David Alexander
@david-alexander.bsky.social
Love National Parks, Protected Landscapes and Maps My views are my own
Welcome to the #RLASSymposium! We begin with an introduction to the first #RLASPartnership symposium by Prof. Bridget Emmett OBE @britishecologicalsociety.org. 17 organisations make up this partnership, & we hope it will provide connectivity between #LandscapeScale #LTEs 🌍
I got this book from the Library at Cranfield. It's beautiful, insightful and enjoyable. Published in 1986, it's nearly as old as I am!
Nice panel at my local conservation area in Rotherham. Small outcrop of limestone near a SSSi - Anston Stones. Not many Meadows left around here.
In June 2024, 80,000 of us marched peacefully to #RestoreNatureNow with hardly a mention in the media. Were we supposed to have thrown stones and fought the police to be noticed? www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...
Bottles thrown at police as 100 officers clash with ‘unite the kingdom’ marchers – UK politics live
Met police estimate 110,000 people attended rally, with smaller number of counter-protesters ‘penned in’
theguardian.com
Doing stuff together that we can't do alone... #protectedlandscapes defraenvironment.blog.gov.uk/2025/09/05/t...
The Protected Landscapes Partnership: working together for nature, people and climate
Our Protected Landscapes aren’t just lines on a map or signs at the side of the road. Each Protected Landscape has a dedicated team behind it who are experts in their local area and both national and ...
defraenvironment.blog.gov.uk
"Megaberg" currently slightly larger than the size of the Peak District National Park. Hard to comprehend the scale.
CNN@cnn.com · last yr.The world’s largest iceberg is “rapidly breaking up” into several “very large chunks,” scientists from the British Antarctic Survey say: https://cnn.it/3K8Zz68
Useful guide for tonight's eclipse... Hopefully it's not too cloudy ☁️
Dani Dark Skies ✨@danidarkskies.bsky.social · last yr.Want to know how to watch tonight’s eclipse? I made a reel telling you all you’ll need to know ahead of the Moon rise tonight. www.instagram.com/reel/DOOqF6D... Wonderful image by my good friend Kirk Paton
Nice graph 📉
Annie Leymarie@annieleymarie.bsky.social · last yr.A new World Bank report cites data from a forthcoming study: it shows the biomass of wild terrestrial mammals as being 2% of all mammals on earth. A widely quoted 2018 study had shown that proportion as 4% (see next post). The rest is us & our livestock. openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/c...
Our new Landscape Observatory website went live today. Please check it out www.landscapeobservatory.org.uk
Landscape Observatory – AI mapping research to adapt landscape to climate change
landscapeobservatory.org.uk
It was excellent to attend and speak at the #landscapesconference 2025. Highlight was the Ministerial address, talking about our new Landscape Observatory 🤯
Celebrating a single successful hen harrier nest in the Peak District risks creating a false impression of conservation success en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivo...
Survivorship bias - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Irreplaceable habitats are on the line. This is the reality if an unamended Part 3 of the Bill passes. It must not.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · last yr.Revealed: 5,000 English nature sites at risk under Labour’s planning proposals
@bbcspringwatch.bsky.social great to see dry stone walls on Springwatch this evening. Since the 1950s we've seen a gradual decline all over the white peak. Gradual feature loss, resulting in shifting baselines.
David Alexander@david-alexander.bsky.social · 2y agoUsing computer vision and #MapReader software, we analysed the loss of field boundaries across the #PeakDistrict Since the 1950s, the White Peak has seen a 12% reduction-551 km lost from an original 4,814 km. A stark reminder of landscape change 📊🌿 storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5c89... #maps #GIS
A HISTORIC MILESTONE: For the first time, solar power generated more electricity globally than nuclear, making it the world’s 4th largest power source. In just 5 years, solar output nearly tripled—from 79 TWh (Apr 2020) to 233 TWh (Apr 2025). The energy transition is speeding up. @ember-energy.org
Most interpretation panels I come across these days are old. This is a fantastic one near my house, explaining a little known fact... the stone used to construct the Houses of Parliament, originates from Rotherham!
Just attended a fascinating workshop on DV. Got me thinking about the 40,000+ images in our #LandscapesUnlocked archive at the Peak District. Huge potential for AI-driven insight into people, place, and landscape change. www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/learning-abo...
I know it's Friday & sunny, but mark your calendars for next Wed lunchtime to hear @catsporter.bsky.social talk about WEATHER and the early Irish Ordnance Survey.
Luca Scholz@lscholz.bsky.social · last yr.Join us online on 21 March 12pm (BST) for the another event in our series on Environmental Digital Humanities: @catsporter.bsky.social will give a talk titled "Exploring the Weather in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland". #digitalhumanities #skystorians @kmcdono.bsky.social
Shocking stats in today's FT: "England faces driest year this century." April rainfall more than 50% below average across most of the country…
We need to rethink how we monitor biodiversity at scale Traditional methods alone can’t keep pace with the urgent need for high-resolution, landscape-scale monitoring of protected areas & landscapes New methods with @vdplasthijs.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Monitoring protected areas by integrating machine learning, remote sensing and citizen science
Protected areas are central to addressing the world's biodiversity crisis, but rapid and high-resolution monitoring is required to assess their effectiveness for conservation. Two data sources, remot...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
🌲 Planting trees helps woodland birds—but how and where we plant matters. 🐦 doi.org/10.1007/s109... We modelled how different woodland creation strategies affect 10 woodland bird species in England’s agricultural landscapes. @watts-km.bsky.social @tomfinch.bsky.social
Combining occupancy and dispersal models to predict the conservation benefits of land-use change - Landscape Ecology
Context Economic incentives for habitat creation in productive agricultural land are an important tool for halting biodiversity loss. Given inevitable funding constraints, assessing the cost-effective...
doi.org
Beautiful Barn Owl in flight photo from Daryl Peters: 'I never tire of watching these magnificent, graceful, silent and ethereal raptors, even with the fallout of the early morning pre-dawn starts to see them at their best.'
Fun climate fact of the day. Last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere there were no humans on Earth.
The Turks Head. St Agnes, Isles of Scilly. What a pub 👌
Bluebells looking stunning today 😍 Almost half the world's bluebells are found in the UK, they're relatively rare in the rest of the world
We need to start to think about ecosystem turnover as a form of ecosystem resilience. Fantastic paper.. "mass-scale assisted colonisation will likely be required not to conserve threatened species, but to maintain functional ecosystems"
James Bullock@jmbecologist.bsky.social · 2y agoAs climate change will fundamentally change the environment we cannot carry on with traditional conservation & hope that will be enough We need to start investigating new approaches to maintain functioning ecosystems Our new paper besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
"Great workshop last week discussing landscape change & conservation with the LCCM team! Exciting conversations on connecting historical maps, computational methods, and land protection in UK National Parks. Looking forward to the next steps! #MapReader #Conservation #UKLandscapes"
