Peat-Fest is an annual festival dedicated to the discussion of issues surrounding peatlands. Two of the festival’s organisers, Bethany Copsey and Ireen van Dolderen, reflect on this year’s event, which focused on the rights of peatlands.
Understanding the significance people attach to landscapes over long timescales is an important element in landscape decision-making. Yet it can be difficult for historians to accurately capture how previous generations experienced the landscapes around them. Drawing on new research, Jeremy Burchardt identifies four distinct patterns in how people related to landscapes in the past.
Members of the Landscape of Post-War Infrastructure project have curated an exhibition that is on display at the National Coal Mining Museum. Richard Brook reflects on the exhibition and what it can tell us about the symbolic and iconic qualities of power stations in the landscape.
British landscapes are likely to change profoundly in the coming decades as global temperatures rise. Heiko Balzter explains why the country needs a coherent landscape strategy for adapting to the new climatic conditions and reducing our climate footprint.
Tensions between conservationists and the farming community are often highly visible in modern nature writing. Pippa Marland describes how creative writing workshops and original films – part of the public engagement strands of the Pen and the Plough and Tipping Points projects – have fostered new conversations that might help bridge these differences.
The Landscape Decisions Programme Coordination Team (PCT) have set up a working group to examine the role of mathematical modelling in informing landscape decisions. Sergei Petrovskii explains the value of the working group and details some insights from the discussions.
Helene Burningham and Simon Read have been organising a series of field meetings as part of their ‘Deben Soundings’ project. In this article, they report on the third meeting, held at Waldringfield on 10 February.
Computer models are frequently used to aid landscape decisions, but the complexity of the world around us makes it impossible to accurately account for all of the patterns and processes that might affect outcomes. Drawing on new research, Prof Simon Willcock, Prof James M. Bullock and Dr Danny A. P. Hooftman explain how combinations – or ‘ensembles’ – of models can produce more accurate and reliable information.
The Landscape Decisions Programme Coordination Team (PCT) have been running a set of writing groups to bring together researchers from across the network. These have been cross discipline working groups addressing some of the bigger picture topics the PCT identified coming out of the first whole programme level workshop in 2020. As this process draws to a close now the groups’ hard work is coming to fruition, Dr Beth Cole reflects on the process, the outcomes, and lessons learnt from leading these diverse writing groups.