News: September 2017
Bigger, more intensive dairy farms may also mean bigger milk footprints
A new study published in Global Change Biology challenges the idea that the trend towards larger, more intensive dairy farms mitigates climate change by shrinking the carbon footprint of milk production. A team of animal nutrition experts and environmental modellers from Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities looked beyond the farm-system boundaries of typical carbon footprint studies to account for indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emission consequences considering changes to dairy feed production and to beef farms that may compete with dairy farms for grassland.
Publication date: 29 September 2017
Wales-Ireland co-operation sees launch of BlueFish Project
Researchers, industry representatives and commercial producers from both sides of the Irish Sea congregated in Bangor University on Tuesday to officially launch the BlueFish Project, a collaboration between Wales and Ireland that will examine the effect of climate change on fish and shellfish sustainability in the Irish Sea.
Publication date: 28 September 2017
Scientists call for more research on how human activities affect the seabed
A group of UK scientists, co-ordinated by the University of Southampton, has published extensive research into how industry and environmental change are affecting our seafloors, but say more work is needed to help safeguard these complex ecosystems and the benefits they provide to people for the future.
Publication date: 25 September 2017
Day of reckoning for marine invaders
Volunteers in North Wales are being asked to help national campaign to track an invasion taking place around the UK’s coastline.
Publication date: 6 September 2017
Gauging evolutionary adaptation- are our models right?
One challenge facing scientists is to estimate how our environment and the complex web of creatures within it, will respond to changes in their environment due to climate change or other human influences. Traditionally, scientists have taken and tested single or pairs of ecological ‘drivers’ of change in the environment, elements such as increased temperature, increased CO2 or changes in herbicides or fertilizer, to assess how species will evolve over hundreds of generations. This lab-based model of evolutionary change is simple compared to the complex environment in which species exist, so one major task for scientists is to understand how well simplified versions of environmental change teach us about more complex ones.
Publication date: 1 September 2017