Close

Monthly Archives: October 2017

Metabolic constraints arising from the loss of organic carbon and structure from soils.

Metabolic constraints arising from the loss of organic carbon and structure from soils.

The “4‰ Soils for Food Security and Climate” agreement has focussed regulators’ and scientists’ minds alike on the role that carbon plays in fertility and global climate change. Organic carbon is often implicitly linked with soil structure and its rapid loss from conventionally managed agricultural soils is a cause of serious concern. Soil without biology however, is just dirt: […]

Read More

Dispersal strategies and space use in pollinating bees

Dispersal strategies and space use in pollinating bees

Quantifying dispersal ability and how organisms navigate through the environment is an essential step required to predict how individual species will cope with land use changes. There is a growing desire to ensure that intensive land use practices are designed in a way that maintains stable populations of pollinators. While the field of movement ecology has been revolutionised by […]

Read More

What lies beneath: Resolving fundamental controls on the stable oxygen isotope composition of phosphate in soils

What lies beneath: Resolving fundamental controls on the stable oxygen isotope composition of phosphate in soils

Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for food production but rock phosphate reserves are non-renewable and set to become increasingly scarce, making phosphorus critical for global food security. Therefore, it is vital that we better understand how P is cycled in soils in order to support future food production. This project will develop a highly novel stable isotope technique […]

Read More

Modelling the impact of agri-environment scheme options on soil and vegetation

Modelling the impact of agri-environment scheme options on soil and vegetation

Would you like to earn a PhD doing research at the cutting edge of biodiversity, ecosystem services, land-use change and agriculture? Would you like to produce novel science that could help shape land management schemes after Brexit? We are looking for an enthusiastic, numerate student with a passion for ecology. The project will statistical modelling and existing very high […]

Read More

The role of moss mats on the resilience of soil to climate change

The role of moss mats on the resilience of soil to climate change

We are seeking an enthusiastic PhD student to work as part of our interdisciplinary team based at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Bangor with registration at Bangor University. You will work in collaboration with Forestry Research and a European climate change network with sites located in Denmark, Hungary and Spain. In our Welsh climate manipulation experiment we […]

Read More

Ice-ocean interaction: effects of climate change on Antarctic ice-shelf dynamics

Ice-ocean interaction: effects of climate change on Antarctic ice-shelf dynamics

In summer 2017 the Larsen C ice-shelf in Antarctica calved a 6000 km2 iceberg, and the Halley research station closed over winter 2017 due to nearby crevasses opening up, potentially calving another massive iceberg. When these large volumes of ice drift equatorwards they eventually melt and can influence key pathways in the Earth System, including changing ocean heat transports […]

Read More

Effects of electromagnetic noise on the orientation of migratory birds

Effects of electromagnetic noise on the orientation of migratory birds

Animals face many challenges as increased urbanization impacts their ability to survive and reproduce. Nowhere is this more evident than in migratory birds. Throughout Europe evidence indicates that populations of migratory birds are declining. Many anthropogenic influences are implicated, such as land use and climate change. However, recently, a new and surprising potential hazard to bird migration has emerged. […]

Read More

Using western boundary currents to generate electricity: resource characterisation, technical & practical constraints

Using western boundary currents to generate electricity: resource characterisation, technical & practical constraints

To reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, it is crucial that we continue to explore renewable energy resources and technologies. It is possible to convert the kinetic energy that resides in ocean currents into electricity by installing arrays of turbines, and the global potential of this energy resource is vast. In contrast to (twice daily) tides that are characterized […]

Read More