Decoding Nature’s Code

Sarah McKim leads a research group at the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute which studies how barley plants grow and develop, and linking these processes to grain yield and quality. Her talk will take you on a tour through the life of a barley plant, highlighting how master genes control different events to make sure barley plants survive and thrive in our fields, to yield high quality grain important for our farmers.

Mangrove ecosystems along tropical coastlines provide a host of ecosystem services for local and global communities- sequestering carbon, protecting coastlines from erosion and damage from extreme weather and as biodiversity hotspots.

Additionally, communities rely on resources from mangroves- activities that contribute to their degradation. Current approaches to land and ocean protection encourage community-driven and -led management. These measures, however, rarely incorporate biodiversity into public engagement and management.

My research aims to incorporate mangrove dependent communities’ local ecological knowledge with scientific survey to enhance the human-nature relationship in mangrove systems, informing land protection and restoration activities.

Description TBA

Most glaciers around the world are shrinking in response to climate change, which presents several problems for humanity. Glacier melt supplies ~2 billion people with water, particularly in the Himalaya-Karakoram and Andean regions, but glaciers will become too small to supply water at a reliable rate, meaning that some regions have seen water shortages which are likely to become worse through this century.

At the same time, glacier shrinkage and permafrost degradation leaves many mountain environments more susceptible to more landslides, outburst floods and ice avalanches, which collectively have killed tens of thousands of people in recent years, and destroyed crucial infrastructure such as roads and hydropower stations.

This talk will briefly outline the importance of glaciers to people and the dangers that shrinking ice cover presents. The talk will be delivered by Dr. Simon Cook, a glaciologist and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science at the University of Dundee.