Our newest team member introduces himself in today's blog.
Hi Robin, tell us about yourself.
Hi! I’m Robin, the new Project Officer at the Crichton Carbon Centre. Having grown up in Galloway, the landscape and biodiversity of the area has always a great source of interest and enjoyment for me. Most of my childhood was spent out in the hills on my bike, and that is still a fairly accurate description of me now. I have always been aware of the pressures facing the environment, and I’ve wanted to work in an area inspiring positive change. My previous job was in acoustics and sustainability consulting, during lockdown I moved back to Galloway and I realised I wanted to be more directly involved with habitat restoration.
What was your path into environmental acoustics – what interested or inspired you about it initially?
I studied Mechanical Engineering at Strathclyde, and all the while I had an interest in music and sound. This led me towards a career as an Acoustic Consultant with the engineering consultancy Arup. In this role I always felt the desire to be doing more to address the climate crisis through exploring ways in which acoustics intersects with climate change and biodiversity. I started working on Whole Life Carbon Assessments (which involved calculating and reducing the carbon footprint of the buildings we designed). This really opened my eyes to the carbon footprint of the built environment, and it showed me how incredibly important natural resources, particularly peatlands, are as a carbon store. I also started to learn about how acoustics can be used to monitor biodiversity, and the key role ecoacoustics can play in successful habitat restoration.
What is ecoacoustics and in what ways can it be used for restoration or monitoring?
As someone who is a bit nerdy about sound, the possibilities of using recordings to monitor biodiversity is really exciting. We can tell a lot from listening to the natural environment. We can identify the presence of target species through identifying their vocalisations, or we can gain a more general understanding of health of an ecosystem. Changes in abundance and diversity of species will be reflected in the soundscape of the habitat, and the impacts of land management changes and restoration can be captured over long periods of time through analysis of recordings. Whilst recording bird song is nothing new, advancements in technology and analysis mean that this could be a really effective way of monitoring the success of our projects.
While you’re working here, you’ll also be doing a research masters. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Some of the river catchment in Galloway have particularly high levels of acidification which can be detrimental to fish populations. My research will be looking into surface water acidification, with a particular focus on forested peatland catchments as this is where some of the most severe acidification has been identified. I will be aiming to establish the role that different factors within the catchment (such as geology, soil types, land use) can have on water quality. The plan is that this can be used to inform policy relating to forest and land management, and it will help identify key areas within catchments where the implementation of peatland restoration and other land management practises could be most successful
What are you looking forward to about your role?
It has been great learning about all the techniques for restoration and visiting sites to see how effective different techniques have been. I’m excited about seeing work commencing on projects this winter and getting more involved in their delivery.
Once I start studying I look forward to the knowledge exchange between research and work, hopefully I will gain some valuable expertise in soil science and water quality and bring that to the CCC team.
We're so excited to welcome Robin to our team. He brings some really interesting knowledge and skills to CCC and we look forward to working with him.
Comments