BES Research Seminars

Detecting Icebergs with Machine Learning: Research and Commercialisation John Stott, Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics and Sonny Bailey, Senior Research Associate in Iceberg Detection and Commercialisation Department of Physics, Lancaster University Wednesday 22nd May, 1-2pm, Cottrell 2V1 and streamed on Teams (contact the seminar organiser for the Teams link). This seminar is open to all staff, students and

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Chan Su Yang

Principal Research Scientist, Marine Domain & Security Research Department, Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST)

Ian Pattison, Associate Professor in Physical Geography, Heriot Watt University.

Here, Ian will report findings on a project looking at the effect of soil compaction on runoff and flood risk. Soil characteristics were assessed at a range of spatial scales and for different land management practices across the catchment. Continuous spatial mapping allowed zones of compaction to be identified, and therefore target alleviation measures. Finally, the consequences of different levels of soil compaction on catchment scale flood risk will be discussed.

Leslie Mabon, Lecturer in Environmental Systems, School of Engineering and Innovation, Open University.

The talk will be of interest to researchers working on climate change adaptation, extremes and resilience from both a social and natural science perspective, as the social science research I will present is supported by wider natural science and remote sensing based research into how temperatures and green coverage vary across Glasgow.

The talk also engages with how residents in potentially over-researched communities can be connected in applied research, and in how this can then feed into policy and planning processes. This may be of interest to people working at local or national government in urban planning and environmental management, as well as those working in environment or conservation for third-sector organisations.

George McGavin, President of the Dorset Wildlife Trust; Honorary Research Associate, Oxford University Museum of Natural History; Senior Principal Research Fellow, Imperial College.

Insects are the most diverse and successful group of multi-cellular animals on Earth. They are an essential component of every terrestrial and aquatic food chain - without them the world would be a very different place. But insects have a dark side - they have changed the short course of human history by killing hundreds of millions of people and destroying their crops. But without a rich diversity of insects we will be living on an impoverished planet and will be facing a very uncertain future.

Laura Graham, Associate Professor and IIASA-NERC Research Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham. 

Jim Harris, Professor of Environmental Technology, Cranfield Environment Centre.

This is a broad presentation, with a strong theme of conceptual understanding and the philosophy of understanding land use change and management, utilising many of the tools and approaches utilised in the various cognate areas across the Department. As such I would hope that it would have a wide appeal.

This joint presentation will hopefully be of interest to people involved in Earth observation, particularly of forests. 

David Walsh will discuss his and Gerry McCartney’s new book (published in November 2024) which presents all the evidence for the horrific impacts of UK Government ‘austerity’ policies on health and health inequalities.

The European Space Agency’s Sentinel Satellites offer unprecedented global spatial and temporal coverage for a range of remote sensing applications. A corner stone of the Sentinel spectrum is a constellation of imaging radar satellites. While backscatter and interferometry are the two most popular operational modes, the radar satellites also offer coherent dual polarimetry, effectively measuring the full polarization ellipse of the scattered wave. In this talk we show how best to exploit the polarized sentinels to extract physical parameters of interest.

Experts and evidence in democratic innovations Ruth Lightbody, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Glasgow Caledonian University Wednesday 12th March, 1-2pm, Cottrell 2V1 and streamed on Teams (contact the seminar organiser for the Teams link). This seminar is open to all staff, students and affiliates of the University of Stirling. The seminar is hosted by Biological and Environmental

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This talk will be about a practitioner's attempt to wield state-of-the-art scientific thinking, analytical tools and datasets in the hope of influencing and guiding a large Environmental NGO in delivering landscape scale nature recovery.