CCRI is the largest specialist rural research centre in the UK, having expertise in all aspects of research in policy and planning for the countryside and the environment of the UK, Europe and further afield.
The University of Gloucestershire, Countryside and Community Research Institute, supported by the ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership for Wales (Wales DTP) invites applications for two funded PhD studentships in collaboration with Defra and CEFAS.
When we do surveys, we often collect a large amount of information from respondents that they may feel is personal to them and is not relevant to the topic of the survey. This post explains the utility and importance of doing so, even though it can be tiresome to complete by the respondants.
Defra is funding this project to improve our understanding of the ability of current Agri-environment schemes (AES) to respond to climate change. Climate change and the associated changes in weather are impacting upon agriculture and forestry. We know that bud burst and bird nesting are now two or three weeks earlier than they were 20 or 30 years ago due to overall warming. But as well as gradual change in mean temperatures, the Met Office is recording more extreme weather events (i.e. heatwaves, cold spells, drought, flooding, storms) which impacts natural and managed environments. AES provide support for farmers and
The new year saw three new researchers join the CCRI team. Find out more about them and their areas of work
CCRI, with University of Exeter, has recently started working on a project for Natural England to develop methods for monitoring and evaluating the social outcomes of agri-environment schemes.
For the past five years, the RECARE project has been working with stakeholders across Europe to develop a new way of saving the soil. As the project ends, it is presenting the accumulated learning from its research to policymakers in the cities, regions and nations of Europe as well as international bodies.
The urgency of this mission is underscored by recent UN reports highlighting the role that agriculture plays in climate change and how sustainable agriculture is going to be necessary to secure food production as well as liveable landscapes under climatic change.
As the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation uses World Soil Day to raise awareness about soil health, it may come as little surprise to find out that soil doesn’t just impact our food supplies, it also helps clean water and lower risks of floods and droughts. More surprising is the SoilCare team’s efforts to treat profitability for farmers as a central priority – a consideration many research projects on environmental health overlook.
We are delighted to announce that thousands of students have been celebrating their graduations over recent days and amongst them are a number which the CCRI has played an integral role. Read more about who they are and the subjects which they have been studying.
The Valerie project have published stakeholder field trial information leaflets. These describe the identification of problems within a number of specific contexts and the trial of experimental solutions by stakeholder project partners, and are the result of the preceding four years’ work on the project.
Colleagues at Durham University need your help with research which is trying to better understand how different stakeholders in the Cotswold landscape, from residents and farmers, to visitors and local government use and value the landscape and how they feel it should be best managed for the future.