🌊 As the need to restore Europe’s freshwaters becomes ever more pressing, so too does the demand for funding to support ambitious restoration projects. 🤝 A new @merlin-project.bsky.social publication guides you through the grant funding landscape. freshwaterblog.net/2025/10/22/h...

How to find grant funding for your freshwater restoration project

Image: Cottonbro Studio | Pexels Creative Commons As the need to restore Europe’s freshwaters becomes ever more pressing, so too does the demand for funding to support ambitious restoration project…

freshwaterblog.net

It's out! 🧪 "Lines in the landscape," on the under-appreciated importance of #ditches as diverse ecosystems: doi.org/10.1038/s432.... By @peatymike.bsky.social, @fluitans.bsky.social, @drtatariw.bsky.social, @timaukel.bsky.social, @jordannabergman.bsky.social, @juliecrabot.bsky.social, ...

Lines in the landscape - Communications Earth & Environment

Ditches have many overlooked environmental and societal roles, including impact on biodiversity and pollution, and management strategies to enhance their multifunctional landscape-scale benefits are n...

doi.org

🌱 🐟🦫 No.1 Freshwater Detective Agency from the University of Stirling take on Finland’s beaver ponds 🇫🇮🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Day1: 16/72 audiomoths installed so far… and as many bug bites… 🪵 #beaverlogbook @dralanlaw.bsky.social @nigelwillby.bsky.social + myself, Alex Adams, and Alice Turner

This new map provides a global view of the distribution of a multitude of aquatic ecosystems, including various wetlands. It's a pretty big step forward, and I look forward to seeing how it will be used e.g. to study wetland greenhouse gases. essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Mapping the world's inland surface waters: an upgrade to the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD v2)

Abstract. In recognition of the importance of inland waters, numerous datasets mapping their extents, types, or changes have been created using sources ranging from historical wetland maps to real-tim...

essd.copernicus.org

New paper out with collaborators from Tianjin University: "Village ponds are hotspots of CO2 and CH4 emissions regulated by biological communities" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Village ponds are hotspots of CO2 and CH4 emissions regulated by biological communities

Ponds in rural villages (village ponds) potentially emit substantial greenhouse gases (GHG), since they are pervasive and often highly eutrophic. Howe…

sciencedirect.com

How do we decide on conservation actions in the face of context dependency? In our new paper on ‘Precision Ecology’ we show how methods developed in medicine & marketing can be applied to predict site-specific outcomes allowing effective & targeted conservation doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Precision ecology for targeted conservation action - Nature Ecology & Evolution

The fields of medicine and marketing use large data volumes and computational power to target individuals. This Perspective argues that applied ecologists should draw on such approaches to provide dec...

doi.org

I remember when authors used to thank the reviewers in the acknowledgements section... maybe that's a thing of the past? Or maybe I've become reviewer number 2?!

Today, we are also celebrating the winners of the 2024 Annual Meeting Prizes: Emily Holden and Alice Turner (from left to right). https://f.mtr.cool/tpabuuvzgi

While there have been papers looking at Beaver effects on immature aquatic insects, the latest @freshwaterscience.bsky.social #FreshwaterScience issue shows how Beaver dams can increase biomass in emergent adult insects - along with community changes www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Beaver recolonization explains aquatic insect emergence patterns | Freshwater Science: Vol 44, No 1

Abstract Emerging aquatic insects are an important aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidy that can make up a large portion of the diet of riparian predators. The biomass and abundance of aquatic insects can b...

journals.uchicago.edu

I was walking along my local river last night and was so pleased to see that beavers have returned. I managed to get a picture.

Beaver Versus Human: The Big Differences in Small Dams wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Beaver Versus Human: The Big Differences in Small Dams

Illustration of the net benefits and costs of different types of dams considered in this paper. The types of dams are ordered by relative benefit from left to right, with the most beneficial on the l...

wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Super excited to share our new paper out today in Nature Water led by Christina McCabe. @naturewaterjnl.bsky.social “The ecological benefits of more room for rivers” Find the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s44... Free to read version: rdcu.be/eeuBx #rivers #floods #biodiversity #resilience

The ecological benefits of more room for rivers - Nature Water

This Review synthesizes the ecological features and processes that arise when rivers are given room to move. Understanding these interactions will support more sustainable decisions that weigh river e...

nature.com

A beaver themed prize giving! 🦫 - Eileen Stuart then presented the prizes for best talk to James Macarthur at UHI Inverness and the best poster to Alice Turner from the University of Stirling. #SNSC2025 PS - I promise it wasn’t rigged towards the organisers!

A dam good talk from Emily Simpson @emofthewoods.bsky.social on the role of beaver ponds in sediment trapping and recognising beaver ponds for carbon accreditation 🦫 #SNSC2025

Coypus taking the credit beavers are due… @britishecologicalsociety.org

Active #wetland restoration kickstarts vegetation establishment, but natural development promotes greater plant diversity besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🌍 🧪 🦤

Active wetland restoration kickstarts vegetation establishment, but natural development promotes greater plant diversity

Active steering of wetland restoration by introducing target species and preventing herbivory accelerated vegetation development, while natural development took longer. However, natural development r...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Duckling body mass increases with abundant aquatic invertebrates: experimental approach www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Duckling body mass increases with abundant aquatic invertebrates: experimental approach

In Fennoscandia, waterbirds have declined over several decade, and this decline could be linked to problems in the breeding success and loss of foragi…

sciencedirect.com

✨ We have EIGHT amazing summer internships with our National Capability for Global Challenges scheme! Work with UKCEH scientists on topics like ozone pollution, modelling, satellite imagery, soil health & more. 🔗 Apply by 2 April: www.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/... 🧪🧵 1/ Please share widely!

Job: Come work with me! Please repost! We're seeking a faculty colleague whose research, teaching, and outreach focuses on water quality and freshwater ecosystems in the context of climate change. Review of applications will begin April 15, 2025. careers.msu.edu/jobs/assista...

Naming a beaver Alan is a perfectly acceptable in my opinion. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Beavers return to Northamptonshire for first time in 400 years

A family of eight is released into an enclosure in Rushden.

bbc.co.uk

The impact of reintroduced Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) dams on the upstream movement of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in upland areas of Great Britain journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

The impact of reintroduced Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) dams on the upstream movement of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in upland areas of Great Britain

The return of Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) to large areas of Europe represents a conservation success with the current population estimated to be around 1.2 million individuals. Their reintroduction...

journals.plos.org

A legacy of lockdown has been an increasing number of online, free talks by research projects and organisations. These are so great to keep science open and inspiring. To the many folks who do this (RGS, Merlin, NERC), thank you!

Global Report Calls for Wetland Restoration Through Rewilding sdg.iisd.org/news/global-...

Global Report Calls for Wetland Restoration Through Rewilding

A report by the Global Rewilding Alliance and partners reveals that the decline of key animal species disrupts wetlands’ ecological balance and ecosystem services they provide, including carbon seques...

sdg.iisd.org

A pleasure to be involved in this paper, which turned out to be quite a tricky analysis! Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology - BMC Biology

Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explan...

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com

Some excellent examples of the role that animals play in making our wetlands functional and dynamic. Including beavers obviously! How we and our wetlands rely on wild animals – a report to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands globalrewilding.earth/how-we-and-o...

A beautiful (but REALLY cold) day on Ben Each and Stùc a' Chròin. Crampons almost the whole day, it was great!!! #Scotwinter #ThinkWinter

"Universities across the UK are facing a challenging financial period" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cardiff: University confirms plans to cut 400 jobs

Vice-chancellor Wendy Larner says

bbc.co.uk

'Simply obscene'. UCU comment on Stirling Principal's 40% £119k pay rise over 2 years making him highest paid VC in Scotland on £414,000 plus benefits. Salaries like this when we're facing funding challenges and redundancies across HE are unconscionable www.scotsman.com/education/th...

The 'staggering' £119,000 salary rise for best paid university principal in Scotland

‘Simply obscene’ hike in pay for Scottish vice chancellor who now earns more than double the UK prime minister

scotsman.com

There is an idea that we can simply step away from degraded ecosystems & they will recover But truly biodiverse, resilient ecosystems are complex So, in degraded landscapes, we will often need to intervene to guide systems towards complexity besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Explore before you restore: Incorporating complex systems thinking in ecosystem restoration

By illustrating how key Complex Systems Science (CSS) concepts linked to non-linear threshold behaviour can impact restoration outcomes through influencing recovery trajectories, our framework Explor...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The oystercatchers are back on Stirling Uni campus! A sign that winter is making way for spring. I'll be on the lookout for snowdrops too.