Happy away day!

Untitled, a photo by Soil & Water Science on Flickr.

On Wednesday we all popped up to the Eden Valley to do some soils sampling and some general CSWM team bonding and soil sampling. here's a snap of some of the happy samplers!

Chris Turner on the Environmental Virtual Observatory

Untitled a video by Soil & Water Science on Flickr.

Last week we did a demonstration of the EVO portal to farmers and other stakeholders in the EdenDTC centre at Newton Rigg.  Chris Turner, our local expert (Natural England Catchment Sensitive Farming Officer) gave us some helpful feedback in this short film on how it is looking......

Prize winners

BSSS_2012_P2, a photo by Soil & Water Science on Flickr.

Congratulations to Kirsty Ross and Micheal Knott pictured here either side of me, receiving their prizes from the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS) for the best undergraduate Soil Science Performances at the Environment Centre, Lancaster University. Thee photo was taken at the National Space Centre, at the dinner of the BSSS annual meeting. Thanks to Karl Ritz for taking and supplying the photo.

On the role of Art in Catchment Science

John Fox of Dead Good Guides talks at the Catchment Change Network Conference June 2012

North Wyke - a Piece of Cake!

Untitled, a photo by Soil & Water Science on Flickr.

Just back from a terrific launch of the North Wyke farm platform. The approach taken in Devon is to instrument the entire grassland farm in 3 contrasting long term experimental systems - the ultimate systems biology of the landscape. Really impressed with the way the have done this - akin to the approach adopted in the UK DTC projects and complimentary to the EVO pilot framework. Well done North Wyke - live long and prosper (and jolly good cake art too!). If you click on the picture you will get a link to more pictures taken on the day.

Cool new video on the River Eden

The Eden Rivers Trust just made a funky new film to help raise awareness of the Eden River and its potential plight....

Exploring opportunities for knowledge exchange

, a photo by Soil & Water Science on Flickr.

Today I have been with colleagues from the Defra DTC programme at Lancaster University exploring opportunities for knowledge exchange for catchment science. We identified that the immediate need was to produce a policy guidance note for helping Defra communicate issues of diffuse pollution to wider stakeholders. A longer term opportunity, needing more funding, is to make a short film to help communicate the issues. More on that later......