See the world with environmental science

Term is well and truly underway, in fact it is racing past at a frightening pace.

Greenery at a former Cr waste site

Just before term started Ian Burke (University of Leeds) and Robert Woods (Bolton Council) kindly gave myself and Laura Bellis, one of our MEnv students, a tour of a former Cr waste site somewhere in the northwest. Laura will be looking at earthworm distributions on the site as part of her MEnv research project. The site has a clean soil cap as part of its remediation and we are interested to see how earthworms have colonised this.

Then last week we took our MEnv students to exotic Huntingdon (it’s on the other side of York!) to the Portakabin site. We had an excellent morning getting a tour of the facility and discussing environmental issues associated with the site. I was particularly impressed by the way they collect fumes associated with the chemical reactions that occur as the foam insulation that they inject into their modules for insulation expands and vent these safely to the atmosphere. Many thanks to the Portakabin team for being so welcoming and helpful.

Walking between rows of Portakabin modules

In the paint shed

The steel framework for our new offices

Meanwhile back at base our new building continues to grow. You can now see the framework for the offices and start to get an idea about the size. Each time I go past I feel guilty about the construction noise that our soon-to-be neighbours in Wentworth college and Biology are having to put up with. We're still all looking forward to moving in next Autumn and are beginning to think about how we should celebrate the event.

Job available listening to earthworms talk to plants

I'm pleased to say that we're now advertising a postdoc position for our "Whispers in the dark" project investigating earthworm-plant interactions. Details of how to apply are here.

PhD vivas and bulging barrels

The Diamond Synchrotron user meeting was very interesting. It was great to hear about the varied science being carried out on the beamlines. Perhaps most concerning was learning about the bulging barrels of who knows what on the Sellafield site. The chances are what ever is inside is radioactive and flamable and there is always the chance that the bulges will eventually burst! Luckily scientists at Bristol like Dr Tom Scott and Diamond are working on techniques to work out what is going on without having to open the barrels. Once we know what is going on we should be able to deal with it, that's the theory at any rate. We also heard about research relating to water and metoerites, generation of magma in subduction systems and whether calcite on Mars could be used as evidence of life.

Delegates milling around the Diamond House entrance hall during the Synchrotron users meeting.

Last Friday I was in Manchester running a PhD viva in the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. Nicola Ashton was defending her thesis on soil development on a range of different rock types in Ireland. Nicola has done a tremendous amount of work characterising the inorganic, organic and microbial composition of the soils and defended her thesis well. She passed with minor corrections, well done Nicola.

Nicola and Richard Pattrick (one of her supervisors) celebrating in the bar after the viva

Time travelling made simple

I had grand plans over the summer to blog daily from an excellent conference I was speaking at in Paris this August, entitled "The Geochemistry of the Earth's Surface", a working group of the IAGC (International Association of Geochemistry). For one reason or another my plans didn't come to fruition (certainly not because of the time taken visiting the Rodin Museum, Musee d'Orsay and Musee d'Orangerie) but it was an excellent conference, hosted by Jerome Gaillardet at the Institut de Physique du Globe, where Marie Curie had her lab. The papers from the conference have been published and are available on line for free.

The Arab institute in Paris is near the Institut de Physique du Globe and one of my favourite buildings in Paris. The front of the institute is designed to reflect Islamic art and comprises a series of windows each containing a series of light sensitive shutters which open and close through the day. Magical.

Tomorrow I'm off to another conference I've been asked to speak at - this time at the Diamond light source down near Didcot. It is their annual user meeting and I'll be talking about our use of FTIR (fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) to study earthworm calcite balls. If I'm really good I'll take some photos and write about it. the big news in the area is of course that Didcot A has now been demolished, however Didcot B remains so there are still some of the iconic cooling towers on view.

However, today's main topic is to congratulate Sam Parry, ex Reading PhD student, now at Syngenta, who has had the first paper published from his PhD. The paper looks at calculating how fast minerals dissolve in soils.

As I often write, I still get a thrill when I see a paper with my name on it in the literature. One of the nice things about this one is that although it is published now it has a publication date of 2015! This often happens as scientific publications put out issues early. In reality they do this as it helps the statistics by which journals are judged (perhaps a subject for another blog) but what it means is that I'm already having work published in 2015 which I always think is kind of neat.

Whispers in the dark - do earthworms talk to plants

Academics spend a lot of their time trying to obtain the money to do the science that they are interested in. One good source of money in the UK are the UK research councils. For most of my research the Natural Environment Research Council is a possible funder.

However, the research councils aren't flush with cash and funding is highly competitive. At present the success rate of NERC research proposals is 14% or, to flip that around 86% of the ideas submitted to the NERC for science projects aren't funded. There's a debate to be had about how productive it is for UK environmental scientists to spend a lot of time writing proposals that don't get funded but the level of competition does keep us on our toes and the quality of UK environmental science really does punch above its weight, quite possibly as a consequence of this intense competition.

Having written how hard it is to get funding, I'm happy to say that last week I heard that myself and a colleague, Professor Jane Thomas Oates in our chemistry department here at York, have just been awarded a grant by the NERC for our project "Whispers in the dark - do earthworms talk to plants". I really love the title! Contrary to what you might imagine in this project we won't be pressing our ears to the ground and listening intently!; rather we'll be using state of the art chemical mass spectrometry (Jane's specialism) to find out whether earthworms produce chemicals that promote plant growth. It's in their interests to do this since plant growth results in more food for the earthworms - more decaying plant material and more soil micro-organisms feeding on the chemicals secreted by the plant roots. The project starts in October and lasts for 18 months in the first instance - keep listening!

You are the REF

The earth systems and environmental science panel

Every 6 years or so the entire University-based academic community in the UK is assessed to check that we're doing a good job. The assessment is carried out by (in England) the Higher Educaion Funding Council for England (or HEFCE for short), and the equivalent bodies for Wales and Scotland. University's decide on groupings of academics (which often correspond to departments) to be assessed. The assessment is done by a bunch of academics. This process is currently called the Research Excellence Framework (REF), in the past it was called the Research Assessment Exercise.



The Radisson Blu where we are meeting

I sit on the panel of academics tasked with assessing "Earth Systems and Environmental Science". We have to assess "outputs", i.e. research, "impact", i.e. does the research that has been done have an effect on society in some way, and environment, i.e. what the place is like where we do our research. The process comprises reading a lot of documents, grading them and then meeting with other panel members to discuss.

A couple of '60s tower blocks
visible from the hotel

A Chinese pagoda that you can see from the hotel.
It's here due to the closeness of the Chinese district.

We're over half way through the process now and today and tomorrow I'm in exotic Birmingham continuing the work. More than that I'm probably not allowed to say.







Demolition derby

The talk at Daresbury labs. (3 weeks ago now!) went well. A good audience of 100+ with a range of ages. It felt odd being back in Daresbury after I don't know how many years. Given that Diamond celebrated its 10th anniversary this year I probably haven't been to Daresbury for 10 years. The place still looks much the same with the same traffic jams over the rivers on the way there from Warrington station. Sadly there was no time for a nostalgic visit to the Ring O'Bells, a brilliant pub with good guest beers, which made late night shifts on the synchrotron far more bearable.

Audience arriving for my talk at Daresbury labs a few week ago

The following week I was at Nottingham catching up with colleagues and helping out with Soil Biology Professor interviews. Then last week I was at the Natural History Museum in London for a steering group meeting of our NERC BESS project looking at controls on earthworm distributions in grassland sites. The headline news is that "we" (David Jones, NHM) have collected and identified over 13000 earthworms from over 500 soil pits and that we have analysed the soils from the pits as well for all manner of chemical, biological and physical properties. I reckon we have a fantastic and valuable dataset. A very quick look see of the data suggests that Ron Corstanje, our stats maestro from Cranfield will be able to show what impact pasture management techniques have on earthworm populations. I'm resisting the temptation to say what we've found so far but it looks very exciting.

Today I took the opportunity to have a look at the building site that will soon (we trust) turn into a nice new Environment building.

Here is what the site looked like in April this year. Some rather (atypical) slightly worn looking 1960s buildings which I believe provided the cheapest university accommodation at York.

Demolition is now well underway with the aim of a new home for the start of the 2015-6 academic year.

I'll revisit the site later in the year and hopefully we'll all see a new building rising, resplendent from the rubble.