̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Cambridge researchers to tackle major threats to 'UK’s vegetable garden'

plc32 — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Although covering less than 4% of England’s farmed area, the Fens produce more than 7% of England’s total agricultural production, worth £1.23 billion. But they are threatened by climate change and their ancient peat soils are drying out, releasing millions of tonnes of CO₂.
̽��ֱ��Cairngorms are home to over a quarter of the UK’s endangered species, from capercaillies to ospreys.
̽��ֱ��Lake District is a national treasure and a UNESCO World Heritage Site but future changes in agricultural subsidies present both challenges and opportunities for the landscape

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Centre for Landscape Regeneration project will work with farmers, local communities and conservation groups to tackle environmental threats in these areas. This major countryside regeneration project will be led by Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), Cambridge Zero and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), in partnership with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Endangered Landscape Programme.

Professor Emily Shuckburgh OBE, Director of Cambridge Zero said: "We aim to make a demonstrable difference to the way landscape restoration is designed, implemented, scaled up and supported by policy, ensuring solutions are resilient, inclusive and sustainable."

Funding for the work with farmers, landowners, conservation groups and local communities to address ecological threats such as extinction, flooding, drought and pollution comes from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) as part of its £40 million 'Changing the Environment' programme.

̽��ֱ��UK’s vegetable garden

̽��ֱ��Fens contain almost half of the UK’s grade-1 agricultural land and support a farming industry worth around £3 billion across the food chain. Farming there directly employs over 10,000 people and supports around 80,000 jobs more widely.

̽��ֱ��area is the vegetable garden of UK horticulture with 33% of England's fresh vegetables grown here. More than a half of UK-grown lettuce and over 75% of UK-grown celery are produced in the Fens. Alongside salads, key vegetable crops such as carrots, leeks, potatoes, onions and beetroot are also extensively grown on the Fens.

Yet this fertile landscape faces a host of existential environmental challenges. It is estimated that only 1% of the original wetlands in the Fens remain intact and 30% of the peatlands have been lost – emitting millions of tonnes of carbon in the process.

Just as alarmingly, the region is projected to run out of water in five to 10 years, while simultaneously being threatened by rising sea levels.

Project researchers have been working closely with farmers in the region to find environmental solutions that work for them and their communities. Fourth-generation Fens farmer and Fenland SOIL steering committee member Tom Clarke said: "Farming in the Fens faces a triple threat – a climate challenge, a nature challenge, and a food security challenge. ̽��ֱ��best defence is for farming is to be less defensive about some of the problems it has contributed to. We farmers instead need to work in a positive and pragmatic way to find opportunities and solutions for the farmers of the future."

Agriculture in this eastern region of England is of vital importance not just to the whole UK, but also to local people who rely on it for a living. That is why simply rewilding the Fens to preserve and restore its ecosystem is not an option. ̽��ֱ��funding from NERC will support this work and will enable researchers to find the best ways of protecting the ecosystem and its farmers.

National treasures endangered

̽��ֱ��Cairngorms and the Lake District are both national treasures, but their ecology is severely imperiled. ̽��ֱ��beauty of these popular tourist destinations obscures significant degradation and wildlife loss.

̽��ֱ��Cairngorms are under particular threat from climate change, as well as deforestation, erosion and the loss of iconic species which cannot be found anywhere else in the UK.

Teams there are working to expand and restore ancient Caledonian pinewoods. These spectacular forests have suffered from a significant loss of biodiversity and the encroachment of non-native tree species.

Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: " ̽��ֱ��interlinked extinction and climate crises pose a major threat to our future. Harnessing the full-breadth of expertise across Cambridge, this project will develop evidence-informed solutions and provide tools for government and stakeholders to regenerate landscapes for the benefit of climate, nature, the economy and society."

Whole-systems solutions

Professor David Coomes, Director of the Conservation Research Institute within CCI, said: " ̽��ֱ��emphasis of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Landscape Regeneration project will be on whole-systems approaches, as these are critical to addressing the root challenges of landscape regeneration”. This means taking a holistic, long-term view that encompasses the whole ecology of a region.

One example is the work done by Cairngorms Connect – the UK’s biggest habitat restoration project, and a partnership of a private landowner, two government agencies and an NGO (the RSPB). Their focus is 130km² of biodiverse native pinewood habitats in the Cairngorms, Scotland. ̽��ֱ��partners’ 200-year vision will expand the forest to its natural limit, thereby doubling its area. Within the existing forest they are creating more natural character by pulling down trees to simulate naturally occurring deadwood – a vital feature of a healthy forest. This deadwood benefits a wide range of animals, from invertebrates, fungi and lichens, to bird species – many of which are rare elsewhere in the UK.

Professor Jeremy Wilson, RSPB Director of Science said: "As a partner in the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, we are excited by this opportunity to tackle the problem of restoring some of our most precious but fragile landscapes for the benefit of nature, people and the climate. As one of the largest nature conservation land managers in the UK, our nature reserves are at the heart of these landscapes and the insights from this cutting-edge research will underpin our restoration work for decades to come."

In the Fens, a group of farmers is experimenting with raising the water table to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This offers a natural experiment to find out not only how such measures affect crop yields, but also its impact on the communities of insects and spiders on which bird populations and crop pollination depend.

In another example, farmers in the Fens are relaxing the usually drastic clearance of fen ditches and providing more farm reservoirs. This enables the storage of winter water for summer irrigation and also provides ideal habitats for fish and wetland birds such as herons and the Marsh Harrier – a species reduced almost to extinction in Britain in the 20th century.

Cambridge researchers will tackle environmental threats that could affect a third of England’s home-grown vegetables and more than a quarter of the UK's rare and endangered wild animals. Eco-friendly farming in the Fens, pine martens in the Cairngorms, and disappearing woodlands in the Lake District will all benefit from a £10 million countryside regeneration programme to safeguard the country’s most important agricultural land and beloved rural idylls.

̽��ֱ��emphasis of the Cambridge Centre for Landscape Regeneration project will be on whole-systems approaches, as these are critical to addressing the root challenges of landscape regeneration.

Professor David Coomes, Director of the Conservation Research Institute

J Garget via Pixabay

Wild horse on Wicken Fen

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Women in STEM: Flora Donald

sc604 — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 07:00:00 +0000

I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, where the environment informs everything that we do. It’s in our songs and our poetry, and sometimes it’s a daily battle just to get to work because of the elements. I didn’t appreciate that was special until I left for university, and realised that, actually, it’s quite unusual to grow up in that environment and be so connected to your landscape.

I’ve always been interested in plants because my parents are both professional gardeners. My Mum runs a daffodil nursery and my Dad worked for the National Trust for Scotland managing gardens, but I think growing up where I did and the natural environment was my real inspiration. I went to Aberdeen ̽��ֱ�� and did a Bachelor of Science degree in Plant Sciences.

I knew I wanted to do something with plants, but I wasn’t exactly sure what. My degree allowed me to learn about a whole range of subtopics from ecology to microbiology to physiology and everything in between. I graduated with first-class honours, then I went to the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh and did a Master’s degree in taxonomy. I love going out into the wilds to identify and make an inventory of all the species I can see but all my knowledge was self-taught or passed on from other enthusiasts. ̽��ֱ��Master’s degree gave me a formal understanding of the theory behind species concepts and the skills to identify plants anywhere in the world. I’ve always particularly liked rhododendrons and was lucky enough to work on them for my summer project. It allowed me to work in the herbarium, run DNA analyses and visit living collections across Scotland. It was hard work but so rewarding.

My PhD is modelling the impacts of a plant pathogen, Phytophthora austrocedri, on native UK juniper. I split my time between Cambridge and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford. Juniper is a great species to work on because it grows in beautiful places across the UK and people really care about it. I collected all my own field data. I taught myself the skills to process the data and write statistical models to understand factors contributing to disease persistence and spread. It’s a challenging PhD because my background is purely ecological rather than mathematical, so there are a lot of things I need to learn, but it also means I approach the work with a different perspective.

Juniper is now a red-listed species in the UK. We only have three conifers native to the UK: Scots pine, yew and juniper. This means juniper has evolved lots of relationships with other species, some of which depend on it solely for their habitat or their food source. Juniper is a keystone species for biodiversity, so if you protect it you’re also protecting all these other species and interactions too. However, juniper populations are declining nationally both in terms of extent and quality – and that’s before the pathogen that can kill populations very quickly was introduced – so juniper is a priority species for conservation action.

I’m helping conservationists and public bodies decide where action should be targeted. These organisations have a limited budget, so want to limit infection between different populations and target restorative action to populations at lower risk from being wiped out by the pathogen. I’m researching why some populations are dying very quickly when others are not showing such severe symptoms even though the pathogen is present. Can environmental difference such as a soil type or rainfall explain that or is it related to characteristics of the juniper populations themselves such as age or density? I want my research to be used directly to improve the health of juniper populations and make sure we retain this important species in our landscape.

I have five supervisors, three women and two men. I’m funded primarily by the Scottish Forestry Trust with additional contributions from the Forestry Commission, Forest Research, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and my former employer Scottish Natural Heritage. My project is a collaboration between Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and Forest Research so I get to meet so many passionate people with really different specialisms and experience: brilliant for generating fascinating ideas.

̽��ֱ��best day I’ve had so far was out at one of my study sites in the Lake District. ̽��ֱ��site has really challenging terrain with lots of steep scree slopes that I had to run up and down every couple of months in rain, gales and blizzards. But the last time I visited it was under a blue sky, the bird song in the woodland was deafening and I took a deliberate detour to get to the highest point and look across the whole juniper population. It was a really special and reinvigorated my determination to generate research that can help save juniper.

We spend a lot of time thinking ‘I’m not 100% confident about that so I won’t go for it’ when we should just try it. Be curious. Don’t limit yourself by thinking that’s not for me or ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at it’. “Yes” gets easier with practice – just go for it! I don’t know what the future holds for me but I want to continue working in ecosystem conservation, ideally back in Scotland among the landscapes I love.

Flora Donald is a PhD candidate who splits her time between the Department of Plant Sciences and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Here, she tells us about growing up in a family of gardeners, her research on conserving the native UK juniper, and her love of the Scottish Highlands.

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