"Look at it this way"

David Rogers has started a new role leading on Youth and Community Engagement for the South Downs National Park. He is offering to support schools and posted this message on LinkedIn. If you are a school, youth group or outdoor learning provider inside, or within 10km of the South Downs National Park (or farther afield) I'd love to talk to you about how we can help support learning. We can help with the DfE's Sustainability and climate change strategy ; connecting young people with nature and helping them have agency toward improving nature and climate change though a number of bespoke opportunities. Get in touch with me via learning@southdowns.gov.uk Sign up to our newsletters: - Schools https://lnkd.in/e8zar4kv - Learning Providers https://lnkd.in/eJFGZvRR - Young People https://lnkd.in/e7WGwa6X Image: South Downs from above - taken by Alan Parkinson and shared on Flickr under CC license

Thanks to Hannah Steel for the link to this useful visualisation tool. Biomeviewer displays a range of information in a visual way. It's really useful for identifying biomes in a general way, and rotating the globe to see where they are located and identifying their characteristics. There are accompanying resources in a folder, student worksheet and apparently an iOS app too. The worksheet takes students through the various features which are built into the app. You can also explore anthromes : anthropogenic biomes. These are where the majority of humanity lives. A classification proposed by E.C. Ellis, October 25, 2005 lists them. Minimum mapping scale greater than or equal to one square kilometer. Source:  https://ecotope.org/about/anthropogenic_landscapes/ There is a lot more information and some useful maps on this website too , which is the new home of the previous link. Lovely work and I now want to do something with this as well...

One of the nicest programmes on the telly is Gone Fishing with Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer. The latest series has just ended. Each programme features short snippets of music to sit alongside the beautiful close-up, slow motion and drone cinematography. There are Spotify playlists for each episode which can be found by searching. Some of them are curated by people involved in the show, and others by fans of the show.  Some really good music is included and it's always good to hear a snippet of something you like, such as Goldfrapp...

 ...but they can't do it free of charge... this is not a great idea. Story here. And in totally unrelated news... "The newly created Alliance for Wales’ Rainforests (AWR) says only about one in five of the 68 temperate rainforest sites it has surveyed are in good condition" New report urges Welsh Govt to safeguard Cymru's rainforests: https://t.co/G6S7eGI6ZA — Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) November 26, 2024 And finally.... 

This is a very useful report from the Friends of the Lake District It's a really clear piece of research by Dr. Davina Stanford on the costs and benefits of tourism in the Lake District with some case studies from other locations on how they raise money for sustainable tourism and to pay for some of the additional requirements. One option is a Tourist tax expansion. What is the tax spent on? If you have travelled to a European city recently, you will be familiar with the idea of paying a few extra Euros on top of the price of your room. I think I may try to do something with this for our Year 8 unit exploring tourism as it's a lovely area for young people to learn about. Who Pays for the Lake District? Tourism is a vital part of the #LakeDistrict economy – but it comes at a cost. It’s time to talk about the problems and the solutions. Read our report here: https://t.co/1IYKJxZmly #WhoPays pic.twitter.com/liwxF8Pok7 — Friends of the Lake District (@FriendsofLakes) November 20...

The new Living England 2022-23 habitat map is now live! Download freely from https://t.co/rR1gT2IaPl (coming soon on Magic). It’s more reliable & user-friendly than ever - providing essential habitat data for natural capital monitoring across England. pic.twitter.com/5PmDIHjeli — NE Chief Scientist (@NEChiefSci) November 12, 2024 Visit the link, and see the details in the technical report.  

  Four new films look at the work of the Environment Agency to develop natural flood management schemes.  📢 Announcing our four NEW animated films developed with @envagency to spread the word about natural flood management (NFM) 🎉 Meet Twiggy from the film 'Wood you believe it' below and watch the rest of the films here 👇 https://t.co/SRl1IBb4kw (1/4) pic.twitter.com/bXqQnMekTi — CumbriaWildlifeTrust (@cumbriawildlife) October 28, 2024 We need to slow the flow. Storms which cause flooding in homes and businesses have increased in Cumbria in the last decade. Peatlands hold large amount of water and during periods of high rainfall they can both hold back water and also slow the flow of the water coming off the hills. Damaged peatlands cannot hold the same amounts of water, and areas that contain drains actually speed up the flow. This means that, during high rainfall events, water isn’t held back and released slowly but flows immediately into rivers, increasing the flooding ...

Always nice to hit another small milestone on one of my blogs. This one is about landscapes.

  A StoryMap on forgotten woodlands and the clues they leave in the present day. Coilltean Caillte (Gaelic for 'Forgotten Woodlands') is a partnership project that has mapped over 15,000 Scottish place-names that suggest the presence of woodland. Many of the names appear in areas of ancient woodland, but others lie in open ground. Could these be the locations of long-forgotten woodlands? Forgotten Woodlands: Can linguistic clues enhance our understanding of an area's past and inspire its future potential https://t.co/52PytVsdqS — Benjamin Hennig (@geoviews) October 28, 2024 Read more here.