Mike Shewring
@mikeshewring.bsky.social
Ecologist / conservation scientist
Had a fantastic day talking all things peat at the Gower Show!
Adfer Natur CIC@adfernatur.bsky.social · 3d ago💚 We had a wonderful day at the Gower Show today! 🌿 It was a pleasure chatting with farmers, local representatives and visitors about the work of Adfer Natur CIC, peatland restoration and our upcoming surveys on Gower.
If you’re in South Wales and fancy coming to speak to us about the peatlands of Gower at the Gower Show tomorrow, come and find Adfer!
Adfer Natur CIC@adfernatur.bsky.social · 4d agoAdfer Natur is going to be at the Gower Show tomorrow at Penrice Castle to talk about all things peat, including our work this year on Rhossili Down. We’re over in the Gower National Landscapes tent and we’d love to see you there!
I always think it's amazing how much water seeps out of the hills...but we do need rain now! #peatlands
Manx Peat Partnership@manxpeat.bsky.social · 6d agoWe definitely need more rain 🙏🏻💦 however it is good to see that our work is helping to keep the hills wet. Slowing the flow of water is especially important in prolonged dry weather, but is also important after heavy rain as it can reduce erosion 😊 #peatland
Really nice good news story from our Welsh peatland restoration area
Adfer Natur CIC@adfernatur.bsky.social · 6d agoLast week Mike and Joey from Adfer Natur delivered training for BSG Ecology on peatland habitat management design. As part of this training the group visited Cregan, a forest to bog peatland site that was delivered in 2023 by the Lost Peatlands project, with the restoration designed by Mike and Joey
New research reveals a substantial decline in the number of European Storm-petrels caught by researchers over the course of a 27-year study Read on for a summary Full paper: doi.org/10.1080/0006... @one-cardiffuni.bsky.social @robthomasbirds.bsky.social @kirstyfranklin.bsky.social #seabird 🪶🧪
A very rewarding day to be out not only delivering training for BSG Ecology on peat and habitat management, but to find water vole latrines on a forest to bog site that in November 2023 looked like this, a bare stump flipped landscape. An incredible change in only 2.5 years!
If your new academic year resolution is to improve your statistical knowledge and coding skills in “R” in a friendly and supportive online learning environment, check out our forthcoming courses for autumn and winter 2026-27. #rstats #RStats www.ecoexplore.co.uk/ourcourses
Data Analysis Courses — Eco-Explore
ecoexplore.co.uk
Lovely to see our Track paper (besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....) featured in @inkcapjournal.bsky.social this week - check it out here url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/PhpvC68O8t... @rspbscience.bsky.social
Archaeologists and conservationists unite!
This week's edition of Ground Cover.
url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com
1/🛰️🧠 New open-access paper! We built a deep-learning (U-Net) model to automatically map surfaced vehicle "hill tracks" across the UK uplands from 25 cm aerial imagery — the first spatially comprehensive assessment of their extent. 🔓 doi.org/10.1002/2688...
Vehicle tracks in the <fc>UK</fc> uplands vary in occurrence with land use and overlap with peatlands and protected areas
Surfaced vehicle tracks are widespread across GB uplands, yet their extent and environmental footprint have until now been poorly quantified. Using remote sensing and a semi-automated detection model...
doi.org
swyddi.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/VacancyInfor... There is a new role out for the Welsh National Peatland Action Programme (NPAP) for all you peaty people who are looking for a role in GIS/Remote Sensing/Modelling. Lots of very positive peatland action in Wales and a great time to get involved!
At the @britishecologicalsociety.org #NBS symposium? Come see our @rspbscience.bsky.social poster on wildfire and habitat restoration!
New in #BirdStudy and the media today: Swifts are very faithful to nest sites, partners & colonies. Providing nest sites could help maintain populations. High fidelity to nest sites and partners in the Common Swift Apus apus: doi.org/10.1080/0006... www.theguardian.com/environment/... #ornithology
Migrating swifts loyally return every year to nests in buildings, study finds
Conservationists emphasise importance of protecting nesting sites used by ‘strongly faithful’ red-listed species
theguardian.com
Roads inside protected areas are invasion highways! Zardetto & Fidelis find that roadside edges fuel invasive plant spread in tropical forests & savannas, hitting native species hard. 🌿🚧 #VegetationScience
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Nice blog post from Tom Aspinall at @rspb.bsky.social for the @iucn-uk-peat.bsky.social on how we can build landscapes that are resilient to fire www.iucn-uk-peatland programme.org/blog/tom-aspinall/building-fire-resilience-natures-way
Building fire resilience, nature's way | IUCN UK Peatland Programme
In this guest blog, RSPB Senior Policy Officer Tom Aspinall presents his views on the journey from fire risk to resilience for UK peatlands.
iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org
Calling all peaty people. Still time to submit to our special issue on peatlands. Details below. Free free to DM/email me if you want to ask any questions.
Mike Peacock@peatymike.bsky.social · 9mo agoPeaty people: we're hosting a special issue in the Taylor & Francis journal Sustainable Environment. Do consider submitting to it - the scope is broad and multidisciplinary. think.taylorandfrancis.com/article_coll...
Prynhawn Da Pawb! If anyone is at the IUCN peatland conference Adfer Natur has a stand set up and we’d love to talk to you! We’re right next to the main IUCN desk. We have microscopes set up for the duration of the conference so if you have samples from field trips, bring them to us for a look & ID
Lovely night to be out surveying for nightjar around the wind farm peat sites in the Rhondda (before the rain comes in)
PSA for any of my peaty friends who are at the IUCN - bring me your Sphagnum and mosses and liverworts that you find on your field trips and I’ll ID them for you if needed and you can use our set up to take some photos under the microscope that I can send you. Bring on your peat and bog finds!
Adfer Natur CIC@adfernatur.bsky.social · 2mo agoPrynhawn Da Pawb! If anyone is at the IUCN peatland conference Adfer Natur has a stand set up and we’d love to talk to you! We’re right next to the main IUCN desk. We have microscopes set up for the duration of the conference so if you have samples from field trips, bring them to us for a look & ID
🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.
This is so cool! zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Tracking Wintertime Behaviour of Emperor Penguins Using High‐Resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery
Using 25–30 cm Umbra synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery combined with ground validation of our observations, we introduce a method to track the phenology of emperor penguins during the Antarctic ....
zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Interesting piece on #WoodlandCarbonCode parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2026/05/25/t...
The Woodland Carbon Code (1) - tree carbon at the expense of soil carbon - parkswatchscotland
The Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) describes itself (see here) as ‘the UK’s government-backed standard for creating new woodlands that generate high-integrity carbon credits’ and is managed by Scottish Fo...
parkswatchscotland.co.uk
NPAP team members were delighted to see the progress on the @rspbcymru.bsky.social Gadfa peatland restoration site. The dams and pools are now colonised by sphagnum; moss that forms layers of peat to lock carbon in the land. Impressive work Team Vyrnwy! #WalesPeatlandAction @natreswales.bsky.social
Delighted to share our new paper, just published in Environmental Research Letters, on the air quality (AQ) impacts of prescribed moorland burning. We combined burn area estimates, fire hotspot data, and meteorological records to estimate emissions, then a AQ model to simulate population exposure.
Prescribed moorland burning in Great Britain exposes 2.3 million people to PM2.5 levels exceeding the WHO 24 h guideline limit
Prescribed moorland burning in Great Britain exposes 2.3 million people to PM2.5 levels exceeding the WHO 24 h guideline limit, Graham, Ailish M, Spracklen, Dominick V, Shewring, Mike P, Douglas, David J T, Pope, Richard J, Chipperfield, Martyn P
iopscience.iop.org
Hey #PeatSky, going to be at the IUCN conf in Swansea? come and say hi! On day 1 I’m on the Adfer Natur CIC stall with my directors hat on, day 2 I’m doing some of the Rhigos trip for Swansea Uni, day 3 I’m part of the AM EC workshop for BES and the PM community engagement workshop for Adfer Natur
Very excited to announce that my first PhD research paper is out! 🎉 We think shallow #peatlands represent #ClimateChange "sentinels" for deeper peats, but we don't know much about their #evapotranspiration (ET) dynamics 🧵 doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70558 @nobel-water.bsky.social #PeatPaper #OpenAccess
Persistent Evapotranspiration in a Shallow Boreal Shield Peatland Despite Summer Drought: Implications for Ecohydrological Resilience
We examine energy balance and evapotranspiration dynamics in a shallow peatland as an analogue for projected climate change impacts in deeper peatlands. Across nine growing seasons, we document simil...
doi.org
Boglands around the world are considered wastelands and continue to be destroyed to make room for more “productive” land. With this ignorance, we lose some of the most beautiful, diverse, and innovative ecosystems-and one of our best climate allies. Please share and become a #BogChampion.
This is such an important and engaging book (including an excellent chapter on our work on evidence-based conservation). Makes a completely compelling case for learning what is effective and then doing what we know works and not doing what we know doesn’t work.
Where are the world's bogs, fens, and swamps? Are there peatlands still waiting to be mapped within the dense tropical forests of the Amazon and Congo? 🌎 Mapping #peatlands is a global challenge. For more, see my new post on Peatpedia: open.substack.com/pub/peatpedi...
Peatland Mapping
The quest to identify and map the world’s bogs, fens, and swamps
open.substack.com
Lovely day looking for Chough on South Gower cliffs with @nationaltrust.org.uk . Three active Chough nests found. Plus some botanical niceties yellow whitlow grass (too quick for photo) and hoary rock rose.
