This December, the British Soil Science Society’s Early Career Researcher Travel Grant, supported my attendance at the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting 2024. Held in Liverpool from 10 – 13th of December.
Founded over 100 years ago, the BES was the first Society in the world to commit to understanding earth through ecology, and each year it invites 1500 delegates from around the world to attend its annual conference. In the last few years BES has been creating more time and space for researchers who work within landscape recovery projects who may not have a specifically biological or ecological niche but are looking at the wider outcomes of ecological changes. For anyone interested in nature recovery and landscape interventions BES events are becoming the place to be.
My name is Cesca Darvill, and I am a current PhD student at the University of Leeds. For the better part of the last decade, I have wanted to turn my love of learning about ecological restoration and practical conservation into a real job rather than a weekend volunteer hobby. Winning my PhD place was a pivotal moment in this endeavour. I have chosen to study the various modes of woodland creation used within nature recovery projects in the British uplands and their potential impact on soil organic carbon stocks. So far, I have focused on gathering baseline soil data to create a case study of Snaizeholme Valley. Snaizeholme is a landscape-scale woodland creation site planned and managed by the Woodland Trust. Attending the BES annual conference is a real opportunity to engage with many projects, researchers, and members who work in landscape restoration and share similar questions and experiences from their own sites. All with the same questions: “How can we manage our land better for the soil, plants, animals, and humans?”, “Where can we change our practices to increase positive outcomes across multiple ecosystem services?”, “What can we do to find the correct balance between landscape management for nature recovery and climate mitigation and adaptation?
Throughout the conference, there are many opportunities to network and mingle, but what I love most about the BES annual conference is the variety of learning opportunities hosted by BES representatives—many of which are designed with early career researchers like me in mind. On Wednesday, I attended the “Careers in Conservation for Early Career Researchers” lunchtime workshop hosted by the Rewilding Special Interest Group. Through a rotating carousel of experienced conservationists holding positions in academia, charities, entrepreneurial businesses, and government, everyone in attendance had the opportunity to ask their burning questions and receive answers that could help orient their future career decisions. As a current PhD student, this workshop was extremely helpful and engaging. Other brilliant sessions included the lunchtime data management workshop on Thursday, which provided detailed instruction on how to create useful, accessible metadata for clear scientific data sharing. Then, in the evening, I stumbled upon a “quickfire review” session that offered the chance to meet the BES journal editors, show my current draft, receive instant feedback, and ask all my burning questions about the review and publishing process—a particularly helpful experience for a newcomer to scientific paper submission. Overall, the workshops at this annual meeting significantly reduced some of the stress that I, and many other PhD students, may face when thinking for the first time about our future career paths, submitting our first paper, and handling the nitty-gritty of good data management
I shared my research poster at the event, titled “Woodland Creation Scheme in the Yorkshire Dales Focuses on Tree Planting on Lower Carbon Soils.” I usually feel quite shy about sharing my work, but at this event, my poster connected me with other researchers whose interests lie specifically in furthering our understanding of how native woodland creation impacts existing soil carbon stocks in upland landscape restoration projects. I feel that many in the conservation industry are eager to explore how adding trees to largely treeless landscapes—such as the Yorkshire Dales—builds greater habitat connectivity and enhances ecological resilience in response to climate change impacts. Yet, there is always the underlying question of whether trees will help us reach area-based net-zero targets while also delivering other benefits for nature recovery. What impact will tree planting have on important existing soil carbon stocks in upland areas? These are questions to which we don’t yet have clear answers; however, with more case study evidence, we will gradually build a clearer picture of how tree–soil interactions in uplands contribute to net-zero targets over time. The feedback I received on my work and the conversations I had with visitors to my poster were uplifting and gave me greater confidence that my PhD project is on the right track and holds an important place within this research community.
In addition to presenting my own work, I decided to try a new role and volunteered to chair a talk session. I chaired the “Soil Ecology and Plant–Soil Interactions: Belowground Biodiversity” session. The talks were all very interesting, and it was fun to practice facilitating the session, keeping time, and moderating question time and discussion in a friendly atmosphere. I would recommend that any early career researcher try chairing a talk session.
There is a real sense of community at BES. I am a member of BES and have affiliated myself with the Rewilding Special Interest Group. On this occasion, the Rewilding SIG organized a quiz and pizza night where members could get to know one another in a more informal setting. I was lucky with my quiz team and sat with ecologists from the University of Hull who are monitoring rewilding outcomes using novel techniques such as acoustics and eDNA. I was also able to reconnect with old university friends who are now pursuing PhDs at other UK universities—a definite bonus.
The BES conference was packed with useful opportunities for a PhD student at the beginning of their research career, and attending was a positive, fun, and engaging experience. It is a space I have found my soil carbon-woodland-upland work has found its audience, and I have found a research community to belong to.
