity is critical to ecosystem functioning, but our understanding of the richness and distribution of soil organisms lags far behind that of biodiversity above ground. The difficulties of detecting organisms that spend all or most of their time living below ground and a shortage of skilled scientists able to identify them have contributed to our general lack of knowledge. This is particularly true in alpine zones which support some of our most natural habitats and provide important ecosystem services, including supporting unique biodiversity, carbon storage and water supply. The

The youth fight against climate change continuesā€¦

The main youth conferences in association with COP26 were the Youth4Climate conference (hosted in Milan at the end of September 2021) and Coy16 ā€“ the 16 th annual UN Climate Change Conference of Youth (hosted in Glasgow at the end of October 2021). Both events saw youth climate leaders from over 150 different countries meet to discuss climate issues, producing manifestos (found here and here respectively) which outlined their expectations for world leaders and policy makers. The need for a very low climate change target was being discussed around 2013, with the scientist James Hansen urging