The Geographer: Food Security (Winter 2009)

The

Geographer Winter 2009–10

The newsletter of the

Royal Scottish Geographical Society 1884

Future Food Security, in Fife and Further Afield

In This Edition...

125th

Anniversary of RSGS 2009

•O pinions on: Food Security from Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP and Mike Small of Fife Diet •E xpert View on: Transition Towns •E xpert View on: Biochar • I nside the RSGS: The Bartholomew Archive •O ff the Beaten Track: Poland •R eader Offer: So Foul and Fair a Day

“We live not by the jingling of our coins, but by the fullness of our harvests.”

Professor Patrick Geddes RSGS Council Member, 1896-98

plus other news, comments, books...

RSGS – Making Connections between People, Places & the Planet

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Geographer C h a i r m a n ’ s

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i n t r o d u ct i o n

o much is happening in the Society these days that I am in Perth almost once a week and it is invariably a busy time.

On a recent visit, Marie had me signing cheques and gave me an update on banking matters, where we are simplifying procedures. Fiona had me writing letters to members who had kindly sent donations – greatly appreciated.

An hour with Mike and Susan over funding issues, with particular reference to the Fair Maid’s House project, then I saw the Society’s new Facebook entry that volunteer Michelle has been developing; we hope this will lead more people to discover the Society.

I missed Maggie and Lorna, who are each giving one day a week of their time to help in HQ, contributing to our essential communications work.

But I met Reona, who hopes to study geography at university. But what to say to someone whose age is more than half a century away?

I told her that a geography lecturer once said to me “You will find, Barrie, that most geography lecturers like to keep in touch with their former students because geography graduates as a rule tend to go on and do something with their lives”. I think, too, that this is one of the most compelling raisons d’être of our Society.

Finally, I was delighted when in December our Chief Executive was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Environment Award 2009, in recognition of his years of work and considerable achievements in raising awareness of and coordinating action in response to climate change, and in helping to raise more than £35m for a range of environmental projects. Many congratulations Mike!

Inspiring People We are now half-way through the 2009-10 Inspiring People talks programme, and are pleased that this 125th anniversary season has been so well received, with reports of excellent speakers, fascinating talks and enthusiastic audiences.

We have been promoting the talks more widely, and are particularly pleased to be attracting more non-members and younger people, many of whom have joined the Society as a result. We arranged extra activities for some speakers: Benedict Allen gave an extra talk to the Expeditions Society at the University of Dundee; Aqqaluk Lynge met Stewart Stevenson MSP, Scottish Climate Change Minister, and gave an extra talk at the University of Edinburgh, in which he encouraged scientists to properly engage with and involve indigenous people in the course of their research.

To mark the 125th anniversary of the Society’s formal establishment, we also arranged some extra speakers. In late October, we were delighted to welcome world-class mountaineer and RSGS Livingstone Medallist Doug Scott to Perth. In early December, renowned Arctic explorer Pen Hadow spoke to a packed audience at Scottish & Southern Energy headquarters in Perth at lunchtime, and gave a public lecture in Glasgow in the evening. Between them, these talks raised over £2,000 for the Society.

If readers have any suggestions for speakers for 2010-11, please send them, marked ‘speaker 1884 suggestions’, th to RSGS HQ by the end of Anniversary January. of RSGS

125

2009

Inaugural Shackleton Medal Awarded In the week leading up to the international climate summit in Copenhagen, the RSGS awarded its first ever Shackleton Medal for leadership and citizenship in a geographical field to the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee (TICC) of the Scottish Parliament, for its role in developing Scotland’s world leading climate legislation. MSPs Alison McInnes

and Patrick Harvie accepted the Medal on behalf of the TICC from polar explorer Pen Hadow.

The Fair Maid’s House – Great News In late November, we were delighted to receive an offer of grant, through Perth & Kinross Council, of £450,000 from the Scottish Government’s Town Centre Regeneration Fund towards the Fair Maid’s House project.

Barrie Brown

With the pledges already received from other sources, this gave us nearly

RSGS, Lord John Murray House, 15-19 North Port, Perth, PH1 5LU tel: 01738 455050 email: enquiries@rsgs.org www.rsgs.org Charity registered in Scotland no SC015599 The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the RSGS. Masthead picture © Mike Robinson

enough to complete the building phase of the project, and by making fresh approaches to several local charitable trusts, we have been able to bridge most of the remaining gap. As we go to press, we are just £20,000 short of our minimum target, having raised c97%. This is great news, and we are focusing now on trying to find the final £20,000.

David Hempleman-Adams, one of Britain’s most successful adventurers and a Vice President of the RSGS was enthusiastic. “I think this is fantastic, that Scotland will have a centre for the interpretation of some of the most critical issues of our day, and a place to show off the fabulous collection of the RSGS.”

RSGS – Making Connections between People, Places & the Planet

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NEWS People • Places • Planet Funding Geographical Education With the new Science Baccalaureate omitting geography, some teachers have reported that core geography topics like rainforests and climate are beginning to be picked up by teachers in other subjects.

In addition, a recent review of university funding threatens to reduce available funding for geography, despite healthy student numbers and efficient teaching ratios.

Is geography simply suffering from a black and white political view of subjects being science or non-science? How do we do more to fight for the role and value of geography in bridging sciences and social sciences, and in providing solutions and crucial perspectives on many of our most current societal concerns?

Has geography become too specialised and non-integrated to define itself persuasively? For a subject which is so good at joining the dots, where are the popular science texts and exemplary outreach? And in an age of global problem solving, why aren’t politicians and others beating a path to our doors?

RSGS’s Chief Executive has been in discussions with a number of leading academics who are determined to help build the political profile and reputation of geography, and who are keen to hear from anyone who thinks they can help. RSGS plans to draw together Heads of Geography from the Scottish universities to try to take this forward in the New Year.

On a very positive note, we have recently been invited by the SQA to participate in a development project to put in place the new National 4 and National 5 Qualifications announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Education in June as part of the Curriculum for Excellence.

The Great Trossachs Forest

A major native woodland regeneration scheme launched in October 2009, the Great Trossachs Forest will cover 166.5km2 of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, with a range of restored, regenerated and new wildlife habitats designed to last for two centuries.

More than 10,000ha of specific habitat types (moorland, wetland, grassland, etc) will be enhanced, and 4,400ha of new woodland will be created.

The multi-million pound scheme is being delivered by the Scottish Forest Alliance (Woodland Trust Scotland, RSPB Scotland, Forestry Commission Scotland, and oil company BP), with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Environment Minister Roseanna

Cunningham MSP said: “Maintaining, enhancing and expanding Scotland’s native woodland cover is hugely important for the health of our communities, our biodiversity, our environment and our economy.

The Alliance’s unique approach to woodland management has let each of the landowners to pursue their own objectives while also working together to achieve common aims.”

“The Alliance’s unique approach to woodland management has let each of the landowners to pursue their own objectives while also working together to achieve common aims.”

Tim Smith, BP’s Scottish external affairs director, added: “The Great Trossachs Forest combines three Scottish Forest Alliance sites at Inversnaid, Glen Finglas and Loch Katrine and is a fantastic example of how the public, private and voluntary sector can work together to create something truly remarkable.”

Auction of Rare Travel Books – 13th January 2010 Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Rare Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs on 13th January 2010 contains a large collection of topographical and travel works.

The volume illustrated is just one of six volumes of John and Awnsham Churchill’s A collection of voyages and travels, which are illustrated with over 160 engraved plates. Other highlights from the sale include works by Capt James Cook, d’Entrecasteaux, la Perouse, Mathew Flinders, Lord Anson, Capt Sir Edward Belcher, Sir John Barrow, William Scoresby, John Franklin, Capt

George Vancouver, Capt Edward William Parry, Sir John Ross and François Péron.

For more information, contact Simon Vickers or Alex Dove on 0131 557 8844 or email simon. vickers@lyonandturnbull.com.

A full sale catalogue is available at www. lyonandturnbull. com

Churchill, Awnsham & John: A collection of voyages and travels. London, for John Walthoe, 1732. Folio, 6 volumes, 159 plates, 2 portraits, 2 engraved titles, contemporary calf gilt (6), £2,000-3,000

NEWS People • Places • Planet Milnathort 2009-10 Primary RSGS Awards In November, Mike Robinson was invited to speak to a P6 class at Milnathort Primary School. The next week, we were delighted to receive a small bundle of letters from the children. Some of the comments (uncorrected) perhaps reflect the fact that Mike is a father of three small boys.”

“I will try not to use my play station 3 so much.”

“I will defantly tell my mum and dad to turn off my lights. I well tell my sisters to eat more food.”

“I will eat all my tea, even if I don’t like it, so I’m not wasting.”

The first of this year’s RSGS awards were presented at the AGM in Edinburgh on 3rd December.

Professor Michael Pacione, one of the world’s leading urban geographers who is currently Academic Advisor on the Higher Geography Syllabus for the Scottish Qualifications Authority and a member of a governmental committee on the future of Scotland’s cities, received the Society’s prestigious Coppock Research Medal, awarded for an outstanding contribution to geographical knowledge through research and publication.

Erica Caldwell was awarded the Tivy Education Medal in only its second year, honouring her outstanding contribution to geographical education throughout her life, as an inspirational teacher, as a leading examiner, and through her work with SAGT. Mike Traynor was awarded the Bartholomew Globe for his contribution to the management of geographic information in Scotland and beyond, including his crucial role in creating and recommending the adoption of a Geographic Information Strategy for Scotland.

Graeme Cook, a BSc and MSc geographer who is the team leader in the Scottish Parliamentary Information Centre (SPICe), won this year’s President’s Award, which recognises the achievement of a working geographer and celebrates the impact of geographers’ work on wider society.

Electricity blackouts in Ecuador

In November, Ecuador introduced electricity rationing after a drought led to acute water shortages at the country’s main hydro-electric power plant at Paute. There were blackouts in the capital, Quito, and

Speakers’ Corner –

Vanessa Collingridge Alan Doherty

Over the summer, Vanessa Collingridge was putting the finishing touches to Scotland Revealed, a spectacular threepart STV series broadcast for the first time in September-October 2009. “The weather has been a bit changeable, to say the least, but the filming has gone well and I’m particularly excited about the aerial sequences that we have captured.”

Vanessa has presented and produced programmes for all the major terrestrial TV channels, including flagship news and current affairs programmes.

Latterly, she has focussed on her passions of geography and history, presenting BBC1’s landmark series British Isles: a Natural History with Alan Titchmarsh, BBC2’s Timewatch documentaries and The People’s Museum, and Radio 4’s Making History.

2020 Whisky The Scottish Climate Change Act 2009 led the world, with its commitment to a 42% cut in emissions by the year 2020. To mark this momentous occasion, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland and Scottish & Southern Energy asked Edrington Distillers to create a unique 42% Scotch whisky called 2020 to celebrate and promote Scotland’s leadership on this issue. The bottle is made in Scotland from 92% post-consumer recycled

the Pacific port city of Guayaquil, with officials saying power to residential areas would be cut by 5-10%, but businesses would not be affected.

Ecuador depends heavily on

In November, Vanessa spoke to RSGS audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow about the making of the new series, saying “I am really looking forward to taking the audience on a behind-the-scenes tour of the making of Scotland Revealed.

This big budget, high definition exploration of the landscape of Scotland combines stunning aerial footage from the Borders to the Highlands & Islands with a closeup, ground-level look at the towns and cities, castles and abbeys, mountains, glens, rivers – and the people – of our amazing country.” glass; the label is printed in Scotland on 100% recycled paper; the cork is made in Portugal from sustainable resources.

The whisky was produced as a special edition of 470 bottles, half of which were given to world leaders negotiating action for climate change in Copenhagen in December.

The whisky is also being stocked by Royal Mile Whiskies in Edinburgh (www. royalmilewhiskies.com), who describe it as “Lemony, honeyed and deliciously balanced. Like a bowl of good porridge with honey on top.”

hydropower to produce electricity, and the drought which hit the Andes region is thought to be the worst in four decades, forcing the Paute plant in eastern Ecuador to halve its average production.

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NEWS People • Places • Planet Celebrating a Century of Geography, 1909-2009

Staff and students, past and present, gathered to celebrate the Centenary of Geography at the University of Glasgow in August 2009. Over 180 student alumni spanning seven decades made it to this geographical homecoming, to enjoy a picnic lunch, revisit the Department, and share fond memories of people and place.

The social aspects of the day were complemented by a speech from Professor Trevor Hoey (Head

The boy who harnessed the wind William Kamkwamba is a remarkable young man from central Malawi who has transformed his village by designing and building electricitygenerating windmills out of scrapyard junk.

William had planned to study science in one of Malawi’s top boarding schools, but in 2002 his country was stricken by a terrible drought and famine that left his family’s small farm devastated.

Unable to pay the tuition fees, William had to leave school aged

of Department), and lectures from Professors John Briggs, Paul Bishop and Chris Philo, profiling current geographical research and teaching activity in the University, and remembering students’ learning experiences in the past.

Iain Stewart, BBC television presenter and Professor of Geoscience Communication at the University of Plymouth, delivered a highly informative and entertaining Centenary lecture on 14 and return to his parents’ village. His future seemed limited, but the teenager embarked on a plan to provide his family with the luxuries that only 2% of Malawians could afford – electricity and running water.

Using scrap metal, tractor and bicycle parts, and plastic pipes, William built his first windmill, to power four lights in his parents’ home, with homemade switches and circuit breaker. A second machine turned a water pump to

Un-Natural Hazards. The day’s proceedings were aptly brought to a close in the University Chapel with the première of Geographia Mundi, composed by Drew Mulholland and performed by the University’s Madrigirls.

The last two issues of the Scottish Geographical Journal for 2009 celebrate Glasgow’s geographical centenary, with a series of reflections on the past century.

help battle drought and famine.

Since 2002, William has continued to develop and build, and news of his ‘electric wind’ has spread far beyond his village, first by word of mouth, then through an article in the Blantyrebased Daily Times, and now with the publication of a book written with Bryan Mealer, a former news agency reporter who had been reporting on conflict across Africa for five years when he heard William’s story. William is now on a scholarship at the elite African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa. The boy who was once called ‘crazy’ has become an inspiration.

For more information, see williamkamkwamba.typepad.com

Thank you to our sponsors In what has been a particularly difficult year for the Society, we have been cheered by and grateful for the financial support we have received towards our Inspiring People programme of illustrated talks, from BEAR Scotland, Hillhouse Quarry Group, Glasgow City Council, Magnox North, Airdrie Savings Bank, and the British Council Scotland.

These organisations have already contributed nearly £2,500 towards the talks, and we hope to be able to announce other sponsors before the season is out.

Membership decline stops Over the past six or seven years, RSGS has lost a third of all its members, and as a result has seen finances and attendances diminish. We are pleased to report that membership levels at the end of 2009 have started to show the first increase for nearly a decade.

We still need your help in promoting the Society and recruiting members, to deliver a long term and meaningful change of fortunes, so please help us where you can.

NEWS People • Places • Planet

The chief executive of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, Megan Clark, has warned that higher prices on water and continued agricultural carbon emissions will make it difficult to sustain the world’s growing population.

Facebook RSGS is now on Facebook, a global social networking website which helps connect people and allow information to be shared quickly and efficiently. We hope it will play a hand in helping introduce the Society to more students and raise our profile amongst the younger generation. That said, anyone can use our Facebook page to access and display photos, see events information, and engage in discussions with other members. We will shortly be placing a link to our Facebook page on our website. So become our ‘fan’ and suggest us to your Facebook friends!

Our presence on Facebook is only possible because we had the help of Reona Thomson, a secondary school pupil studying geography who chose the RSGS for her one-week work placement in November, and Michelle Aboim, a recent graduate volunteering with us for 10 weeks to gain work experience in the charity sector. We are very grateful to both of them for their tremendous enthusiasm and energy, in this and the other projects they worked on.

Russia Gets Bigger Russia, the world’s largest country, has grown 4.5 km2 bigger thanks to seismic activity around two of her eastern island outposts which lie to the north of Japan.

A powerful earthquake in 2007 on Sakhalin Island lifted nearly 3km2 of the sea floor which then became dry ground. Sakhalin Island, Russia’s largest island, is mountainous and densely forested, with a population of just over half a million people. It is prone to earthquakes because of its situation on the margin of two tectonic plates, and has experienced at least one large quake about every decade over the last century.

Another 1.5km2 appeared on uninhabited Matua Island after a huge eruption by the Sarychev Peak volcano beginning in June 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes on the Kuril Islands, an archipelago made up almost entirely of volcanic rocks, and the debris from volcanic explosions.

Clark said, “It is really hard for me to comprehend that in the next 50 years, we’ll have to produce as much food as we have ever produced in human history. That means in the working life of my children as much grain as has ever been harvested since the Egyptian time.”

This isn’t the first time such a claim has been made and supported. In 2006, NASA warned that the warming of the Earth’s climate reduces the ocean’s primary food supply, posing a threat to fisheries and ecosystems. As the climate warms, ocean phytoplankton

growth rates decline, reducing the amount of CO2 they consume, so that the gas accumulates more rapidly in the atmosphere, in turn spurring more warming.

By 2030, according to one scenario, temperatures in North America and Africa will rise c2°C. Rainfall in central North America could be 10% lower than now; in eastern and northern Africa it may be 10% higher. While more rain holds the promise of increasing African agricultural productivity, higher temperatures may offset this advantage by decreasing soil moisture, so dry agricultural regions may continue to suffer the effects of inadequate water supplies, even with higher rainfall.

Food Security

Historical challenge for next 50 years of food production

The challenge, writes Cornell Professor David Pintimel, is to slow the change, since a severe shift is catastrophic to ecosystems.

Facing Up to Climate Change

dimension in that we in the UK have contributed more CO2 per capita than anyone else since the industrial revolution and need to play our part.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has set up an Inquiry into Facing up to Climate Change which will report in early 2011. Its chair David Sugden sent us this update. Two other geographers, vice-chair Alan Werritty, and Erica Caldwell, are also committee members.

The focus of the Inquiry is on the gap between the measures we need to take in the drive towards a lowcarbon life style and what people at large will accept. The aim is to engage with individuals, industries and public authorities to help develop and respond to Government climate change policies. Also the Inquiry will identify barriers to change and recommend measures for current and future policies and the timescales on which action might be developed.

The Inquiry is set up on the basis of three premises. First, human activities have pushed CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere way outside the natural envelope, and fundamental physics shows that this will lead to global warming.

Second, climate change is happening now, as manifested in different ways around the globe, but illustrated in Scotland by warmer winters, less frost and a near doubling of winter rainfall in the west in the last 40 years. Third, there is an ethical

The Inquiry will take evidence from a wide range of sources, is arranging regional debates, and will run a competition in which schools look to a sustainable future in their own area.

To get involved, contact Marc Rands, mrands@royalsoced.org.uk

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NEWS People • Places • Planet Not just a new chapter, but a new book...

HRH The Princess Royal, a Vice-President of the Society, attended a reception at the new RSGS office in Lord John Murray House, after awarding this year’s University Medals (see page 15). A small number of guests representing various aspects of both Perth and the RSGS each had a chance to speak with Her Royal Highness, before our President Lord Lindsay presented her with a leather-bound journal handmade by Louis Valentine, in which to record her travels. In accepting this gift, The Princess Royal expressed the view (which we warmly applaud) that “Geographers are of fundamental importance because they see how things join up, and it’s not always in a straight line.”

The Princess Royal then signed the new official visitors’ book to begin a new chapter of our distinguished charity’s long history. The old visitors’ book was begun in 1884, by HM Stanley, and has been signed by many previous RSGS medallists, speakers and visitors, including Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, Hilary, Ranulph Fiennes, WH Murray, Neil Armstrong, Dougal Haston, Francis Chichester, and David Attenborough. We hope that the new visitors’ book (a gift from one of RSGS’s members) will serve the Society in its new headquarters for the next 125 years.

With thanks to Miss Blyth Legacies are an incredibly important way of helping the Society in the longer term. They can help us pay the essential ‘core costs’, and can also contribute towards research, collections maintenance and education work.

We currently receive only two or three legacy pledges a year worth an average of around £9,000; these are vital to our ongoing work.

In November, we were especially grateful to Miss Margaret Blyth of Dundee, who had been a great supporter of RSGS and who left nearly £24,000 in her will to the RSGS.

African farmers in the Sahel, on the southern edge of the Sahara, have reclaimed farmland lost to drought, bringing hope for the future of this arid region and a model for fighting hunger worldwide.

The Sahel people have long struggled to farm on sandy soil slowly eroded by droughts and harsh winds. In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of devastating droughts caused an environmental and human catastrophe. Many gave up on farming, but others chose to stay, slowly reclaiming land from the encroaching desert.

In 1979, Yacouba Savadogo observed fellow farmers using innovative growing techniques as part of an Oxfam project. He began to

experiment with planting pits and stone embankments, to produce more sorghum and millet on his degraded land.

Surprisingly, trees began to grow spontaneously in the planting pits. By digging deeper pits and adding manure, he found that he could bring dry land back into production.

As the trees grew, he protected them, to create a diverse forest.

the Sahel are today home to farmland, wells, and livestock.

Millions of acres of restored farmland reveal a complex landscape of crops and trees, stone embankments and terraces.

Savadogo has organised events to exchange seeds and ideas and to train other farmers, and has worked with experts like Mathieu Ouedraogo, a Yatenga-born technician who later became the director of Oxfam’s project in the region, to improve methods, conserve water, and reduce erosion.

“With over one billion people worldwide now facing chronic hunger, and climate change further threatening the global food supply, our leaders and aid providers can learn a lot from the efforts of farmers like Savadogo,” said Oxfam trade policy advisor Emily Alpert.

Once-barren landscapes in

These changes have stimulated local markets, supported an ever-growing population, and diversified ways of earning a living. And despite growing populations and the threats of climate change, food security has actually improved in the Sahel region.

“...our leaders and aid providers can learn a lot from the efforts of farmers like Savadogo.”

Food Security

Burkina Faso: The other green revolution

Off The Beaten Track

Poland - twenty years after the colla

“Lying mainly on the North European Plain, most of Poland is flat or rolling; only in the southern 5% are there any mountains.�

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apse of Communism

My Scotland

New Aberdour Sunday was Dad’s only day off as a busy pharmacist in Fraserburgh.

After church and the Sunday roast he drove us the eight miles to New Aberdour to visit his mother. Later I realised New Aberdour was important as an 18th century planned village with lotted lands, but at that time it was the beach and cliffs that held the charm.

On any half decent Sunday afternoon we would go, with my grandmother, to New Aberdour beach. Down the narrow, steep road to the grassy areas used for parking; no need for parking spaces then!

There were usually some other local people there and after a few “fit likes?” Dad took my sister and me to explore the beaches of New Aberdour. The red sandstone cliffs held secret caves and arches. At low tide we could crawl through to the ‘boat shore’;

at higher tide it was up and over the cliff-top path to reach its sandy beach.

The beach was mainly large, beautifully rounded cobbles, in stunning berms, but the rock pools at the eastern end were the main attraction.

Dad started the questions. What would be lurking under that wee shelf in the bigger pools today?

How big were the limpets? How many different kinds of seaweed?

Did we know that poor folk used to eat seaweed? Had we noticed the seaweed drying on the racks on the coast road to Rosehearty?

See the lines in the rocks? Did you know an old man once lived in the cave over to the west?

See the irises growing in that wet patch? See the primroses on the hill? Here’s a wee bit of sand and shells… can you find any John o’ Groats (northern or

arctic cowries)? What has the tide brought in? How high was the last tide? Did you see that seventh wave?

Then it was back past St Drostan’s Well to the car for Mum’s picnic. What lucky folk we were.

I can go and ‘walk’ that beach any day in my mind… it has never lost its promise of peace and ‘aye something new’.

We all have special places we can escape to. We may still go there to walk, to sit in the car, to show off to friends. We may go there only in our minds when we need a peaceful place to be.

•W ho first showed you this place?

Has writing this made any difference? Surprisingly, yes!

•W here is that place?

Sitting on my desktop for further reading are files I saved as I remembered this special place; about planned villages; St Drostan’s Church, founded in AD 580 by St Drostan and St Columba, which we passed on the way to the beach; SNH’s National Programme of Landscape Character Assessment: Banff and Buchan of 1997.

I hope that, in future editions of The Geographer, this page will be full of bonnie parts of Scotland that are special to you.

Learning is still fun!

Erica M Caldwell Convener, RSGS Education Committee

•H as writing this piece made any difference to you?

On the Map

First Among Equals: Prime Meridians 0° from which the other lines of longitude are counted.

Until 1884 each country usually chose its capital as the prime meridian for topographic maps produced in that country: John Knox’s A Commercial Map of Scotland (1784) shows Edinburgh as 0° even though it was published in London.

Especially on early sea charts, El Hierro or Ferro, the westernmost island in the Canaries was also used as a prime meridian, particularly after the French decreed its use from 1634, as it was thought (erroneously) to be 20° west of Paris. By selecting a line of longitude well to the west of Europe, mariners avoided the confusion of degrees east and west of a prime meridian when sailing in European waters.

Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland

John Knox’s A Commercial Map of Scotland (1784) shows Edinburgh as 0° even though it was published in London.

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009 is not only the 125th anniversary of RSGS’s foundation, but it is also the 125th anniversary of the selection of the Greenwich Observatory as the international Prime Meridian. The prime meridian is the line of longitude numbered as

However with increasing international exploration and trade, a universal prime meridian was required and in 1884 an international committee met in Washington to consider the matter.

National pride was at stake, and it was extremely difficult to achieve a consensus.

Eventually it was shown that over 70% of world navigation was based on British Admiralty charts, which used Greenwich as the prime meridian, and finally agreement was reached. The French took until 1911 to adopt it, and they did not implement it until 1978 with the introduction of Universal Time (formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time). Britain has still not completely fulfilled its part of the bargain, which was that if Greenwich were selected as prime meridian, Britain would adopt the metric system!

Diana Webster

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An Expert View: Transition Towns

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Transition - Coming Soon to a Town Near You Eva Schonveld, Transition Scotland Combining the twin geographical concerns of resource limitations and sustainable urban planning, the Transition Towns model has really begun to take off in Scotland.

The Transition model outlines how communities can tackle the threats of both climate change and peak oil through re-localisation, which also brings huge benefits to local people by strengthening community, improving health and diet, creating employment and improving quality of life.

Transition is about local people getting together to make a better, lower oil, lower carbon life for themselves and their neighbours, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for them. Until the age of cheap oil, people expected to rely on themselves, their neighbours and their local environment to produce almost everything they needed to thrive: food, clothes, housing, warmth, transport. Most UK communities today produce little of value to their local community: we get most of what we need from far afield, and with cheap oil, this has been easy! Without cheap oil, we will need to re-build much of this resilient local infrastructure if we are to maintain a good quality of life for ourselves, our children and our neighbours.

Starting to produce and do more for ourselves creates jobs, strengthens our communities, counters apathy by giving us more of a stake in what happens locally, and crucially uses much less oil, so it is less vulnerable to price fluctuations and also creates much less climate changing pollution. This is relocalisation: creating ways to live a more locally-based life.

We are starting from almost the opposite extreme, with almost no local infrastructure, and we can’t re-localise overnight, so it makes sense to start now.

Here are some of the ways communities are beginning to change their everyday lives:

•F ood: growing more of our own by creating allotments, community orchards, market gardens etc; making arrangements with local farmers to grow for us (this will not replace all trade, but will allow us to provide the basics much more cheaply, so we can still afford luxuries from elsewhere in the world).

•E nergy: insulating our homes and public buildings; putting up community windmills; creating combined heat and power systems; growing wood for fuel.

•W aste: composting; creating ‘libraries’ of items which can be shared in our communities; finding space for local ‘swap shops’, reducing, re-using and finding ways to recycle locally.

•M oney: sharing instead of buying; setting up LETS schemes, or local currencies, which keep money in the local economy.

•W ork: working more from home, establishing community offices and workshops; creating more local jobs, as we start making more of what we need in our own communities.

These are just a few examples – Transition communities are coming up with new ones all the time!

The Transition model is being taken up all over the world.

In Scotland, Transition Scotland Support (TSS) is the first organisation in the world to receive government funding to build a network of Transition communities across Scotland.

We are currently in touch with around 80 communities, from tiny islands to local areas in big cities.

In our globalised world, it is easy to discount local action as insignificant against the backdrop of world governments and events, but almost everyone lives in a community and a movement of many active local communities inspires action in others which could also drive change on a national and international level. It was Patrick Geddes who coined the phrase ‘think global, act local’ and the Transition Towns movement is doing just that.

To find out more, please contact evaschonveld@transitionscotland. org or 0131 657 1555, or see www.transitionscotland.org and www.transitiontowns.org

“Most UK communities today produce little of value to their local community.”

Inside The RSGS

The Bartholomew Archive Karla Baker, Bartholomew Archive Assistant, Map Collections, National Library of Scotland

“It is regarded as one of the most extensive cartographic archives to be found in the world.”

W

hilst archives freeze a moment in time they are also constantly changing.

The manner of this change is not necessarily that more material is added, but that the information learned from them changes how they are both used and perceived. A good example is the Bartholomew Archive, kept at the National Library of Scotland (NLS).

The Bartholomew Archive records the daily business activities of Edinburghbased cartographers John Bartholomew & Son Ltd. The firm can trace its history back six generations to George Bartholomew (17841871), the first to train as an engraver, apprenticed to Daniel Lizars at 13 years old.

John C Bartholomew (1923-2008) was President of the RSGS from 1987 to 1993, and thereafter was Vice-President. He was a tremendous asset to the Society, and took a great pride and interest in his role, devoting much time to visiting all the Society’s Centres throughout Scotland, and encouraging young people through the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers and the Society’s own educational programmes. He was both an academic geographer with a passion for cartography and keen interest in astronomy, geology, meteorology and oceanography, and an enthusiastic traveller who over the years visited six continents.

That three generations of Bartholomews have been at the centre of the RSGS since its inception 125 years ago is quite exceptional for any learned society, and we are indebted to the family for their long and generous support.

His son John Bartholomew Senior (1805-61) similarly trained as an engraver, but took the further step of setting up his own modest firm in 1859 in premises shared with A & C Black. John Bartholomew Junior (183193) introduced lithography and printing to the engraving for which they were beginning to develop a reputation.

By 1889 the firm was rebranded John Bartholomew & Co with lavish new premises at Park Road and with John George Bartholomew (18601920) at its head. The firm expanded beyond recognition at this time as John George laid the foundations for the numerous successes that were to come. In this vein John ‘Ian’ Bartholomew (18901962) presided over the firm as it began printing maybe its most famous publication,

The Times Survey Atlas of the World. The final generation to manage the firm were John C Bartholomew (1923-2008), Peter (1924-1987) and Robert (1927-), who oversaw the transference of management to Readers Digest in 1980.

The Archive comprises an impressive array of items. Amongst the 110 metres of general business records, there are around 3,000 copper and 6,000 2. glass printing plates, 20,000 proof and printed maps and 177 volumes recording the daily printed output of the firm. It is regarded as one of the most extensive cartographic archives to be found in the world.

In 2007, with funding from the John R Murray Charitable Trust, extensive preservation and curatorial work began in earnest. An inventory

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now allows for the business records and map collection to be accessed, a website (www.nls.uk/bartholomew) enables remote access, and preservation work on the printing record has made this valuable resource more useable than ever. As a result, many unexpected discoveries have been made, not least some interesting items concerning the early days of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

John George Bartholomew was a founder member of the RSGS, enjoying the realisation of one of his most ambitious projects aged only 24. John George’s father sat on the Council and his son and grandson would both go on to be Presidents of the Society. Personal papers in the Archive contain a wealth of information relating to the Society, but items produced

by John George reveal how the early days of the Society were managed and the extraordinary depth of his

own involvement.

Amongst this material is the first provisional prospectus for the Society as envisaged

by John George Bartholomew.

Drafted on the back of a map of Franz Josef Land it accompanies the final printed version, whilst scribbled costings reveal how an ambitious 50,000 copies were ultimately reduced to 10,000.

There are hand-drawn menu designs and even a watercolour ticket for the Society’s inaugural address delivered

by Henry Morton Stanley in December 1884.

Quite a lot of unexpected material has been found amongst the private papers of the Bartholomew directors.

A sobering example is the letters written by John ‘Ian’ to his father from the trenches of the First World War. They are accompanied by a small collection of trench aerial photography and first person accounts of assorted battles and engagements.

But it was for their maps that Bartholomew are most vividly

remembered and, as might be expected, it is in this area that the Archive is particularly rich.

The Archive can be used to trace the production of a map or atlas from original idea to finished article including the steps in between.

Photographs, correspondence and advertising help to complete the picture, revealing the time, effort and ability needed to produce maps to the standard and quantity that Bartholomew achieved.

1.

1. John George Bartholomew’s draft RSGS prospectus (1884) 2. John George Bartholomew’s revised design for RSGS menu (1890)

The size of the Archive ensures the almost daily discovery of hidden treasures.

We are keen to encourage RSGS members to take advantage of these new opportunities and to consult and research the Archive. The scope of the Archive reaches far beyond the cartographic and business worlds in a way that we are only just beginning to discover.

3. Draft cross-section produced by Sir Archibald Geikie (1835-1924) for the RSGS’s Atlas of Scotland (1895) Images courtesy of the Bartholomew Archive, National Library of Scotland

1884

125th

Anniversary of RSGS 3.

2009

“ We are keen to encourage RSGS members to take advantage of these new opportunities and to consult and research the Archive.”

Opinions On: Food Security

The new food REVOLUTION

Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs

“The challenge of food security then, is to ensure a reliable supply of safe, nutritious food that is resilient to environmental and economic shocks.”

In August 2009, Defra published Food 2030, the government’s draft food strategy, inviting comments from food producers and manufacturers, retailers, consumers, and other interested people on our aim for a sustainable and secure food system, how we will achieve that, and who needs to do what to make it happen.

The way we produce and consume food has a significant impact on our environment, our health and wellbeing, and our economy, and this is true globally as well as for the UK. The global population is expected to increase by two-and-a-half to three billion in the next 50 years; the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that global food production will need to increase by 70% as a result.

The Green Revolution of 40 years ago enabled us to ensure that food production kept up with the increasing population, but now the climate is changing and there will be less water available.

So we have to think hard about the consequences of the way we grow food for the environment.

Recent events such as drought in Australia, coupled with oil price rises and therefore fuel and fertiliser costs, meant that we were paying more in the shops for things that we take for granted, like bread and rice. Food price inflation reached 14.5% for the year to August 2008. There were riots in some countries because of price increases, while other countries banned the export of some crops.

The challenge of food security then, is to ensure a reliable supply of safe, nutritious food that is resilient to environmental and economic shocks, and which is produced, consumed, and disposed of in a way that does not harm the natural resources on which food production ultimately depends.

It’s important not to confuse food security with self sufficiency.

The UK is around 60% self

sufficient in all foods, and 73% self sufficient in the foods that naturally grow here. But even if we could grow all our food here, self sufficiency has its disadvantages. Supposing disease, flooding, or drought cause crop failure? What do you do then to make sure there’s enough for everyone to eat?

There must be a balance between a strong base of domestic production and also being able to buy from the world market.

Science and technology will be key to producing more food for more people in an environmentally sustainable way; feeding more mouths using less water, fertiliser, and pesticides; growing more food in what could be described as hostile conditions; and protecting dangerously depleted fish stocks.

In sub-Saharan Africa for example, food production could be significantly increased simply by providing farmers with access to water, fertiliser, seeds, and a market with good distribution systems. A lot of food becomes inedible because it takes too long to get to people who want to buy it because the transport infrastructure isn’t there.

I was at the East Malling Research Centre in Kent last summer, where they have been growing strawberries using 85% less water than conventional growing methods. Farmers are already measuring nitrate levels in fields using satellite technology and apply only the amount of fertiliser required in the part of the field where it is needed.

Advances like these help farmers minimise their environmental footprint and farm more efficiently at the same time.

It’s not all straightforward though. Many people believe, for example, that imports of fruit and vegetables from the other side of the world make the biggest contribution to emissions from the food chain. But in many

cases those crops are grown using the natural power of the sun, emitting far less carbon than growing things in a heated greenhouse powered by fossil fuels closer to home.

I recently brought together representatives of the fruit and vegetable industry to begin looking at how we can grow more fruit and vegetables here in Britain. Our food security goes hand in hand with that of the rest of the world, and we are all going to have to produce more using less.

If the weather in Asia affects prices in European supermarkets, or the price of oil pumped in the Middle East pushes up the cost for an English farmer to bring in his crop, the answer is not to pull up the drawbridge. Strong trade links make global food supplies more reliable; advances in science and technology will help us grow more both at home and abroad while reducing the environmental footprint of the food chain. Having identified the challenges of maintaining a secure supply of healthy food, it’s time to respond. And that’s what the food strategy is all about.

For more information, please go to http://sandbox.defra.gov.uk/ food2030

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Winter 2009-10

Know your place Mike Small, The Fife Diet

‘Place matters’. Or so the saying goes. But in our globalised society the reality is that it doesn’t matter at all. We expect to be able to eat whatever we like, whenever we like it.

The problem, that we live an existence divorced from the geographical realities of place, season and natural cycles, is coming back to haunt us. This was the thinking behind the Fife Diet food re-localisation project, now entering its third year. It was always an explicitly regional and bioregional response to climate change, and one that was inspired by regionalist thinkers and geographers, Élisée Reclus, Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford. As Mumford wrote in 1923, “The re-animation and rebuilding of regions, as deliberate works of collective art, is the grand task of politics for the opening generation”.

That would seem to be as true today as it was then, particularly given the challenges of climate change, food production, soil management and local economy.

The approach taken for the project was a response to place that emphasises its unique qualities and celebrates its distinctive character.

This approach requires adopting what Geddes, Mumford et al called the ‘Regional Imperative’ which: • i s founded on natural processes and the native landscape; • r ecognises the holistic view of man as part of the regional ecosystem; • r equires understanding of the essence and structure of the region you live in.

Central to this holistic approach is the recognition of man’s role within the wider ecosystem, not distinct from it, an approach that itself stems from the Scottish generalist tradition. So the idea was and remains to eat seasonal food, grown naturally within the region.

The idea was never to try and eat 100% regionally.

That would be very hard and wouldn’t really represent anything other than a feat of endurance. Regions are porous and need to be open to trade of ideas, people and exchange. We soon found out the real task was to think in terms of sufficiency not self-sufficiency. In other words did we have enough here? It was clear

that we did, but the real challenge was that we were time-poor.

We were trying to re-discover our food region (what the French call the terroir) to celebrate what you could grow and rear and land here, and explore what your place could produce.

The idea of localism has been swept away in the drive for modernity, but a thread of thinking remained constant, from Reclus and Geddes, through Kropotkin and Gandhi.

For Gandhi, his concept of selfsufficiency was embodied in the principle of Swadeshi, in terms of which villagers should acquire whatever goods and services they required from their own village. For Roy Dassmann, at the University of Santa Cruz in California - a great environmentalist - the ideal was ‘ecosystem man’, that is to say a man who lives off his own ecosystem, as opposed to ‘biosphere man’ who acquires the goods he needs from distant places, ie from the biosphere as a whole.

Such an approach, though not at this extreme, is part of a huge movement for food localisation we have witnessed across the UK over the past two years.

What did we eat? We ate seasonally and we ate what could be easily produced here, without great artificial heating and, for the most part, without pesticides. At the end of the year we polled participants and here is a typical response: “We found meat the easiest, with Fletcher’s venison, Jamesfield beef, and pork from a small holding near Kinghorn, also pheasant and rabbit when available. Vegetables from Bellfield supplemented by the Pillars and what we grew ourselves.

Fruit locally when in season and often foraged. Eggs from our own chickens.”

So it’s a diet that is made up of unprocessed foods, with few exceptions. We ate probably double the ‘five a day’ of fruit and veg (though admittedly fruit of a more limited range than the 365 BST supermarket shopper). We ate a low (but high quality) meat diet, sourced from farms we knew well and trusted.

What did we miss? The ease of ripping open the pizza and 10 minutes later chowing down on some rubbery hydrogenated tomato

product was something we yearned for. But the ‘convenience’ of food is predicated on a lifestyle lashed to the job and the hectic whirlwind of the treadmill. The credit crunch may change things. Fast foods can be easily replaced. Omelettes and frittata replaced pizza. We kept coffee and tea and sugar and debated vegetable oils. Should pesticide dependent rapeseed oil replace beautiful olive oil?

What fish can we eat in good conscience? It was easy enough to source the vast bulk of your food from the region of Fife. Beer from Clackmannanshire and wine from Perthshire constituted welcome ‘contraband’ goods.

If this all sounds like a horrendous exercise in self-denial it didn’t feel like that. Newly acquired habits become the new norm. Life without supermarkets is a blessing.

How do we move to a bioregional approach? The American writer Kirkpatrick Sale argues “How do we become bioregional? The answer: remembrance and invention.” Or, as Growing Communities in Hackney puts it, “remember a food tradition, and invent a new one.” There’s a definitely a good tension between reviving or acknowledging a food culture and say, enjoying a beetroot curry. The reality is that whilst some of this is alien and difficult for us, how have we got to the stage where the 10,000 mile journey of a cod is commonplace, or that we can’t comprehend eating seasonally?

The good news is that there’s evidence that the need for provenance, the lack of faith in the industrialised food system, and the awareness of the absurdity of food miles means that the local food movement is growing in strength.

On a recent visit to Ireland, where people are launching a similar local food project initiative in Tipperary, it was remarked that the Irish and the Scots had been following the wrong subjects, obsessed with history when we should be focusing on our geography. The environmental crisis we are facing will mean that we all will know more about our geography, what Geddes called the ‘literature of locality’. The good news is the future tastes good.

“... the ‘convenience’ of food is predicated on a lifestyle lashed to the job and the hectic whirlwind of the treadmill.”

Education

Global Connections: what’s all the fuss about? we are creating a geographical forum to exchange experiences.

We want to generate further excitement and highlight the importance of geography by giving school pupils a taste of academic geography.

(L to R) Sarah Forbes, Ellen Osborne, Nico Ferguson, Alessa Geiger

Strengthening interaction, increasing interconnectedness and creating new dimensions of time and space. This is exactly what the RSGS young members group at the University of Glasgow aims for with their Global Connections events. By bring young people together,

How do we do this? We organise evening events featuring University staff, students and RSGS guest speakers, covering an array of geographical topics. These reflect curricular requirements as well as exploring the endless opportunities a geography degree offers. Our first event in December was highly successful, featuring Dr McDonald’s presentation on the Impacts of mining on indigenous peoples and Dr Hansom’s passionate talk on Coasts in crisis. A highly dynamic

talk was given by University students having undertaken their third year research in Tanzania and Iceland. This evening also gave school pupils an opportunity to further discuss geography with students and academic staff during a 30 minute interval.

Given the positive response of the last event, we would like to invite you to our next Global Connections event in March, with an equally diverse and interesting programme. If you would like to receive further information, please do not hesitate to contact us by email: rsgs_global@yahoo.co.uk Best Wishes for the Year Ahead, Your Global Connections Team

John C Bartholomew Essay Competition 2009 “...two volunteers from our membership are urgently required to take on the satisfying task of coordination.”

In November 2009 the curtain came down, hopefully for only a brief interval, on the ‘Strathclyde-wide’ RSGS John C Bartholomew Essay Competition for Schools, after 30 productive years, coordinated by the RSGS Glasgow Centre.

At the prize-giving ceremony in Glasgow, atlases and maps donated by Harper Collins were presented by TV geographer Vanessa Collingridge to the winners (selected from more than a hundred high-quality entries received from P6 to S4 pupils in nearly 20 schools): Mark Williams, Callum Fickling, Gregor Duncan, Iain Archibald, Gillian Anderson, Melissa McMillan, Sarah Beth Martin, Iona Murray, Emma Watkins, Gavin Kidd,

Sophie Campbell, Kelly Taylor, Billie Spalding, Beth Frame, Ailidh Henderson, Melissa Frame, and Rachel Home.

Mike Robinson presented handengraved crystal glasses to retiring coordinators Jim Carson and Bill Wood (in absentia), to former Many more coordinator Sandy pupils will have Robertson, and had the stimulus to Ann Mahon of and reward of Harper Collins. Their completing a support, dedicated piece of work hard work and Jim Carson receives his retirement for which they gift from Mike Robinson enthusiasm over the had to discover last 30 years have the material made the competition a great themselves, thereby extending success. We hope that someone their knowledge, understanding will be able to carry on their and skills, whilst arousing an good work, and are seeking new interest which we hope is lasting. volunteer coordinators to keep The 1,000-word illustrated essays the competition running. If you ranged from straightforward are interested in helping, please studies of countries or natural contact RSGS HQ. regions to more ambitious As Jim Carson said, “If this problem-based laudable competition is to topics, largely continue to inspire countless reflecting the future generations of pupils in geographical Scottish schools for many years topics studied to come, then two volunteers in schools at from our membership are the various urgently required to take on the levels. satisfying task of coordination.

On behalf May the interval be short-lived. of the RSGS Long live the RSGS John C Glasgow Bartholomew Essay Competition.

Committee, It is surely too good to lose.”

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University of Edinburgh

Climate Change Research in the Shetland Isles This new project, led by Prof Alastair Dawson, is in collaboration with the Shetland Oil Terminal Environment Advisory Group (SOTEAG), Shetland Islands Council and the North Atlantic Fisheries College in Scalloway. SOTEAG has routinely gathered environmental (marine and atmospheric) data in Shetland since the start of operations at the Sullom Voe oil terminal over 30 years ago. This project seeks to compile and analyse this data, together with other environmental change datasets, to investigate to what extent the observed changes in Shetland correspond with more widely-documented national trends.

Two graduate students will be employed on the project which will run until September 2010.

Edge Work

CoastAdapt gets underway A new project is starting at Aberdeen (led by Alastair Dawson) regarding the response of coastal communities to climate change.

CoastAdapt is funded through the EU Northern Periphery Programme and will run until December 2011. The project is being led by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) with partner institutes in Cork, Coleraine, UHI Thurso, Iceland (Reykjavik), northern Norway (Hammerfest) and Aberdeen. The study will focus on coastal issues linked to climate change such as storminess and sea level change and how coastal communities and policy advisors adapt to these perceived potential threats. The Atlantic coastline of the Outer Hebrides will form the focus of particular study given the damaging storm that devastated the area during January 2005.

The Open University in Scotland The Open University has developed a new short course Sustainable Scotland, which looks into key areas of the sustainability agenda, including how we manage waste, how we produce and use food, our choice of energy sources, how we use information technology, and transport issues. It looks at how other small countries tackle these. The course also considers some less well-explored aspects including cultural and community sustainability. The course encourages students to explore issues in the context of their own local area or their particular interests and it explores ways to tackle a sustainable future positively. The tensions between sustainable development and sustainable economic growth are examined.

The 15 week course has three start dates in 2010 (February, May, October) and is taught entirely online.

The course provides 15 credit points at SCQF level 7, and is designed to appeal to students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds. Online discussion amongst the student group is an essential part of the learning process.

More information is available at www.openuniversity.co.uk/ sustainablescotland

University Medallists At Perth Concert Hall in October 2009, after a superb and stunningly illustrated talk by renowned mountaineer Martin Moran, speaking about the muchrevered and near-impenetrable Himalayan mountain Nanda Devi, this year’s University Medallists were presented with their medals by HRH The Princess Royal. The medals are awarded by the Society to the outstanding geography graduates from Scottish universities each year. The 2009 medallists were Karla Graham, Rebecca Barclay, Rory Coulter, Robin Parker, Catriona Fyffe, Emma Laurie, and Rebecca Burridge (not in picture).

Dr Tom Slater has secured a Leverhulme Trust International Network grant for a three-year project entitled Edge Work: Comparative Studies in Advanced Urban Marginality. The Network unites urban scholars working in Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Porto, Milan, Sao Paolo, Tokyo and San Francisco, and will engage in exchanges aimed at developing comparative and international perspectives on advanced urban marginality. We are particularly concerned with the predicament facing those living in neighbourhoods affected by a notorious reputation, one that intensifies existing stigmatisation resulting from poverty, class position and/or ethnic origin.

Further information from www. urbanoutcastsoftheworld.net Biochar Research The UK Biochar Research Centre (UKBRC), part of the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage, welcomes research associates Sohel Ahmed, Peter Brownsort, Andrew Cross, and Miranda PrendergastMiller, and research students Teri Angst and Jason Cook. Biochar is a fine-grained, highly porous form of charcoal with potential benefits of long-term soil carbon storage, bioenergy and sustainable agriculture by helping soils retain nutrients and water. Current research examines biochar production technologies, quality, with field trials and socioeconomic assessments. A newly awarded EU Interreg grant to Simon Shackley extends UKBRC’s collaborative research across the North Sea Region, and Saran Sohi presented at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

Further information from www. biochar.org.uk

University News

University of Aberdeen

Making Connections

British Cartographic Society Visit

RSGS was delighted to welcome its first official visiting group on 11th September 2009.

Thirty members of the British Cartographic Society and its Map

Curators’ Group mostly from over the border and including curators from continental Europe and Australia arrived in brilliant sunshine which remained throughout the day. The visit began with a superb presentation by Mike Robinson, and the group was clearly much taken by his exciting plans for the Society’s future.

The group subsequently toured Lord John Murray House and later was guided round the Fair Maid’s House in small groups

by RSGS Chairman, Barrie Brown, Mike Robinson and Margaret Wilkes. The visit had a particularly happy and positive atmosphere, with group members expressing great interest in RSGS’s interpretative plans for the Fair Maid’s House and the new storage for the Society’s collections.

lived in areas where today only sheep, walkers and climbers spend much time. This study of palaeoecology and palynology (still in a geography department) was getting me into archaeology and ethnobotany. What crops were people growing during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, how were they managing their animals, where were they living, celebrating life and death, dying?

and their monuments and artefacts in the landscape, both the one we could see out of the museum window and the one that they would have seen, when they stood on the hillside 5,000 years ago.

Margaret Wilkes Convenor, Library & Information Committee

What Geography Means To Me

A

truism that I only recognised with hindsight is that with a geography degree you can do practically anything. My An insight interest in geography into the started with the desire to learn more about the life of a world, its countries and working its geomorphology. Why geographer do landscapes look like they do and how do people adapt to living in the huge variety of landscapes across the world?

Dr Deborah Long Conservation Manager, Plantlife Scotland

This led, not unnaturally, to a joint degree in Geography and French. Half my time I was studying glaciology, slope failure and biogeography and the other half I was learning a beautiful European language and living and travelling in a differently geographically diverse landscape.

I couldn’t understand why more people weren’t doing it. From there, I found another way to bring together both the desire to learn about landscapes and how they are made with the excuse to visit them, this time in the Peak District in England, where I researched the vegetation history of the Dark Peak and how prehistoric communities

This was starting to highlight interesting parallels and paradigms in how ancient communities in Britain and modern communities in the Arctic, the Himalayas and the Americas were living in a sometimes hostile landscape, carving out a living from it, sometimes in a sustainable manner but not always. I was beginning to test the theory that although the past does hold the key to the future, it illustrates both how some peoples can live in harmony with their environment using sustainable exploitation strategies and how some peoples adopted unsustainable practices that led, in the long term, to total community collapse.

This prepared me for a spell at Kilmartin House Museum on the west coast of Scotland where, as Museum Manager, I was able to develop the landscape side of the Centre for Archaeology and Landscape. This was all about setting the archaeology, its people

It has been the broad skills base coupled with the ability to take the long perspective, both spatially and temporally, that studying geography has given me. This paved the way for me in a career from biogeographical research, to archaeology and now to conservation, where I am Conservation Manager at Plantlife Scotland. The plant communities and the landscape they live in that we see before us today hasn’t always been this way and has changed almost unrecognisably over the centuries as humans have lived in a landscape. The plants we see now aren’t necessarily living in the sorts of habitats they would prefer – it’s just what they have been left with after centuries of human exploitation.

And they won’t necessarily be living here in a few more centuries’ time. Landscapes change, plants change and people are often the moving force of that change. It is a geographer’s perspective that can understand the impact and probability of significant topographical, climatological and biological change, and that can put forward realistic solutions for the future.

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Geographer

An Expert View: Biochar

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Winter 2009-10

Biochar: The New Black Gold Kimberley Pratt, MSc student, University of Edinburgh

Scattered across the Amazon Basin between the copper brown soils typical of tropical rainforest, there is a darker, richer earth known locally as terra preta. These soils may hold the key to a cheap, low-tech method to remove Gigatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere and slow our slide into climate chaos.

Terra preta (Portuguese for black earth) is not a natural phenomenon; they were created by ancient people hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago, who added charcoal to their soils which were otherwise too poor to support large agricultural systems. The charcoal held nutrients, organic carbon and water in the soil, allowing farmers to practice continual cultivation.

This in turn supported the establishment of great cities, the ruins of which can still be found buried in the rainforest. Today, the carbon from the charcoal in the soil can still be found there and the soils are extremely fertile; crops grown on terra preta produce three times as much yield as crops grown on adjacent fields. This discovery has sparked an idea in the minds of modern scientists seeking ways to halt man-made climate change. This idea is biochar.

Biochar is a solid, black material consisting mostly of carbon.

It is made by burning biomass without oxygen using a technique known as pyrolysis. Biochar is very similar to charcoal in its physical properties but, whereas charcoal is used mainly as a fuel, biochar could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have huge agricultural benefits as well.

The secret to biochar’s seemingly magical properties lies in its micro structure; carbon is locked away in a strong lattice structure which also contains pores where nutrients collect and are taken up by plants. Microorganisms in the soil, which would otherwise decompose the carbon, eventually releasing it to the atmosphere as CO2,

cannot separate the carbon from its lattice structure. Over time, less CO2 enters the atmosphere, meaning that biochar is a carbon negative process which could help mitigate climate change. However, in the world of credit crunches and economic crises, new technologies must be economically as well as scientifically proven. Scientists are racing against the climate change clock to show that biochar can have agricultural benefits which result in savings for farmers as well as environmental benefits.

Biochar reduces the amount of expensive fertiliser required to grow crops in developed nations.

In the developing world, where farmers are poor and soils are lacking in nutrients, biochar offers a cheap alternative to fertilisers to increase yields.

Other benefits, such as reduced flooding, reducing pressure on land and improving water quality, all add to biochar’s economic benefits. However, more research is required before farmers can be expected to take a risk with their livelihoods on this new technology.

One way in which biochar projects could be given financial stability immediately would be by including them in carbon markets. At the time of writing (2009), carbon negative technologies are not considered in carbon markets, but this may change in December when world leaders gather in Copenhagen for the most highly anticipated conference on climate change since the Kyoto agreement. Biochar is on the list for discussions. The challenge for supporters of biochar is to convince farmers, businesses and policy makers that the benefits of biochar outweigh the uncertainties.

“In the developing world, where farmers are poor and soils are lacking in nutrients, biochar offers a cheap alternative to fertilisers to increase yields.”

“At the time of writing, carbon negative technologies are not considered in carbon markets, but this may change...”

Book Club

Seton Gordon’s Cairngorms Earth on Fire An anthology

Bernhard Edmaier

Hamish Brown on Seton Gordon Quite how anyone becomes captivated by wildlife and the outdoors is a mystery but Seton Gordon ‘got it early and got it bad’. He obviously had understanding and encouraging parents but, from that background, heading off with gun rather than camera would have been the norm.

He quietly made himself an extraordinary pioneer at a period everharder to envisage.

His early photography was amazing (no putting a digital miniature to a telescope) and many of his earliest pictures were taken by simply stalking his quarry then, increasingly, shot from cramped hides (he was a tall man) using weighty and cumbersome primitive cameras. By his teens he was being published and at 21 his first book appeared, Birds of the Loch and Mountain, 1907.

This youth then goes on to describe sitting up all night to record the times when various birds started singing, mentions long hill days and being caught on top of Macdhui in a blizzard. Already knowing the wilds at every season of the year he suggests “They are at their finest during the month of June, when all Nature at this height looks at her best and the air is laden with the scent of the mountain plants”. He died just short of his 91st birthday (1886–

Bernhard Edmaier trained as a civil engineer and geologist and has photographed the earth’s surface for over 15 years, creating abstractly beautiful compositions that offer an awe-inspiring view of our planet. Over the last decade, he has photographed volcanoes both active and dormant around the world, amassing an archive of aerial photographs depicting an amazing range of geothermal phenomena and formations. As well as spectacular pyrotechnics, this book features photographs that reveal how volcanic activity has shaped the landscape of our planet, and includes clear accessible text explaining key volcanic phenomena and events.

The Geographer recommends

So Foul and Fair a Day A History of Scotland’s Weather and Climate

1977), saying and writing exactly the same things, with the same

Alastair Dawson

revelational wonder and freshness.

This book, recommended by Bruce Gittings, is the first detailed history of how floods, storms, blizzards, droughts and volcanic eruptions shaped Scotland.

That he started to pioneer the study of wildlife for its own sake in a world where many landowners and keepers were mainly interested in slaughtering fur and feather is extraordinary, that he did so in the carefully preserved Cairngorms and won the help of these men, is even more extraordinary. He must have been a very special person.

Seton Gordon was one of the first wholly all-round, exploratory naturalists in Scotland. How lucky we are then to have had this prophet, this forerunner, who would inspire and likewise enthuse others by his steady flow of writing through the 20th century.

I have known the Cairngorms over a lifetime too, have walked the lairigs, climbed and skied in its vastness, visited every Munro at least seven times, been as entranced by dotterel and ptarmigan, relished sun and storm and the very character that makes the Cairngorms different and special. If I could only have one memory it would be of a winter assessment course at Glenmore Lodge when a candidate and I crossed at night from Glen Feshie to reach Braeriach’s summit for a bivouac – not my first there either – in a world made glorious by deep snow and a dazzling full moon, an experience it would take the pen of Seton Gordon to describe adequately. I hope the selection in my new book will delight old loyalists and inspire new readers and may its enthusiasms be reflected in our care for these hills and their precious wildlife.

Climate change is one of the most serious issues that faces the human race, but how important have climate conditions and weather been in the past?

Professor Alastair Dawson considers this question as he traces the history of climate conditions and weather in Scotland, showing that dramatic changes have played an important part in the shaping of Scotland’s story, a fact often overlooked by professional historians.

He discusses the key lessons to be learned from the past, providing pointers to the future and new meanings to the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. This is a fascinating and thoughtful book, and an invaluable reference for all those interested in climate change.

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Closing date - 1st March

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Hamish Brown