News

Epicentre of major Amazon droughts and fires saw 2.5 billion trees and vines killed

A major drought and forest fires in the Amazon rainforest killed billions of trees and plants and turned one of the world's largest carbon sinks into one of its biggest polluters. Examining the Amazonian epicentre of the El Niño - Brazil's Lower Tapajós, an eastern Amazonia area around twice the size of Belgium - the research team, led by scientists from Lancaster University, the Environmental Change Insitute, University of Oxford, and The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation found the damage lasts for multiple years.

Image: AdobeStock
NEWS

Vance Tan wins Oxford SU Impact Award

Vance Tan Zong Hao, a Bruneian doctoral student at the School of Geography and the Environment, was awarded the prestigious Impact Award from Oxford University Student Union (Oxford SU) on 20th June.

Image: Vance Tan Zong Hao
NEWS

Splendid Isolation or Fish out of Water?

With Brexit, British fishing grew from a tool of the political class to a determinant of constitutional and political affairs, suggests a new interdisciplinary paper by Aadil Siddiqi, current MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management student.

Image: Helen Hotson / Adobe Stock
NEWS

China and the UK: Making an international collaboration work

Working with colleagues on the other side of the world can mean a lot of challenges. There are differences in language, in time zone, in culture, even in the practise of doing science. But scientific collaborations, such as the one between Hong Zhang, Jenny Richards and Heather Viles at SoGE and Qinglin Guo's team at Dunhuang Academy in China, can also provide a wealth of benefits. In a new documentary by Nature, the two teams reflect on making this ambitious project work and how other teams could do the same.

IN THE MEDIA

G7: last chance to board the green pandemic recovery ship before it sails, say Oxford experts

Climate pledges at this week's G7 meeting of the world's major economies in Cornwall represent positive action, according to top environmental researchers at the University of Oxford. But, in response to the summit agenda, the climate experts call for strong leadership from the leading economies and insist the world needs to stop using fossil fuels now - if global warming is to be tackled effectively.

IN THE MEDIA

Enhancing urban life and heritage: Nature-based solutions in the city

'Nature' is currently widely considered a threat to built heritage. But a new paper from Oxford, by renowned heritage expert Professor Heather Viles and colleague Dr Martin Coombes, maintains that both the real and perceived risks can be overcome and nature-based solutions (NbS) adapted to bring the benefits of nature into urban heritage environments.

IN THE MEDIA

Evolutionary winners are ecological losers among oceanic island plants

Evolution of multiple species from a single colonizer is something that has happened repeatedly on oceanic islands. Such radiations, can lead to tens or even hundreds of distinct species, often occupying a range of very different habitats with the expectation that these 'evolutionary winners' will be species so well-tuned to their island environments that they should also be locally successful and abundant. In a new study in Journal of Biogeography, an international team including Prof Rob Whittaker, has shown that it may not be so simple.

Photographs © Robert J. Whittaker, March 2018
NEWS