🌊 As the need to restore Europe’s freshwaters becomes ever more pressing, so too does the demand for funding to support ambitious restoration projects. 🤝 A new @merlin-project.bsky.social publication guides you through the grant funding landscape. freshwaterblog.net/2025/10/22/h...

It's out! 🧪 "Lines in the landscape," on the under-appreciated importance of #ditches as diverse ecosystems: doi.org/10.1038/s432.... By @peatymike.bsky.social, @fluitans.bsky.social, @drtatariw.bsky.social, @timaukel.bsky.social, @jordannabergman.bsky.social, @juliecrabot.bsky.social, ...

🌱 🐟🦫 No.1 Freshwater Detective Agency from the University of Stirling take on Finland’s beaver ponds 🇫🇮🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Day1: 16/72 audiomoths installed so far… and as many bug bites… 🪵 #beaverlogbook @dralanlaw.bsky.social @nigelwillby.bsky.social + myself, Alex Adams, and Alice Turner

This new map provides a global view of the distribution of a multitude of aquatic ecosystems, including various wetlands. It's a pretty big step forward, and I look forward to seeing how it will be used e.g. to study wetland greenhouse gases. essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

New paper out with collaborators from Tianjin University: "Village ponds are hotspots of CO2 and CH4 emissions regulated by biological communities" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How do we decide on conservation actions in the face of context dependency? In our new paper on ‘Precision Ecology’ we show how methods developed in medicine & marketing can be applied to predict site-specific outcomes allowing effective & targeted conservation doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I remember when authors used to thank the reviewers in the acknowledgements section... maybe that's a thing of the past? Or maybe I've become reviewer number 2?!

Today, we are also celebrating the winners of the 2024 Annual Meeting Prizes: Emily Holden and Alice Turner (from left to right). https://f.mtr.cool/tpabuuvzgi

While there have been papers looking at Beaver effects on immature aquatic insects, the latest @freshwaterscience.bsky.social #FreshwaterScience issue shows how Beaver dams can increase biomass in emergent adult insects - along with community changes www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

I was walking along my local river last night and was so pleased to see that beavers have returned. I managed to get a picture.

Beaver Versus Human: The Big Differences in Small Dams wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Super excited to share our new paper out today in Nature Water led by Christina McCabe. @naturewaterjnl.bsky.social “The ecological benefits of more room for rivers” Find the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s44... Free to read version: rdcu.be/eeuBx #rivers #floods #biodiversity #resilience

A beaver themed prize giving! 🦫 - Eileen Stuart then presented the prizes for best talk to James Macarthur at UHI Inverness and the best poster to Alice Turner from the University of Stirling. #SNSC2025 PS - I promise it wasn’t rigged towards the organisers!

A dam good talk from Emily Simpson @emofthewoods.bsky.social on the role of beaver ponds in sediment trapping and recognising beaver ponds for carbon accreditation 🦫 #SNSC2025

Coypus taking the credit beavers are due… @britishecologicalsociety.org

Active #wetland restoration kickstarts vegetation establishment, but natural development promotes greater plant diversity besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🌍 🧪 🦤

Duckling body mass increases with abundant aquatic invertebrates: experimental approach www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

✨ We have EIGHT amazing summer internships with our National Capability for Global Challenges scheme! Work with UKCEH scientists on topics like ozone pollution, modelling, satellite imagery, soil health & more. 🔗 Apply by 2 April: www.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/... 🧪🧵 1/ Please share widely!

Job: Come work with me! Please repost! We're seeking a faculty colleague whose research, teaching, and outreach focuses on water quality and freshwater ecosystems in the context of climate change. Review of applications will begin April 15, 2025. careers.msu.edu/jobs/assista...

Naming a beaver Alan is a perfectly acceptable in my opinion. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The impact of reintroduced Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) dams on the upstream movement of brown trout (Salmo trutta) in upland areas of Great Britain journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

A legacy of lockdown has been an increasing number of online, free talks by research projects and organisations. These are so great to keep science open and inspiring. To the many folks who do this (RGS, Merlin, NERC), thank you!

Global Report Calls for Wetland Restoration Through Rewilding sdg.iisd.org/news/global-...

A pleasure to be involved in this paper, which turned out to be quite a tricky analysis! Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Some excellent examples of the role that animals play in making our wetlands functional and dynamic. Including beavers obviously! How we and our wetlands rely on wild animals – a report to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands globalrewilding.earth/how-we-and-o...

A beautiful (but REALLY cold) day on Ben Each and Stùc a' Chròin. Crampons almost the whole day, it was great!!! #Scotwinter #ThinkWinter

"Universities across the UK are facing a challenging financial period" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'Simply obscene'. UCU comment on Stirling Principal's 40% £119k pay rise over 2 years making him highest paid VC in Scotland on £414,000 plus benefits. Salaries like this when we're facing funding challenges and redundancies across HE are unconscionable www.scotsman.com/education/th...

There is an idea that we can simply step away from degraded ecosystems & they will recover But truly biodiverse, resilient ecosystems are complex So, in degraded landscapes, we will often need to intervene to guide systems towards complexity besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The oystercatchers are back on Stirling Uni campus! A sign that winter is making way for spring. I'll be on the lookout for snowdrops too.

Excited to share our new paper on garden pond biodiversity 🐸🐦‍⬛ resulting from our citizen science project MyPond. Dive into the details here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @bartabarbara.bsky.social @csabavad.bsky.social @schneiderbea.bsky.social @zsofiahorvath.bsky.social

Interested in #wetlands and human culture? In our new paper we report a systematic review of the cultural ecosystem services provided by wetlands. Clear evidence of how much people need wetlands! Delighted to see this huge collaborative effort online: authors.elsevier.com/a/1k0257szSJ... 🌍 🧪 🦤

Our new article by @wenfeiliao.bsky.social & #JanneSoininen shows #urban #dytiscid assemblages experienced #biotic #heterogenisation. Clustered #ponds are more likely to maintain stable populations due to immigration than isolated ponds. doi.org/10.1111/fwb.... @geohelsinkiuni.bsky.social

A very nice paper on changes in temporal beta diversity of diving beetles in urban ponds. Connectivity is good for maintaining resilience, but urbanisation is driving species loss overall. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to share my new (and first!) paper. We reviewed how environmental DNA can be applied to terrestrial rewilding monitoring- particularly which sampling substrates to use and how eDNA compares to other monitoring approaches 🧬 www.frontiersin.org/journals/con...

New paper with SLU colleagues in which we estimate national CH4 emissions from Swedish reservoirs, ditches and constructed ponds. Spoiler: the ditches win. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I’d love to have volunteer days as part of my contract. Any other unis do this? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Must remember to clean my mug before I leave for Xmas…

The forecast was too good not to be on the hills. Proper winter conditions on Cruach Àrdrain and Beinn Tulaichean. #munros

I couldn’t escape to the hills all day today… but managed an hour in the local hills. Beautiful cloud inversion over Stirling.

Interesting study on spatial and temporal beta diversity from my close colleagues 🌐: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Still trying to get gas and water chem from beaver ponds in the winter. A lot of ice smashing today.

Lets not forget about #lakes in conservation. Of all the stillwater habitats lakes are most important for freshwater biodiversity & hence deserve more attention. New research just published: link.springer.com/article/10.1... @dralanlaw.bsky.social

Nice to have some hill time. There’s something special about winter light. Beinn an Dòthaidh and Beinn Dòrain #Munros #ScotWinter

So long X, hello Bluesky!

PhD opportunity available for Oct 2025 to work with me, @clfaust.bsky.social @dralanlaw.bsky.social & Elisa Fuentes-Montemayor on the impact of wetland creation on #mosquitoes & #vector-borne #disease risk in #Scotland. #OneHealth Please share 🙏 iapetus2.ac.uk/studentships...