Dr Deborah Harvey has been invited to deliver the prestigious Charles Lyell Award Lecture at this year’s British Science Festival. Organised by the British Science Association, the British Science Festival is the largest event of its kind in Europe. This year the Festival takes place in Bradford from 10th – 15th September.

Dr Harvey, from Royal Holloway University of London, was nominated for the award by the BES for her work on stag beetles, Lucanus servus, one of the UK’s rarest but most spectacular insects. Dr Harvey has developed a novel means of monitoring the beetle, by using ginger. Finding a cheap and ubiquitous bait for beetle traps, like ginger, is important because most monitoring is done by dedicated but unfunded amateur beetle hunters. The BES featured Dr Harvey’s work in a press release earlier this year.

Using live and mounted specimens, Dr Harvey will use this year’s Charles Lyell Award lecture to give a fascinating insight into the secret world of stag beetles – which have more in common with stags than just their horns – its ecology, the challenges it faces, how people can get involved in its conservation and how her work can help understand other species that live on dead wood.

The British Science Festival’s Award Lectures offer a rare opportunity to honour five professional scientists or engineers in the early stages of their career, who show outstanding skills in communication to a non-specialist audience. The Award Lectures aim to promote open and informed discussion on issues involving science and actively encourage young scientists to explore the social aspects of their research.

Booking has now opened for the 2010 British Science Festival, taking place in Birmingham from 13- 19 September.

Explore a virtual landscape with the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and the BES, or hear experts discuss how ecology and green design will help us tackle the challenges of food, energy and water security in the ‘Landscapes of the Future’ session, in partnership with the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management.

Join the team from the Virtual Landscape Theatre from 14 – 17 September to run. walk or fly through a virtual simulation of upland landscapes and explore how development may affect these into the future. Electronic audience voting allows you to express your preference about the possible futures which you’d like to see in 50 years or so. Admission is free.

Our expert panellists will run a public discussion on ‘landscapes of the future’ from 10am – 12pm on 14th September. Join a landscape architect, urban ecologist and specialists in nature’s life support services to discuss how our landscapes can balance the multiple demands on them – from food, fuel, housing, transport, demand for water and climate change – now and to 2030. Can our landscapes help us to tackle this ‘perfect storm’ of competing demands, as discussed at length by the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Prof. Sir John Beddington? Admission £5.00.

Find out more about the programme at this year’s British Science Festival – the largest festival of its kind in Europe.