Latest News
Festival brings the tropics to town
Researchers from Lancaster University are bringing a flavour of the tropics to town this month.
Lancaster's University Challenge Team!
Three of LEC's postgraduate students have qualified for the televised rounds of BBC's University Challenge. The Lancaster team is made up of:
LEC PG Open Days and Travel Bursary
LEC is pleased to announce that Open Day Travel Bursaries are available to prospective applicants not currently studying at Lancaster who attend a LEC PG Open Day in 2012.
BHS-JBA Trust Studentship awarded to David Mindham on MSc Sustainable Water Management
Congratulations to David Mindham for being one of only six students in the UK to be awarded a BHS-JBA Trust Studentship!
LEC research reveals true cost of a burger
The UK could considerably reduce its carbon footprint if more of us switched to a vegetarian diet, according to new research by Lancaster University.
LEC wins Queen's Anniversary Prize for University
The development of water saving techniques for agriculture which have helped farmers in some of the driest regions of the world , has won Lancaster University a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education. It is the third time the University has received one of these prestigious awards.
The Prizes, announced on the 18th November, highlight world-class work taking place in higher and further education, in Lancaster’s case its contribution to one of the biggest challenges facing humankind - feeding seven billion people against a background of climate change. The prize winning research has been developed by a Lancaster team of plant biologists, led by Distinguished Professor Bill Davies in the Lancaster Environment Centre, who have shown how the signals that roots in drying soil send to the shoots can help plants cope more successfully with drought and produce better yield. This new understanding of how plants reacts to stress has now been exploited with the agriculture industry by the group working in collaboration with researchers around the world. Water saving approaches to irrigation and to the management of crop production have resulted in significant water saving and better crop production in regions of the world which suffer water scarcity. This means increased profitability for farmers and better conditions for people living in challenging environments which are becoming even more challenging as the climate changes.
Lancaster science has been used to develop new systems to grow cereals in North China, grape vines and top fruit in Australia and in viticulture and vegetable production around the Mediterranean and in the USA. New water saving techniques have also been developed with the UK horticultural and agricultural industries. The Lancaster team has trained a large number of research biologists who work around the world on projects aimed at contributing to food security. The prize also recognises the teams work with industry in passing on new knowledge through training programmes and partnerships run through the University’s specialist environmental business centre, the first of its kind in the UK.
Lancaster University’s Vice Chancellor Professor Paul Wellings said: “The Lancaster Environment Centre is working at the forefront of science and is helping to provide real solutions to the challenges of climate change . We are absolutely delighted that this exceptional contribution has received such prestigious recognition." This research also won the coveted Times Higher Research Project of the Year 2009.
Upcoming Events
Breathe Easier: Resolving critical air-quality problems with passive directional sampling'
Dr Maria Angeles Solera Garcia, Lancaster Environment Centre
Friday 24th February 2012, 1500-1600
LEC Training Room 2
Ensuring Water Resource Security: Assessing Water-Related Business Risks
Wednesday 29th February 2012, 0930-1600
LEC Training Rooms 1 And 2
Catchment Change Network hosts NERC Water Security Knowledge Exchange Programme (WSKEP) workshop. Lead presentations for the workshop and facilitated discussion include:
Going Beyond Dangerous Climate Change: Exploring the void between rhetoric and reality in reducing carbon emissions
Professor Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester
Wednesday 29th February 2012, 1430-1530
Marcus Merriman Lecture Theatre
Unprecedented growth in recent emissions demands a radical departure from the mitigation proposals suggested by many policy makers and scientific reports. This presentation strips away the rhetoric of such proposals to reveal a profound challenge to science and society. It argues that our abject failure to reduce emissions leaves the global community with stark choices. To continue the delusion that emission can be controlled through rhetoric, financial fine-tuning and piecemeal incrementalism; to view the future as one of futility and despair; or to acknowledge that the greatest obstacles to real change are an absence of honesty and imagination alongside a fear of change itself. The paper concludes that whilst 2°C futures are all but lost, early harnessing of human will and ingenuity may yet offer opportunities to deliver relatively low-carbon and climate-resilient communities.