Your World, Your Science

The talks and speakers at this event tonight form part of the Opening Up Science For All project, based at the University of Reading, which aims to create a vision for Citizen Science and public engagement with environmental research in the UK. Follow the links above to learn more about the project and how to get involved!

What can a tea bag tell you about soil? It turns out quite a lot! Burying a tea bag in the ground can tell us about an important process that takes place in the soil, known as decomposition. It is vital to understand decomposition for two main reasons: 1) it re-releases nutrients that the plant took up from the soil while it was alive; and 2) it also releases carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. Tea bags are being buried around the world are helping us to find out more about this important process.

Space Weather sounds like a contradiction – space is a vacuum, so how can there be any weather? Space is “almost” a vacuum, and it turns out that the tiny amount of matter that remains is very important indeed, at least for our 21st Century lives. The space surrounding the Earth contains hazardous radiation that can disable satellites, so our increasing use of space for communication, navigation and commerce is vulnerable to space weather. The Sun controls our space weather, and we need help to study images of what the Sun throws at us in order to help predict future space weather disruption.

Thousands of volunteers are helping climate scientists digitise lost historic weather measurements taken over a century ago. These new data are helping build a legacy of environmental information, contributing to new discoveries and unlocking answers to questions about our changing weather and climate. Ed will talk about the Weather Rescue project (weatherrescue.org) and highlight what the volunteers have helped discover!