Mangroves provide a wide variety of ecosystem services to some of the poorest people on the planet. Under natural conditions, mangroves can persist in an incredibly improbable edaphic (“soil”) environment, characterized by repeated wave action and high salinity, by modifying their internal environment with roots, stems and canopy. Increasingly, however, mangrove systems are subject to […]

Many cuttings and embankments within the UK transport and utilities infrastructure networks were constructed more than 100 years ago and were poorly engineered. Consequently many of these structures are deteriorating and are prone to disruptive failure, particularly during periods of prolonged rainfall, as exemplified by recent extreme weather events. Considerable resources for maintenance and remediation […]

When storms cause trees to break or become uprooted they can be responsible for loss of lives, destruction of buildings/infrastructure and disruption to transport, energy and communications networks. It is possible to reduce the risks of tree failure by pruning or removing dangerous trees. However, given the large numbers of trees it is very difficult […]

With increasing energy prices and advances in drilling and hydraulic rock fracturing (‘fracking’) technology, shale gas has radically changed the energy landscape over the world. However, knowledge on how the gases are trapped within the rock, adsorbed on its surface, dissolved in the pore spaces waters and released after fracking are all poorly constrained. An […]

We have recently found convincing evidence that soil dust contamination of food is an important (non-haem) dietary source of iron in several sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. In rural Malawi, composite diet analysis of two villages and calculated food composition data were compared against iron biomarkers. Measured iron intake was greater than calculated intake, and highly […]

Long-range insect migration occurs on an enormous scale and provides huge costs and benefits to agricultural ecosystems. Insect population dynamics and migration phenology are both strongly influenced by climate, and thus patterns of insect migration are likely to be highly responsive to global environmental change. It is vitally important to understand such changes if we […]

The norm is to be exposed to a wide range of infectious organisms and most wild animals are infected with a wide range of parasites. Yet in modern societies we humans are infected with relatively few parasites and as a consequence the hygiene hypothesis suggests we are developing autoimmune diseases and allergies. Laboratory mice are […]

We are seeking a PhD student to work as part of an interdisciplinary team, based at Bangor University, with collaborators in the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge. The project will focus on characterizing behavioural, physiological and morphological traits of cichlid fishes under laboratory conditions. These fish have been bred in the research aquarium at Bangor, […]

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that evidence for global warming is unequivocal and is very likely anthropogenic in origin. However, climate change is not solely anthropogenic and throughout the majority of the Phanerozoic the Earth has been a greenhouse world. Deciphering the climate system and the first order relationship between climate and […]

Good environmental policy has to be founded on high-quality environmental science, but delivering the research needed by policy makers can be a challenge. The Montreal protocol is widely held to be the most successful global environmental agreement of all time, but policy-makers, in the UN and around the world, find it hard to define just […]