Sphere (Winter 2017/18)

Research stories from the Sustainable Earth Institute

If you're interested in contributing to a future edition of Sphere, please email the Sustainable Earth Institute on sei@plymouth.ac.uk

I am delighted to introduce this edition of the Sustainable Earth Institute’s (SEI) Sphere.

I am proud that the �鶹��ý’s SEI encapsulates and demonstrates the four key and highly interrelated ‘ingredients’ that will help to promote and build a sustainable future:

world-leading science to ensure understanding of fundamental earth processes;
interdisciplinary working bringing natural, engineering, social, economic and behavioural sciences together to promote physical and societal resilience;
international collaboration and funding to ensure that not only the best scientists tackle the research questions but that local access and interpretation support policy-making; and
direct societal engagement to build understanding of the issues, and, importantly, to build ‘on-the-ground’ community resilience.

You will find examples of all four ingredients in the following pages. There is research to understand better earthquake and landslide mechanisms through collaboration with partners in Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Morocco. A case study of working with local pastoral farming communities in Tanzania to facilitate changes in land management practices where soil erosion has devastating consequences for livelihoods.

Our SEI team and partners have been working with filmmakers in Lofoten (Norway) to bring science in the field to the public. And finally some sobering thoughts on how to use social media to effectively communicate the devastation of drought to those who experience comfortable and safe lives.

These stories are just snapshots of SEI’s work at �鶹��ý. But they fully embrace the four ingredients. Importantly they showcase a culture of research working that is essential if effective mitigation and response is to be achieved to the environmental challenges the world faces.

Professor Judith Petts, CBE
Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive, �鶹��ý

Understanding earthquakes

The Lofoten Islands in Norway have an exceptionally well-preserved field site provides a rare ’window’ into these once-deep rocks, now exposed at the earth’s surface after millions of years of erosion.

Read about the NERC-funded project looking at devastating earthquakes

Looking for the scars of earthquakes

Heidi Morstang travelled to the Lofoten Islands with the team of geologists to a make a film about them looking for ‘scars of earthquakes’ in the exposed mountain plateau.

A still from a film Heidi Morstange is creating about earthquakes

The land, droughts and big data

…“There is a drought?”

People walking outside Drake Circus with data

Big Data and Social Media Sentiment Analysis

Jali Ardhi – care for the land

The Science of Big Boulders

“As outstanding features in the landscape, large boulders have long captured the imagination of humans.”

Anne Mather and her team have been at the forefront of understanding what big boulders can tell us about related geohazards

Healthy marine ecosystems

“Collaboration between scientists and policy makers is critical to ensure that scientific research supports binding decisions about the marine environment” – Abigail McQuatters-Gollop

Reproducing tsunamis

Recent research has shown that wave heights may be enhanced when an earthquake triggers a subsea landslide, causing an extra release of energy into the water column.

Featured researcher: Camille Parmesan

Camille’s research focuses on the current impacts of climate change on wildlife, from field-based work on butterflies to synthetic analyses of global impacts on a broad range of species across terrestrial and marine biomes.

Professor Parmesan is the National Aquarium Chair in the Public Understanding of Oceans and Human Health at the �鶹��ý.