Postgraduate Seminar 11th June

Postgraduate Seminar Series - Spring 2015
11 June  2015 - 1pm - Zoology Museum (Wallace 129)

Postgraduate Seminar Series

Thursday 11^th June

Wallace Museum 1pm

“The idea of the Anthropocene: imagining alternative social and environmental futures in Wales”

Anna Pigott

This week, one of our speakers is Anna Pigott, is a 2^nd year Geography PhD student. In 2011 she completed her MSc degree in Environmental Dynamics and Climate Change at Swansea University and previously graduated in 2007 with a BSc in Geography from Cambridge University. Her PhD focusses on how cultural visions of the future 're-imagine' humanity's relationship with the earth and environmental problems and feed into broader narratives about social change

Abstract:

The notion of the Anthropocene has implications for understanding humanity's relationship with the past, present, and future of life on Earth. In the Anthropocene, it could be said that the task is no longer to 'map' the earth, but instead to make sense of the tangled relationships between humanity and the Earth. Such a focus looks for new geographical imaginations and narratives of the past and the future, especially those emerging in the realms of art and politics. This paper takes Wales, a country with a pioneering political approach to sustainability, as a case study and explores how various organisations, particularly in the arts sector, are responding to the idea of the Anthropocene and creating visions for alternative social and environmental futures.

 

 

 

Talk 2:

 

Informed movement: one step at a time, do animals have a fundamental step length?

 

Richard Lewis

 

This week, one of our speakers is Richard Lewis. Richard is an MRes student here at Swansea and previously achieved a 2:1 in Zoology from Swansea University. Richard undertook an industrial year with Natural Resources Wales and hopes in the future to pursue a career working with carnivores.

 

Abstract:

With global biodiversity in rapid decline understanding how, when and where animals move within their habitat is of paramount importance to conservation. Current bio-logging tags have a low recording frequency and resolution of animal movement, due to battery constraints. The result of low recording frequencies are isolated pinpoints on a map, with straight lines being drawn between them, the “fundamental step length”. However, movement trajectories are often highly tortuous as individuals adapt their movement based on environmental cues. Such data are lost with low recording frequencies. Therefore it is proposed that high frequency archival tags can recreate these highly tortuous pathways and provide a more accurate description of an animal’s spatial ecology.

 

All welcome to attend!