Next Wednesday will be the last session of this term. Friday 17th Dec. is the end of term.
Why not celebrate your remarkable achievement of making it through your first term by baking a cake and bringing it along to share with fellow students and starving/underfed staff?
I will bring along some mince pies (sadly not homemade - but I will have some brandy butter).
Mark
Thursday 9 December 2010
EGS Seminar Tuesday 14 December 2010
Tuesday 14th December, E0.05 from 1.00-2.00 pm.
Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!
Dr Susan Page, University of Leicester
‘Tropical Peatlands : A Burning Issue’
Peatlands are important terrestrial carbon stores and vital components of global carbon soil-atmosphere exchange processes. In this regard, tropical peatlands, most of which occur in Southeast Asia, are particularly important. These are carbon-dense ecosystems which contain around 89 Gt carbon , i.e. as much as 19 % of the global peatland carbon store. At the current time, however, tropical peatlands are vulnerable to destabilisation through both human and climate induced changes. Anthropogenic land use changes include poor forest and land management practices, large-scale conversion to plantation agriculture and settlement; these reduce the peatland carbon store and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, whilst compromising other valuable ecosystem services, e.g. biodiversity support and hydrological regulation. Climate induced changes include an increased susceptibility to drought-impacts, particularly during ENSO-events, with indications that regional climates in some areas with extensive peatlands are experiencing reduced rainfall.
This talk will review the current understanding of carbon-climate human interactions on tropical peatlands. It will focus on the main causes of land use and land cover change (deforestation, drainage, fire) and will consider the risks that these pose to the peatland carbon pool and the scale of the resultant carbon emissions. It will also address the main drivers of peatland degradation, particularly conversion to oil palm and pulpwood plantations. The talk will conclude by considering likely responses of tropical peatlands and peat swamp forests to a changing climate and the scope for mitigative action, e.g. through ecosystem rehabilitation and upcoming initiatives to support avoided deforestation and reduced emissions.
Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!
Dr Susan Page, University of Leicester
‘Tropical Peatlands : A Burning Issue’
Peatlands are important terrestrial carbon stores and vital components of global carbon soil-atmosphere exchange processes. In this regard, tropical peatlands, most of which occur in Southeast Asia, are particularly important. These are carbon-dense ecosystems which contain around 89 Gt carbon , i.e. as much as 19 % of the global peatland carbon store. At the current time, however, tropical peatlands are vulnerable to destabilisation through both human and climate induced changes. Anthropogenic land use changes include poor forest and land management practices, large-scale conversion to plantation agriculture and settlement; these reduce the peatland carbon store and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, whilst compromising other valuable ecosystem services, e.g. biodiversity support and hydrological regulation. Climate induced changes include an increased susceptibility to drought-impacts, particularly during ENSO-events, with indications that regional climates in some areas with extensive peatlands are experiencing reduced rainfall.
This talk will review the current understanding of carbon-climate human interactions on tropical peatlands. It will focus on the main causes of land use and land cover change (deforestation, drainage, fire) and will consider the risks that these pose to the peatland carbon pool and the scale of the resultant carbon emissions. It will also address the main drivers of peatland degradation, particularly conversion to oil palm and pulpwood plantations. The talk will conclude by considering likely responses of tropical peatlands and peat swamp forests to a changing climate and the scope for mitigative action, e.g. through ecosystem rehabilitation and upcoming initiatives to support avoided deforestation and reduced emissions.
Friday 3 December 2010
Student Natural Selection and Room Changes
Hi All,
I noticed that due to the cold weather, only about half of you managed to make it in this week - survival of the fittest (or those with best transport) allowed a small number of you to make it in.
Please note that new units started...EG7517 Air, Water and Land: Science and Policy (with Prof. Kevin Taylor) and EG7518 The Sustainable City (with Dr Steve Millington). If you missed the start of these new units, you may want to fire off an email to the relevant tutor to ask if there is anything you need to do to catch up - or have any handouts kept for you for next week:
Prof Kevin Taylor: k.g.taylor@mmu.ac.uk and
Dr Steve Millington: s.millington@mmu.ac.uk
Please note that the new teaching room is now E201 (so please don't go to E412 any more).
The rooms will change again after Christmas - so please refer to the year planner you were given back in September.
Cheers
Mark (Ho ho ho!)
I noticed that due to the cold weather, only about half of you managed to make it in this week - survival of the fittest (or those with best transport) allowed a small number of you to make it in.
Please note that new units started...EG7517 Air, Water and Land: Science and Policy (with Prof. Kevin Taylor) and EG7518 The Sustainable City (with Dr Steve Millington). If you missed the start of these new units, you may want to fire off an email to the relevant tutor to ask if there is anything you need to do to catch up - or have any handouts kept for you for next week:
Prof Kevin Taylor: k.g.taylor@mmu.ac.uk and
Dr Steve Millington: s.millington@mmu.ac.uk
Please note that the new teaching room is now E201 (so please don't go to E412 any more).
The rooms will change again after Christmas - so please refer to the year planner you were given back in September.
Cheers
Mark (Ho ho ho!)
EGS Seminar Tuesday 07 December 2010
Tuesday 07th December, E0.05 from 1.00-2.00 pm.
Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!
Professor Chris Perry, MMU
‘Fish as a Newly Discovered Source of Carbonate Sediment: Their Role in the Tropical Carbonate Factory’
This talk will focus on the recent discovery that marine bony fish (like barracuda, flatfish and grouper, collectively known as 'teleosts') excrete high volumes of calcium carbonate from their guts and that this represents a major, but previously unknown, source of fine-grained carbonate sediment. Teleosts precipitate this carbonate within their guts as a by-product of continuously drinking Ca- and Mg-rich seawater, excreting the ingested marine Ca and Mg as insoluble carbonate within mucus envelopes. Our recent research, funded through a NERC small grant in 2008, lead to a series of novel findings regarding the significance of fish-derived carbonates within tropical marine environments, and which have potentially major implications for the field of carbonate sedimentology.
Firstly, we generated the first data on the compositional and morphological characteristics of the carbonates produced by any marine fish, showing that tropical fish produce a diverse array of fine-grained, mainly high Mg-calcite crystals, and that crystal morphologies fundamentally differ from those associated with all known biogenic and abiotic sources of marine carbonate. These carbonates are thus highly relevant to the controversial issue of where tropical carbonate muds are sourced from. Secondly, using our own newly measured fish carbonate production rate data from the Bahamas, combined with fish biomass data based on existing ecological surveys, we made the first regional-scale estimates of fish carbonate production in the tropics. Our data indicate that fish produce ~6 million kilograms of carbonate sediment each year across the Bahamas (equivalent to ~14 % of estimated total carbonate mud production, and up to 70 % in particular habitats). Thirdly, we have made the crucial observation that the crystals produced by fish occur commonly in the finest sediment fractions of surface sediments from all sedimentary environments examined in the Bahamas, thus demonstrating that such material does indeed represent both a novel and quantitatively important source of marine carbonate sediment. This presentation will discuss our current understanding of this recently discovered process and consider major areas of future research interest arising from this work.
Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!
Professor Chris Perry, MMU
‘Fish as a Newly Discovered Source of Carbonate Sediment: Their Role in the Tropical Carbonate Factory’
This talk will focus on the recent discovery that marine bony fish (like barracuda, flatfish and grouper, collectively known as 'teleosts') excrete high volumes of calcium carbonate from their guts and that this represents a major, but previously unknown, source of fine-grained carbonate sediment. Teleosts precipitate this carbonate within their guts as a by-product of continuously drinking Ca- and Mg-rich seawater, excreting the ingested marine Ca and Mg as insoluble carbonate within mucus envelopes. Our recent research, funded through a NERC small grant in 2008, lead to a series of novel findings regarding the significance of fish-derived carbonates within tropical marine environments, and which have potentially major implications for the field of carbonate sedimentology.
Firstly, we generated the first data on the compositional and morphological characteristics of the carbonates produced by any marine fish, showing that tropical fish produce a diverse array of fine-grained, mainly high Mg-calcite crystals, and that crystal morphologies fundamentally differ from those associated with all known biogenic and abiotic sources of marine carbonate. These carbonates are thus highly relevant to the controversial issue of where tropical carbonate muds are sourced from. Secondly, using our own newly measured fish carbonate production rate data from the Bahamas, combined with fish biomass data based on existing ecological surveys, we made the first regional-scale estimates of fish carbonate production in the tropics. Our data indicate that fish produce ~6 million kilograms of carbonate sediment each year across the Bahamas (equivalent to ~14 % of estimated total carbonate mud production, and up to 70 % in particular habitats). Thirdly, we have made the crucial observation that the crystals produced by fish occur commonly in the finest sediment fractions of surface sediments from all sedimentary environments examined in the Bahamas, thus demonstrating that such material does indeed represent both a novel and quantitatively important source of marine carbonate sediment. This presentation will discuss our current understanding of this recently discovered process and consider major areas of future research interest arising from this work.
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