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# RGS podcast with Prof Alice Reid

The Royal Geographical Society has published a podcast featuring Professor Alice Reid, who talks about how fertility, mortality and health affected changes in the UK's population in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The RGS have also produced associated teaching materials for Key Stage 4.

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# AI for climate and nature

AI@CAM

Drs Harry Owen and Emily Lines are part of a newly-funded AI@CAM project which aims to find new AI-driven approaches to tackle society's biggest challenges.

The new project, AI for climate and nature, will tackle the twin climate and biodiversity crises by developing AI approaches for bringing together a wide range of datasets and accelerating the collation of information.

This work will provide up to date, relevant and robust information for researchers and decision-makers working on climate and biodiversity conservation – opening up the possibility for more targeted and effective solutions to some of our world's most pressing climate and biodiversity challenges. This project is a collaboration between Cambridge Zero, Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Conservation Evidence, Institute for Computing for Climate Science, Conservation Research Institute, Centre for Landscape Regeneration, Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits and Cambridge Centre for Earth Observation.

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# Staying put in an era of climate change: The geographies, legalities, and public health implications of immobility

Liam Saddington

An interdisciplinary review piece by Dr Liam Saddington and colleagues from public health, psychology, and law explores the implications of immobility in the face of climate change.

Although there has been widespread discussion of climate migration, this paper explores how climate related hazards affect immobile populations. Led by Dr Daniel Robins, the paper explores how we conceptualise "environmental immobility" arguing that an interdisciplinary approach is needed when considering both "voluntary" and "involuntary" immobility.

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# Prioritise environmental sustainability in use of AI and data science methods

Jay, C., Yu, Y., Crawford, I. et al. Prioritize environmental sustainability in use of AI and data science methods. Nat. Geosci. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01369-y

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science will play a crucial role in improving environmental sustainability, and leveraging them has huge potential to provide effective and robust guidance for our changing world. However, the energy requirements of these methods is significant and growing, and will have an increasingly negative effect on the environment without sustainable design and use.

Academics, including Dr Emily Lines of the Department of Geography, are calling for consideration of the energy requirements of AI to be prioritised in research, in a new article published in Nature Geoscience. They call for environmental scientists to lead the way in developing robust standards that will minimise the environmental impact — and facilitate the accessibility — of AI and data science innovation, with benefits for both the global research community and the world at large.

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# Congratulations to the 2022-23 MPhil cohort!

Big congratulations to our 2022-23 cohort on receiving their MPhil degrees and to: Matthew Benjamin Hoisch, Heidi Howard, Kuba Oniszk and Karen Park for being awarded the MPhil prize for Best Overall Performance, Leo Ko, Sebastian Koa, Leah Palmer and Isabel Strachan for being awarded the MPhil prize for Best Distinction Level Dissertation or Project Report. Fantastic achievements by all of you!

# Professor Matthew Gandy awarded Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship

Professor Matthew Gandy has been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for his project "Zoonotic urbanization".

In the context of COVID-19 and other zoonotic health threats, the project will explore the analytical interface between urban ecology and urban epidemiology, by developing an interdisciplinary multi-species analysis of capitalist urbanization. The theoretical work will be enriched through empirical fieldwork in Berlin, Recife, and Taizhou.

# Professor Ulf Büntgen awarded ERC Synergy Grant

Prof Nils Christian Stenseth (University of Oslo), Prof Ulf Büntgen (University of Cambridge), Dr. Florent Sebbane (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), and Prof Philip Slavin (University of Stirling) have been awarded a six-year European Research Council grant titled "Reconstructing the environmental, biological, and societal drivers of plague outbreaks in Eurasia between 1300 and 1900 CE Synergy-Plague".

Synergy-Plague will revolutionise our understanding of plague, past and present, and contribute to our ongoing struggle with epidemic diseases, present and future. The four PIs, together with their team members, will jointly study how plague re-emerged in 14th century central Asia and radiated repeatedly from Eurasian wildlife reservoirs in the following centuries, only to disappear in the 18th-19th centuries.

# Collaboration between women helps close the gender gap in ice core science

A Perspective article co-written by Dr Matt Osman and colleagues in Nature Geoscience addresses gender disparities in ice core science.

Despite historical underrepresentation, the study reveals that the gender gap is closing. Since the early 2000s, women have outperformed their estimated proportion in publishing first-authored papers, suggesting that they fill important leadership roles on coauthor teams. Crucially, woman-led studies show a 20% higher proportion of women coauthors compared to man-led studies.

The analysis emphasizes the critical role of collaboration between women, especially senior scientists, in narrowing gender gaps within the field.

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# Recognition for Geography colleagues

Congratulations to two of our Geography colleagues, who have been shortlisted for awards within the University's Professional Services Recognition Scheme. Sophie Barnett has been shortlisted within the "Creating an Inclusive Community" category, and Adam Strange for "Demonstrating Excellence in Management and Leadership".

The shortlisting, amid nominations from across the University, recognises their dedicated hard work and contributions to the Department in these areas. The awards ceremony will be held on December 4th.

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# The Fens of eastern England once held vast woodlands

The Fens of eastern England, a low-lying, extremely flat landscape dominated by agricultural fields, was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, according to new research.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge studied hundreds of tree trunks, dug up by Fenland farmers while ploughing their fields. The team found that most of the ancient wood came from yew trees that populated the area between four and five thousand years ago.

These trees, which are a nuisance when they jam farming equipment during ploughing, contain a treasure trove of perfectly preserved information about what the Fens looked like thousands of years ago.

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