NSDG Summer meeting 'Sustainable Remediation and Regeneration'
Friday 4 July 2008
This meeting is being held in conjunction with the North East Contaminated Land Forum, Yorkshire Contaminated Land Forum, The National Industrial Symbiosis Programme NE, the CLEMANCE Environmental Technology Transfer Club and the BioReGen Life III Environment Programme Project. The diverse backgrounds of groups involved promise some interesting view points and a lively meeting. The morning's events will be held at the Centuria Building, University of Teesside. The meeting is free, if you would like to attend please email Jenna Meehan (Jenna.Meehan@tees.ac.uk). Download the Programme for the day here.
There are only 30 places for the excursion in the afternoon, which will be of particular interest to our soils group. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first served basis. I urge you to email Jenna straight away so as not to miss out on the afternoon's activities. Please indicate if you wish to attend this visit in your e-mail so we can organise transport from Middlesbrough.
The Centuria Building is within easy walking distance of Middlesbrough train station. If you will arrive by car open access parking will be available nearby at Middletown car park on the day. Please visit www.tees.ac.uk <http://www.tees.ac.uk/> and click on the side bar “Travel directions” for maps and instructions. You will need sturdy footwear for the afternoon's visits. Lunch is not provided so you may wish to bring your own sandwiches. Apologies for the short notice, I do hope you can make it!
Lindsay
NSDG Secretary
lindsay.bramwell@ncl.ac.uk
Report of Miid-summer field meeting
21 June 2007, Nafferton Farm, Stocksfield, Northumberland
Further information
Recent developments in the measurement of soil physical properties
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Wednesday 31 October 2007
Join Soil Physics/Northern Soil Discussion Group meeting
Follow this link for full details of the programme
Report of the Northern Soils Discussion Group and Tropical Agriculture Association
Spring Meeting:
SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT
Thursday 6th April 2006
Institute of Research in Environment and Sustainability ( Devonshire Building)
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
The NSDG held a joint meeting with the Edinburgh Branch of the Tropical Agriculture Association on 6th April at the University of Newcastle devoted to the topic of Sustainable Land Management. John Gowing and Derek Rose ( Newcastle ) opened the proceedings with an exposition of Dry Drainage a method of minimising salinity and water logging problems in irrigation areas proposed on the basis of realistic simulations of the water and salt dynamics of soils in the Indus basin in Pakistan . Peter Storey (TAA) then described how poor hill slopeland in Taiwan in the 1960’s and in Nepal in the 1980’s had been transformed into productive use, primarily by intelligent use of terracing to prevent soil loss and to retain run off after heavy rain. Robert Sheil ( Newcastle) then discussed his work with Isiah Maharapara on developing sustainable food production in the wetlands of Zimbabwe by involving the local community in making decisions on the management of the land. He demonstrated that, by doing so, yields had increased in the mid 1990’s to levels greater than those attained by large commercial farms and that the quality of the produce had improved markedly. A lively discussion, led by Robert Payton ensued around the common factor in these three talks, the need for extensive, and sometimes substantial, amounts of earth moving and soil reformation for these technologies to be successful in practice.
After lunch, Charlie Richies (TAA, Bristol) spoke on using green manures in Tanzania , mainly as a means of suppressing weeds that often out compete crops for resources. Robert Payton ( Newcastle) then discussed the work, on timescales of land degradation in savannah ecosystems in Tanzania, conducted by an international academic consortium of which he is a member. An optical technique enables the time elapsed since quartz grains were last illuminated to be estimated and hence since surface sand was covered by overburden from erosion. In East Africa, land degradation is not a recent phenomenon as commonly believed: episodes of erosion as long ago as 16,000 years BP have been detected, probably linked to contemporary episodes of climatic change. Finally Vernon Gibberd (TAA) described his efforts at homestead gardening in the eastern cape of South Africa, particularly the quantity and variety of vegetables he could grow on a rain-fed 100 square metre plot over a nine month growing period, with a similar area devoted to water harvesting and storage. A 300 square metre fodder plot was then added to supply milk year round. He concluded that it was possible to supply much of the nutrition for an African family living on a typical 35 m x 35 m plot of land in a rural area. There were also posters from Newcastle University and from the Henry Doubleday Institute outlining the range of activities devoted, by these organisations, to sustainable agricultural development in the tropics.
The next meeting of the NSDG will be in late Spring 2007 and, provisionally, will be a field visit to Nafferton Farm, University of Newcastle (organic agriculture) and Whittle Dene (hydrologic and pollution studies).
Derek Rose
