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CAWR Newsletter
April 2021
Our monthly newsletters are an easy way to keep up-to-date with new developments at our research centre. From successful project bids to upcoming events, our newsletter informs you on how we are 'driving innovative transdisciplinary research on resilient food and water systems.'
The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the contributors at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Coventry University.
Join us in celebrating reflexive, transdisciplinary and co-creative academic practice
Registrations are now open for the Spaces of possibility online conference from the 7-11 June 2021 including an exhibition held in Parckfarm, Brussels. This conference will be about community resourcefulness, social-ecological systems & co-creative research methods. The (online) conference will include key notes, interactive workshops, multiple roundtables and world cafés, storytelling, a campfire session and many inspiring presentations. The confex Spaces of Possibility promises to be an event unlike any other.
For more information, including a draft programme and to register, please see here.
We are very much looking forward to your participation!
Check a Sweet Chestnut project
HOMED partners in CAWR at Coventry University and RHS have started the new citizen science project: 'Check a Sweet Chestnut' looking at sweet chestnut location and health. Sweet chestnut trees are under threat from the newly arrived oriental chestnut gall wasp (Dryocosmus kuriphilus) which causes galls which distort the leaves, and may weaken the tree or make the tree more vulnerable to other pests and diseases. Citizen scientists help log information to map the non-native insect and trees in varying states of health.
To take part in the Check-a-Sweet Chestnut Survey, members of the public can register on the 'Check a Sweet Chestnut' website and log findings online via the TreeZilla and TreeAlert reporting tools. Training materials are provided to help identify and measure sweet chestnut trees and to recognise signs of poor health such as galls on leaves and twigs, damaged or discoloured bark or dieback in the canopy. People are also encouraged to seek out sweet chestnut trees which have already been mapped and to check up on their health.
Phasing out peat use
Many farmers and growers still use growing media containing peat. As the importance of peatlands is increasingly recognised, there is growing pressure to cease exploiting these habitats and prevent the release of carbon dioxide that occurs when they are mined. CAWR researchers investigating peat phase-out as part of the Organic-PLUS project are working with grower Iain Tolhurst to develop on-farm solutions whereby farmers and growers can produce their own growing media from materials on site, particularly, composted chipped wood. Initial trials in our Ryton glasshouse have shown some striking differences between the test crops of lettuce and leek transplants, and will be developed throughout 2021.
For the love of a field: Research Partnership
In April Artist Researchers in Residence Dr Miche Fabre Lewin and Dr Flora Gathorne-Hardy began a collaboration with Nigel McKean to research regenerative soil practices on the 10-acre field West Peace in Suffolk. Nigel’s work draws on his wide training with a number of leaders in their respective fields (excuse the pun) including Dr. Elaine Ingham. Initially Nigel will be assisting with evaluating balancing soil micro-organisms to enhance establishment of, and early years growth for new hedgerows before moving on to suppressing disease, enhancing yields and increasing nutrient density in crops grown on the field. The project, For the Love of a Field, is receiving guidance from Marina O’Connell of the Apricot Centre and support from the Sicon Foundation.
Emerging responses to the COVID-19 crisis
Georges Félix contributed to the recently published paper 'Emerging responses to the COVID-19 crisis from family farming and the agroecology movement in Latin America – A rediscovery of food, farmers and collective action.'
Social Impact Toolkit - now available!
Since 2016, CAWR have been collaborating with The Real Farming Trust, Netfly and The 1201 Project, to explore the social impact of community-scale, agroecological food provisioning systems such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and box schemes.
Working with The 1201 Project, and Netfly Design, the team have created a dynamic, online visual platform to support community food businesses in understanding and evidencing their social impact.
The toolkit was launched on 26th March and is available to explore via the website www.social-impact-toolkit.co.uk.
Hell or high water
Three years ago, Donna Udall was in conversation with an environment officer (and part time farmer) who expressed the concern that regulation to enforce practices of good environmental care during food production was not only failing, but detrimental. The CAWR team (comprised of Donna, Alex Franklin, Francis Rayns and Ulrich Schmutz) decided to investigate this claim and found that, in the case of Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) legislation in Wales, good environmental care cannot be achieved through regulation alone, rigid regulatory prescription of environmental care can adversely effect practice and farm level navigation of regulation shapes farmers' responsibility for care. They also found that perceptions of responsibility for good care underpin narratives of good farming.
Farming for Climate Justice – Event Series
This series of three webinars is a collaboration between CAWR and the Bio-Economy Research Chair at the University of Cape Town (UCT), supported by the British Council under its Researcher Links Climate Challenge Fund. In these sessions over May and June our researchers will interweave strategies for adaptive agroecological systems, climate disruption and urbanisation; discuss reclaiming nature-based solutions through seed and people’s knowledge, participation and rights; and expand thinking around agroecological resourcing towards economies of care and climate justice.
For more on our panel, visit the project website here; and to register to attend please visit here.
Local World radio interview
Amber Martin-Woodhead was interviewed about her research on minimalism on a radio programme called ‘Local World’. In the interview she talks about how minimalists choose to live with a bare minimum of objects and how this lifestyle movement is becoming increasingly popular and environmentally relevant.
The laboratories at CAWR
Since access to our laboratories at Ryton resumed in February, we have been catching up with a backlog of plant and soil samples waiting for analysis. We are currently working through a number of samples collected for the TRUE project in particular green manure crops grown to build soil fertility. The Dumas analyser shown below allows us to assess the nitrogen content of the eight different leguminous species tested.
Project win to revolutionise air quality research in the UK
A NERC Strategic Capital Call 2020 proposal led by University of Birmingham (Prof Zongbo Shi) and six other major UK universities (including Coventry, Ivan Kourtchev as Co-I) was successful. This funding is for two new mobile air quality supersites (plan is one in a trailer and the other in a van). We expect that most of the instruments will be ready by early-mid next year. The supersites are not traditional monitoring stations - they will comprise highly sophisticated instruments which monitor key species in atmospheric processes such as ammonia (key to aerosol formation), VOCs (key to ozone, secondary organic aerosol and new particle formation), as well as trace metals, nanoparticles and particle composition in near-real time, in addition to regulated gas pollutants. By using a triplet site configuration (rural, urban, roadside), not only can urban and roadside concentration increments be measured, the processing of polluted air to form key secondary pollutants such as nitrate and secondary organic particles, and freshly formed nanoparticles can be viewed in unprecedented detail to yield process understanding.
The triplet observations will generate a step-change in scientific capability for quantifying air pollution sources and processes at a fundamental level, thus consolidating UK's world-leading position in this field. It will produce policy relevant science with significant impact, particularly in informing air quality policy including the validation of approaches accounting for imported emissions, with applications across the UK and for analogous challenges globally.
Events
Catch up on our seminars from this month by visiting our YouTube channel
Co-developing and applying a Social Impact Toolkit for Community Food Businesses in the UK with Luke Owen
Organic Plus - Contentious Inputs in Organic Agriculture with Judith Conroy, Ulrich Schmutz, Francis Rayns, Dennis Touliatos and Adrian Evans
Transforming a 900 Acre Rural Estate into a Regenerative Ecosystem with Alice Favre and Becky Burchell
Call for papers
Topic Editors: Dr Niall Burnside and Dr Jonathan Dale
Manuscript submission deadline: 30 September 2021
Special Issue "Surface Water Management: Recent Advances and Challenges"
Topic Editors: Prof Susanne Charlesworth, Dr Tom Lavers and Dr Craig Lashford
Manuscript submission deadline: 30 November 2021
Topic Editors: Stefanie Lemke, Priscilla Claeys, Nina Moeller and Georgina McAllister
Manuscript submission: 29th June 2021
Water Resources Resilience for Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
Special session: Water Security Challenges & Strategies in the 21st Century and Special session: Flooding and resilience against climate change
You are cordially invited to submit abstracts and subsequent full papers to the bi-annual Water Efficiency Conference organised by the Water Efficiency Network, The University of the West Indies and The Association of Professional Engineers of Trinidad and Tobago (APETT).
Abstract submission deadline: 30 November 2021
Contact: info@watefnetwork.co.uk for all conference, exhibition and sponsorship enquiries.
