Combatting the climate crisis on campus

I'm Kadmiel Maseyk. I'm going to talk to you about a project that we've just started in the last year. So I'm sure I don't need to explain what's going on in this figure here. You know, you're well aware of the two main crises that we're facing at the moment in terms of human and human interactions with the environment, in terms of the ongoing climate change and our loss of biodiversity, dramatic loss of biodiversity.

On the left, we see the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which shows no signs of abating in the coming decades. Despite the efforts and commitments that we have to reducing our emissions. And on the right is the consequence of these and additions of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. With the increases and temperatures showing both the global and the UK situation there.

With the UK actually average temperature increasing at slightly faster than the global rate. But we are rapidly approaching one of the sort of points, a highlight of concern of 1.5 degrees, even though we're saying we're trying to keep within that, it's increasingly looking like we're not going to be maintaining ourselves within 1.5 degrees.

And coupled with this is the dramatic loss in biodiversity that have occurred over the last couple hundred years or so. The point of that we're now in what is considered the sixth major extinction on earth and in the UK, which is considered one of the most biodiverse poor countries in the world, there's been something like a 60% decrease in priority species at least since the 1970s, and about 40% of species are currently in decline, largely due to habitat loss and change, land use, management, intensification of agriculture, these sort of things.

So it's very evident that we need to do something about that. In terms of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, only about half of what we admit to the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and land use changes and so on actually remain in the atmosphere, what we termed the airborne fraction and bounces around a bit, of course, obviously.

But this is because of the emissions of approximately a quarter to a third are absorbed by the oceans and approximate another quarter of the third absorbed by the terrestrial biosphere, our living animals, due to the process of photosynthesis and then the storage of that carbon in above ground biomass and in particular long-term storage and carbon pools in the soil.

So nature is already at work, sort of mitigating the increase in temperature that otherwise we would be experiencing from the activities that is that's going on. But to what extent that's going to continue in the future is, is one question. But it also shows that it's an opportunity for us to be able to use and to start working more with nature than against nature in terms of mitigating the increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and other greenhouse gases.

And these big issues are really coming to the political forefront in recent years. And so globally, nationally and locally. And we've heard just previously about some of the local initiatives and the recognition of the importance of addressing the climate crisis and reversing the biodiversity loss. And this is mirrored in terms of some of at least the statement, at least the commitments at government level as well in terms of wanting to become a net zero by 2050 and recently signing up to this 30 by 30, protecting 30% of our land and oceans by 2030.

But it is going to require some really concerted efforts to achieve these goals. That's without question. And addressing these two big issues. So they're very intricately linked. And essentially what it comes down to is that we need to restore healthy, functioning, structurally diverse ecosystems because the more healthy and more complex our ecosystems are, they tend to absorb more carbon up to a certain point.

There is going to be a point where there's a kind of a trade-off. Ok you can have very intensive monoculture forests, for example, that might be absorbing more carbon for a period of time but will not have the same biodiverse biodiversity benefits. So the point is that we are needing to identify where and how we are going to be restoring our natural environment, our natural ecosystems, restoring, recovering, allowing to expand naturally all of these sort of processes in order to maximise carbon sequestration into the biosphere, as well as providing habitat to support biodiversity, reversing the biodiversity loss and in encouraging it to return and given a chance, it does.

And this was very clear after Chernobyl, when they shut out the whole area in Chernobyl after the big accident there, the way in, if you look at how that environment recovered after that, it gives you a really nice example of how nature does recover if we get our grubby little hands off it. So one of the big issues I think, is that it is necessary to support the political goals going forward, shall we say is by having a society that is on board with what's going on.

And this relates to a concept what we call human connection to nature. This is quite a complex thing that relates to all sorts of emotional issues as well as cognitive issues and so on, about how we perceive nature and how we feel connected to it. But I find this figure very interesting from a study that was done. This is a UK based study which shows the connection to Nature index.

That's what's on the left-hand side. And it shows that at a young age this comes from work where you do see a ways with kids and also questionnaires and things like this that at a young age children have a strong connection to nature and then this sort of declines through, shall we say, to school age, years to early adulthood.

So inherently we have the strong connection to nature, but then this decreases over time for some sort of reasons, but then it recovers. So experience in adulthood can increase that connection to nature again. So therefore, there's a lot of so what it speaks to is there's a lot a big role to be played in terms of the education years, as well as providing experience in education in adulthood in order to maintain and increase this connection to nature in our society because we understand and appreciate and then are more likely to protect.

So that’s some of the background to this formation of this living lab idea, our project that we've got going, which I will elaborate on in a second, but just a little bit about Living Labs. It's a widely used term now, so you'll probably see it used in different contexts. But what it's about is about bringing different groups and stakeholders together in a sort of partnership, shall we say, where they address the issues in real world situations to co-design and collaborate and create solutions and so on.

In our context, we take the living quite literally. And so we are going to embark on an ecosystem regeneration project, a habitat restoration that will hopefully be sequestering carbon as well as providing an increase in habitat for fauna and flora. But we're going to monitor this.

So this is now on OU campus, I'll show you a map in a second. It’s in the riparian area next to the river at the west of the campus, now near the fitness trail for those who might know that area or might go walking at lunchtime. And then we're going to equip the site with a lot of sensors. There's a whole range of sensors for environmental monitoring, as well as biodiversity monitoring and monitoring carbon and so on to provide us a whole lot of digital resources that we will use in terms of education and outreach and research as well.

So this is building on the OU strengths that we have for technology enhanced learning through the Open STEM labs, live interactive things. That's our field task that we do for Environmental Science module and these sort of all these great things that the OU does that I'm sure you're aware of. We're taking the Open STEM labs outside basically. So here on this map you can see this is the map of the campus.

So you see that blue area down in the bottom left area. That's the riparian area that will be we'll be planting out. And so it'll tree species, native tree species. And that's actually going to start tomorrow. The first 150 trees and shrubs are going to be going in there and in this we're going to take advantage of a few other green spaces on campus.

The OU campus is extremely interesting and very ecosystem diverse, shall we say. So there's a lot of great things to take advantage of here on our campus. So there's an adjacent floodplain meadow and then there's a bit of a woodland down on next to the southeast car park. So we will be also using these as comparative sites as well.

And then you can see there's a walk walkway that we plan to through our learning walk with interpretation boards that will link out to some of the digital resources and so on that will be developing over time. So here just an example of some of the sort of data we intend to collect, like I said, meteorology data, and then we have wildlife cameras for looking at the mammal diversity and there will be some bioacoustics going in, monitoring phenology from digital cameras, looking at properties that we look at that tells us things about the way the system is functioning in terms of surface reflectance and monitoring tree growth, soil carbon, all these sort of interesting properties of the ecosystem, but sort of quite multi-dimensional in terms that this will help us hopefully build up or get a hold of information and data that we can then use and turn this into other assets that we might use either just for displaying the data, but ultimately with time as a fully kind of digital twinning of the environment where we create an immersive experience where someone can then explore and go on virtual field trips and things like this in the environment and and come across or be able to explore the data that's associated with the environment as they go through it in the virtual space, as well as the physical space.

So here's an example of some of the activities that we planned, and I've kind of touched on. Obviously, one of our big priorities is data and information for OU modules. So particular environmental science module has been integrated into this, but there are also ideas and discussions and thoughts about other modules in different schools, including for biology and math and stats and computer science.

The idea is to run virtual field trips from there and provide data that can be used for students and for their projects, for example, and of course, develop a whole lot of open education resources about it. There are they're designed to educate about these nature-based solutions to climate change and nature recovery and the importance thereof and how people can use this.

So yes, it’ll be data rich. There are these comparator sites, but importantly it's going to be an example of how we can take advantage of spaces, no matter how big or small in this process. Because what we have to understand is that because of the way the earth, the surface is fragmented, we're going to have to take advantage of every available space as part of this nature recovery process and start to integrate our lives with nature much more than we currently do.

And then the idea is to really reach out to the community, have school trips and school groups involved in the site come for visits, be exposed to site, and then hopefully even to start develop some sort of satellite sites at schools or lighthouses and also to link up with national and international programmes.

And on the left there you can see Sneha and Mandy setting up what's called a malaise trap. We set this up last week or the week before. We've been one of the sites that's been selected to join this bio scan project, which is studying the genetic diversity of flying insects across the UK. So one of the 100 sites for this.

So tracking the insects and monitoring the biodiversity in terms of that element of biodiversity there. And then there are things like the mammal web and the PhenoCam Network that are on our radar as well. And obviously this is something that takes a lot of people and a lot of effort and involvement of a lot of people to contribute to this.

So here's just a list of the people involved so far and in particular the Development Office who were instrumental in getting that first lead grant from the Garfield Weston Trust to get us going. And at the moment and the great work that OU Estates team are doing in facilitating this work and getting it going as well, particularly to Tracey and James with helping.