Interested in discussing the challenges facing Scotland’s biodiversity to 2020 and helping to inform the development of Scotland’s draft Biodiversity Strategy? Come along to a meeting in Edinburgh on 8th – 9th March 2012. BES members can attend for FREE (but must register in advance).

The BES is working with the British Society of Soil Science and the Scottish Government’s Biodiversity Science Group to organise a one-day conference (9th March), an evening lecture, reception and dinner (8th March) at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The meeting will:

•Introduce the science community in Scotland to the revision of Scotland’s Biodiversity Strategy;
•Explore the scale of the challenges facing the implementation of an ecosystem approach in Scotland;
•Provide an opportunity for the science community to find out about the needs of policy-makers;
•Provide an opportunity for networking between the science and policy communities.

The evening reception will celebrate the launch of the BES Scotland Policy Group, a new initiative from the Society that aims to link members of the Society in Scotland who are interested in informing policy development and through this to assist the Society’s policy team in doing the same.

Confirmed speakers for the 9th of March include: Colin Moffatt, Head of Science at Marine Scotland; Ken Norris, biodiversity theme leader at NERC and biodiversity chapter lead in the National Ecosystem Assessment; Helaina Black, James Hutton Institute; and Chris Quine, Forest Research.

Poster abstracts are invited upon registration. We particularly welcome registration by students to this meeting and will be offering a prize for the best poster.

Full details of the programme and how to register are available from the BES website.

Professor Jules Pretty gave a fascinating and wide-ranging insight into the sustainable intensification of agriculture on Tuesday afternoon at the BES Annual Meeting; this year’s BES Lecture. Prof. Pretty suggested that there was an ‘emerging consensus’ around the necessity of improving agricultural productivity whilst minimising harm to the environment – as testified by recent reports from the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures programme, the Royal Society and others.

By 2050, the Foresight report has concluded, a 50-100% increase in food production will be needed worldwide to feed a growing human population. The precise figure will depend on how fast and far the population grows and on the consumption patterns which emerge. Food choices are currently converging. Where these were previously divergent, driven by choices and norms informed by differences in culture, now a Western ideal of consumption dominates, informing a greater consumption of meat in China, for example. Food price spikes in recent years have also adversely and disproportionately affected the poor and the hungry. Such trends will only continue unless radical reform is made to the systems by which we currently produce food, which involve intensive application of fertilisers, an increased use of machinery and a huge growth in livestock for meat and dairy which themselves eat grain which could be used to feed the hungry.

Read the full report at the BES Annual Meeting blog.

The 2008 Climate Change Act commits the UK to 80% statutory greenhouse gases emissions (GHG) reduction by 2050. The agricultural industry is responsible for approximately 25%, 50%, and 80% of global anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) respectively. In the UK farming and land use are accountable for 7.4% of total UK emissions and therefore represent a good opportunity to make progress toward GHG reduction targets.

Reducing GHG emissions within the agricultural sector however faces significant obstacles driven by the growth of the human population. As human population numbers rise, more people need feeding, and as the wealth of nations increase so does the demand for meat with the ‘westernisation’ of diets putting pressure on the agricultural industry to produce more food. Furthermore, the dwindling availability of land suitable for farming limits expansion of the industry. As a result, agriculture must as increase productivity by 70-100% by 2050 in order to avoid future food security crisis.

The combination of increasing food production on limited land while reducing GHG emissions consequently presents a unique scientific challenge. To address this, a meeting attended by the BES was held at the Royal Society in London this week to discuss the options for ‘Reducing green house gas emissions from agriculture’.

Expert speakers gave presentations on how to create ‘climate smart agriculture’ and discussed potential solutions and opportunities including:

• Improving land management through intensification of agricultural practices to avoid further carbon dioxide release from expansion into remaining suitable land such as tropical forests.
• Improving soil management to conserve stocks of nitrogen and enhance carbon capture/sequestration.
• Reducing unnecessary over use of nitrogen fertilizers responsible for carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions.
• Replacing fossil fuel use with bioenergy feedstocks.
• Exploring genetic modification of rice cultivars and cattle to reduce methane production.
• Altering rice cultivation management practice and cattle diet to reduce methane production.
• Improving manure management to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
• Decreasing food wastage and changing western dietary behaviours by encouraging people to decrease meat consumption to reduce demand.

The meeting highlighted that reducing emissions across the agricultural industry provides a significant opportunity to help achieve the UK emissions reduction targets. Speakers additionally drew attention to the fact that the agricultural industry has until present, not been a central part of climate change talks, and suggested that the future inclusion of agriculture as a central part of the climate change agenda would be beneficial. Speakers further noted that subsequent policy should consider all demands on land, provide incentives for implementation of more environmentally friendly practice across farming, and include raising awareness to encourage decreased meat consumption in western society.

A new study, the results of which have been released as part of the ongoing analysis of data collected as part of the 2007 Countryside Survey, is at odds with a previous accepted analysis of carbon released from soil in England and Wales.

In 2005, Nature published the results of a study led by Prof. Guy Kirk of Cranfield University, based on the National Soil Inventory, a series of measures taken between 1978 – 83 and 1994 – 2003. Prof. Kirk and colleagues estimated that from 1978- 2003 there had been an estimated loss of 4m tonnes of carbon a year from the soils of England and Wales. Because of Scotland’s peaty soils, the team estimated that the total loss of carbon from the whole of the UK over this period was approximately 13m tonnes. As the loss had occurred across all land types the team suggested that the losses were linked to climate change.

Now a team led by Professor Bridget Emmett at CEH Bangor has compared Countryside Survey data collected between 1978 and 2007. The ecologists found that the carbon concentration in the top 15cm of the soil increased between 1978 – 1998 and then decreased from 1998 – 2007, leading to no net change in soil carbon concentrations. In arable land there was a net loss of carbon, probably due to soil disturbance through ploughing.

Speaking to the Observer, where the story was reported yesterday, Prof. Emmett said that “the amount of carbon in topsoils across England and Wales is about 2bn tonnes so detecting a change of even 4m tonnes per year is very challenging. Small differences in methods between the two surveys can therefore have a large effect”. Scientists have proposed that a study group with an independent statistical expert should be convened to examine why the two studies may differ.

Rise in UK carbon emissions disputed by report: Observer, Sunday 7th March, Juliette Jowit.

Recent research has shown that the decline in yellow wagtail (Motacilla flava flavissima) populations may be partly attributed to reduced soil penetrability.

Yellow wagtail populations declined by 65% between 1972 and 2006, resulting in the species being placed on the red list of birds of conservation concern in the UK. Research was conducted examining the relationship between the distribution of these birds and a variety of habitat features across 14 intensively cultivated farms in the UK.

The results found that yellow wagtail numbers were most strongly linked to the penetrability of the soil in fields planted with crops. Fields with more penetrable soils supported a greater number of nesting colonies of the birds.

Interestingly, yellow wagtails themselves do not feed by probing the ground for food, instead catching food in flight or picking insects off the surface. However, it is thought that hard soil may reduce the food source of the yellow wagtail’s prey, and therefore have a knock-on effect on yellow wagtail populations.

Another possible reason for the correlation is that yellow wagtails construct their nests by scraping a hollow out of the ground, a practice which could be more difficult in less penetrable soils. Compacted soils may also have worse drainage qualities, decreasing offspring survival rates.

Modern, intensive-farming practices are largely responsible for this degradation of soil quality, with heavy machinery in particular compacting soils and reducing their penetrability. The researchers recommend that soils be protected from further degradation. Key measures include reducing the intensive use of heavy machinery, autumn sowing and irrigation, all of which would lead to benefits for both biodiversity and agriculture. Further research on the relationship between soil permeability and other farmland bird populations is also required.

Speaking on the Today Programme, Professor Dick Godwin spoke of the overemphasis on environmental issues in farming, rather than growing food for the people. The Royal Agricultural Society of England released a report today warning that England’s soils are being overworked.

Professor Dick Godwin said: “I think the major concern of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in commissioning this report was really in ‘Where do farmers get their advice from, where do they get new applied research?’.” Professor Godwin called for more research into how soil will adapt to a changing climate.

The society cite a combination of intensive agricultural techniques, dry summers and shifting growing seasons as causing a decline in soil quality. Certainly intensive agriculture has been at the heart of many of the problems that farmland specialist species have faced.

However in the report, Professor Godwin stressed the aim is to provide farmers with relevant up to date information, in order to secure Britain’s food supplies for the future.

A scheme similar to Professor Bill Sutherland’s Conservation Evidence may be the way forward in terms of effectively disseminating information. The success of the Conservation Evidence scheme so far, with the help of the British Ecological Society, has been highlighted in a recent interview with NERC in their Planet Earth publication.

Access the NERC interview here: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/publications/planetearth/2008/autumn/aut08-conserving.pdf

Check out the Conservation Evidence website here.

A new review, showcased on the EU DG Environment website, explores the different EU strategies for capturing carbon in soils. Research has previous indicated that 60-70 million tonnes of CO2-eq could be captured in soils.

Carbon can be trapped in the soil by the activities of bacteria, fungi and earthworms and the conversion of organic matter to humus – which remains in the soil, preventing the release of CO2. Spreading biodegradeable waste, such as sewage and crop residues, on to agricultural land, can also contribute to carbon capture. This practice could contribute 2 – 20 million tonnes of CO2-eq per year to soil carbon capture, given differences in soil and climate.

A crucial factor in the capacity of this practice to contribute to carbon capture is the quality of the waste spread on the land. An initiative under the EU Waste Framework Directive aims to define quality standards for this.

DG Environment is working to develop a ‘Life Cycle Thinking’ approach to managing waste – examining the total impact of the use of products and services on the environment, from extraction to manufacturing to recycling and eventual disposal. The aim is to avoid shifting environmental impacts from one component of the cycle to another or onto different environmental systems. Find out more about Life Cycle Thinking here.

Source Article at website of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment

Defra has today launched a consultation on the draft Soil Strategy for England. Views are sought particularly on the direction for soils policy in the next five to ten years, aswell as considered opinion on the current pressing challenges to soils and soil function in England .

The BES will be preparing a response to this consultation in advance of the 23 June deadline. Please contact policy@BritishEcologicalSociety if you would like to contribute to this.

Click here to access the consultation document and supplementary material.