Plastic found lining UK seabird nests on a worrying scale
Before we can effectively deal with any threat posed by plastic pollution, we need to understand the scale and type of effects it’s having. Our study is a first step towards this. We uncovered evidence that Scottish seabirds are not only ingesting plastic, but they appear to be accumulating it in their nests.
Forests go into growth ‘overdrive’ to recover from drought.
Rather than continuing to grow at rates we might have expected from the temperature and rainfall records in those post-recovery years, the growth of some trees went into overdrive, and these trees actually started growing faster than in our modelled scenario where no drought had occurred.
Climate change: having the right combination of tree ‘personalities’ could make forests more resilient
Every tree in a forest has a neighbour. In many forest neighbourhoods, the same species are often found living together, especially when the growing conditions are similar. Sometimes these neighbours are close and sometimes far apart, but collectively they form part of a community.
Eurasian lynx: how our computer model highlighted the best site for restoring this wild cat to Scotland
Though it can still be found in the forests of Europe, the Eurasian lynx has not been seen in the UK for more than 1,000 years. This modelling work demonstrates the suitability of Scotland’s current landscape to support and sustain lynx in the future.
Focal Species: Entoloma hochstetteri
This fungus is commonly found across New Zealand in broadleaf southern-beech (Northofagus) and coniferous Podocarpus forests in amongst the mosses and leaflitter of the forest floor.
Meta-analysis: What’s it all about?
One of the first steps I’ll be undertaking in my PhD journey will be to conduct something called a meta-analysis. In short, a meta-analysis is simply a set of statistical tests conducted on the compiled results of other experiments.