Issue 7 | Winter 2013 | Geography and Environment
Altitude Welcome to the Geography and Environment newsletter. In this edition we feature fascinating research that reveals more about the eating habits of prehistoric man, the landmark achievement of the Enactus student enterprise team and population mapping designed to help combat poverty and poor health.
Nutrients in food vital to location of early human settlements | Page 2 Student entrepreneurs in World Cup Final | Page 2 Population mapping to help combat poverty and poor health | Page 4
Enactus Southampton has made history by finishing second at the Enactus World Cup in Cancun, Mexico. The University’s team of student social entrepreneurs, including our very own third year BA geography student Rachel Whiley, were beaten to the title by Germany, with Nigeria and Puerto Rico also reaching the final four. The landmark achievement by Enactus Southampton marked the first time that the UK team had made the final of the World Cup. Southampton has now made three successive trips to the World Cup as UK national champions. “My congratulations to our students and staff who represented the University so fantastically at the Enactus World Cup,” said Vice-Chancellor, Professor Don Nutbeam. Enactus Southampton won this year’s UK final after presenting three social enterprise projects to a panel of judges: ‘SanEco’, ‘Right Futures’ and ‘Find Your Path’. Enactus is a global not-forprofit organisation that helps university students make a difference within their communities, while developing their skills to become socially responsible business leaders. To find out more about their projects visit www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/ enactus_worldcup
River habitats provided the opportunity to locate nutrient-rich food
Nutrients in food vital to location of early human settlements: the original ‘Palaeo-diet’ Research led by Geography and Environment’s Professor Tony Brown, has found that early humans were driven by a need for nutrient-rich food to select ‘special places’ in northern Europe as their main habitat. Evidence of their activity at these sites comes in the form of hundreds of stone tools, including handaxes.
Professor Brown continues: “…the sites may have provided ‘nodal points’ or base camps along nutrient-rich route-ways through the Palaeolithic landscape, allowing early humans to explore northwards to more challenging environments.” The project was funded by English Heritage and the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Social and Human Sciences.
The research, in collaboration with archaeologist Dr Laura Basell at Queen’s To read more about this fascinating research University Belfast, found that sites popular visit: www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/ with our early human ancestors, were paleo_diet abundant in foods containing nutrients vital for a balanced diet. The most important sites, dating between 500,000 to 100,000 years ago were based at the lower end of river valleys, providing ideal bases for early hominins early humans who lived before Homo sapiens. “Our research suggests that floodplain zones closer to the mouth of a river provided the ideal place for hominin activity, rather than forested slopes, plateaus or estuaries.” explains Professor Brown.
Students finishing second at the World Cup
The nutritional diversity of these sites allowed hominins to colonise the Atlantic fringe of north west Europe during warm periods of the Pleistocene. Handaxe found at Broom, Dorset’
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Altitude | Winter 2013
© English Heritage Photo Library/Peter Dunn
Student entrepreneurs in World Cup Final
Bird’s eye view helps us understand glacier movement Glaciologist Alex Clayton is using a remote controlled plane, purchased by Geography and Environment, to capture unique pictures of the movement of glaciers in Iceland. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is programmed to fly in a pattern over the Skalafellsjökull glacier (pictured on the front cover) and take thousands of photographs
of the surface; they are then combined to produce 3D models to help scientists understand more about the glacial processes. The PhD student visited the area last year and managed to get useful data for his thesis. “If we know more about how glaciers move now, it will help us understand how they’re going to move later this century in a warmer climate,” he explains. “The models also tell us about the effects of climate change, we estimate this glacier is losing up to four metres of ice a year from its surface.” Alex’s interest in glaciers was sparked by his undergraduate and masters research projects in the UK Lake District and the Himalayas while he was studying physical geography. You can follow Alex’s progress on Twitter @glaciologist and and view the UAV’s highresolution images here www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/ glacier_uav
Alex Clayton and technical colleague Tom Bishop on location in Iceland
Geography graduates recognised for their outstanding work Three Geography graduates received a special mark of recognition at their 2013 graduation ceremonies when they were recognised for their outstanding work in their undergraduate degrees.
Every year three graduates are rewarded for their excellent achievements with the Florence Miller (dissertation) prize, the Fawcett (BA) prize and the Boswell (BSc) prize. This year Geography BA graduate Liam Harney scooped the Florence Miller award for his exceptional dissertation, the CB Fawcett award was given to Phillipa Brumwell for gaining one of the highest scores in her BA Geography and the Katy Boswell prize was awarded to graduate Christopher Barker for his high marks in his BSc Geography degree. The students were presented with their awards by Head of Education professor Jane Hart at their graduation ceremonies.
Our award winning graduates
To learn more about these awards visit: www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/ 2014_ugprizewinners
Geography part of an exciting new data research project A consortium led by the University has been awarded £7.6 million to help launch and run a project to give access to government data for academic research. The Administrative Data Research Centre for England (ADRC) will enable information routinely collected by government departments and other agencies, such as tax, education and health data, to be shared with researchers. The centre, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), will be for approved academic projects and use anonymised data, accessed in a secure environment. Southampton geographers Professor David Martin (the Centre’s Deputy Director) and Professor Graham Moon are looking forward to being part of an exciting new interdisciplinary research programme based in the Centre. Project leader Professor Peter Smith, says: “Our vision is to see these data transformed into knowledge and evidence which can be used to inform public and economic policy - helping to tackle some of the major issues facing society, in an innovative and efficient way. To learn more about this exciting project visit: www.southampton.ac.uk/ geography/adrc_data_project Altitude | Winter 2013
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WorldPop: population mapping to GeoData help combat poverty and poor health Institute celebrates 30th anniversary The WorldPop website aims to provide open access to global demographic data which can be used to help tackle challenges such as, poverty, public health, sustainable urban development and food security. Southampton geographer Dr Andy Tatem, who is leading the project, says: “Our maps WorldPop population map for a town in Vietnam
and data are helping charities, policy-makers, governments and researchers to make decisions which affect the quality of people’s lives… in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines with devastating effect, international organisations were able to download information about population density from our website to help with estimating impact and delivering aid efforts.” With principal funding coming from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (USA), WorldPop combines country specific data from national statistics services, household surveys and other sources to construct detailed population distribution maps. For more information visit: www.worldpop.org.uk/
From Iceland to Botswana – examining complex surface terrain Research funded by the Royal Society, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Worldwide Universities Network is exploring estimating aerodynamic roughness using surface terrain measurements of sandar (glacial outwash plains) in Iceland and salt pans (dry lakes) in Botswana.
Salt pans and sandar make the ideal experimental surfaces because of their small scale texture, relative flatness and lack of vegetation. Importantly they are both potential sources of environmental dust emission, so improving understanding of surface-atmosphere interactions over these kinds of regions is vital.
In a new paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Dr Jo Nield and a team from Southampton University, together with colleagues from Oxford, Liverpool, Cape Town and Sheffield Universities investigated 20 surfaces during four field campaigns using a terrestrial laser scanner.
The results of this research shows how we can better predict the behaviours of these surfaces which in turn allows us to develop more efficient wind erosion models and dust emission schemes in climate modelling. To read the full research visit: www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/ complex_terrain
GeoData will celebrate its 30th anniversary in July this year. Established in 1984 the GeoData Unit started as a University enterprise unit; it was awarded Institute status in 1989 in recognition of the research and applied research activity. More recently, GeoData has become a specialist group within the Geography and Environment Academic Unit. GeoData has maintained its original mission to develop and coordinate multidisciplinary research projects that focus on environmental, geospatial information and spatial data infrastructures. It has extended into more international work in food security, vulnerability, ecosystem services and adaptation, with increasing academic collaboration from across the University. To find out more about GeoData’s work visit www.geodata.soton.ac.uk/geodata/
2014 marks our 100th anniversary! To learn more about our achievements over the last century visit www.southampton.ac.uk/ geography/100years
a) and b) Makgadikgadi Salt Pan, Botswana. c) Falljokull sandur, Iceland
Keep in touch! There are a variety of ways of keeping in touch with our activities. Many research students blog and you can also follow us on Twitter @geogsouthampton For more information or to discuss courses contact: ugapply.fshs@southampton.ac.uk | +44(0)023 8059 3760 www.southampton.ac.uk/geography