Catfished By Butterflies

Not Geography Geography Lesson 10

Conserving Rare Butterflies in Cumbria 

We have reached double figures! Although still not always on time... But anyway, this week I'm gonna talk about a subject that hardly anyone knows about, and that I happen to know a lot about because I based my dissertation on it! And so this week, we will delve into the beautiful world of rare fritillary butterflies, and why being so damn stubborn has driven them to the verge of extinction. Arguably this is ecology, but it has formed a 1/8th of the my Geography degree so let's all pray for me. 

Catfished by Butterflies 

In the wilds of Southern Cumbria is at iny little wood called Howe Ridding, which sits nestled on the upper slopes of the Whitbarrow Scar (a big prominent rim of limestone rock set above the surrounding area through erosion).The wood is managed by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust (CWT), more specifically their lovely employee Joe. In Howe Ridding is a clear strip of grass and meadow flowers called a 'ride' that the CWT maintain, and the trees that surround the ride are also separated into 18 segments (coups) and coppiced one coup per year. Coppicing is where the trees have all their branches and most of the trunk sawn off until they are just little stumps; the stumps will grow back again as whole new trees, like Groot regenerates in Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Where I come in, is that there are also populations of incredibly rare butterflies who live in the wood, and the CWT wanted to know if their coppicing efforts are making positive impacts to the butterfly numbers, and also the effects of climate on them. At this point I feel compelled to disclose that I actually have a phobia of moths (and butterflies that look like moths). 

There are five species of butterflies I studied, all variations of fritillary - the High Brown, the Dark Green, the Silver Washed, the Pearl-Bordered and the Small Pearl-Bordered. Like me, you must be thinking 'Wow! They sound so beautiful!'. Also like me, you will then be kind of disappointed to learn that they are all brown... Trust me on this, I have spent months on this project, and give or take a little white dot here and little red stripe here, they are all brown. Like moths. 

Even though they lied to me about their colour, I still decided to help them out...

The Pickiest Butterflies in the West 

Fritillaries have very specific requirements of their habitats, and even small changes can result in them leaving or dying off. The root of their issues is that they only really like to eat, hide in, and lay eggs on one plant - violets. Additional to that, they also need exceptionally warm conditions to the tune of 20c or so warmer than the surrounding area. 

All bar the High Brown lay their eggs in the late summer underneath the warm cosy violets, where they stay until spring when they then hatch to become larvae and then pupate to become butterflies. The High Brown (the most rare butterfly in the whole UK) is impatient, so they hatch in the early autumn and then the little larvae hide under the violets until they pupate in spring. Hence, they need warm conditions or the next generation will die in the cold over winter. 

Why Howe Ridding?

1. Climate

Knowing that they require such warm conditions begs the question what the hell they are doing in N.W England..? Well, I found that Howe Ridding turns out to be a staggeringly effective micro-climate for heat-loving fritillaries. The white faces of the limestone Whitbarrow Scar just above the ride are perfect for reflecting sunlight and heat into the wood, and increase the temperature significantly. The thick woodland which encloses the ride on the other side also buffers it from strong winds, rain and snow. I found that the temperatures in the winter months, whilst they are nestled under the vegetation, was by far the most important factor in their survival and so keeping the current conditions is key. 

2. Coppicing

The CWT remove any large plants, shrubs or bushes from the ride so that it is always grass and meadow flowers (inc. violets!), with little patches of bracken. If there was no management of land at all then it would soon return to woodland; preventing this process is known as a Plagioclimax. I found that their coppicing regime of the surrounding wood also seems to be working - not through raw numbers but through patterns of where they are found relative to where the coppicing has most recently been done. The butterflies follow the coppicing up and down the ride as it completes a cycle to get to the freshest habitat, which suggests that CWT are doing the right thing. You can see this below in a diagram of the butterflies along the ride, which I definitely 100% did not make on Paint.

Clever Cumbria

The combination of the scar and its reflective properties on one side, the thick woodland on the other, the coppicing regime, and the insulating grass/flower/bracken, all combines to create a fritillary heaven! Because of this, Howe Ridding is now one of the last places in England where fritillaries are found, and it is down to the CWT to make sure the wood is tailored as best as possible to keep them there. Hopefully my findings justified their methods to them, and they can continue to conserve these very rare (very brown) species. 

As a side note, it is also interesting to realise that the fritillaries in Cumbria are one of the few animal colonies on Earth who will actually benefit from climate change due to the increased temperatures the UK will experience in the decades to come (!). Current estimates of global warming are 2c at minimum by 2050, which in my work could result in a population increase of over 100% current levels! 

Hope you enjoyed the read this week, something a bit different but hopefully interesting! Below is a beautiful photo of a Pearl-Bordered, that I did not take (judge for yourself the extent to which it is actually just brown!). 

I Visited A Nuclear Power Plant - And Still Have Only Two Eyes!

Not Geography Geography Lesson 9

Weird and Wonderful Nuclear Power

A post actually on time - what has come over me... On Friday this week, I visited Heysham Nuclear power station in Lancashire, as part of one of my 3rd year modules. Specifically we visited Heysham 2, which is the second, larger and newer nuclear facility at the site, and my mind was genuinely blown by it. The scale and complexity of the whole thing was incredible, and I was in awe of the fact that people actually designed and built this thing - the millions of tiny buttons and bolts, and the back-up systems for back-up systems, and all the procedures, and that when they had designed everything they then had to start doing it without actually knowing for sure what was going to happen... I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I don't think trial and error is the approach you want to be taking to building a nuclear reactor. 

Unlike the normal style - where I just write generally about a topic - I'm going to describe what I saw and what we were told by the guides, and cut to all the interesting bits! And then you won't have to pay for a tour because you already know all the deets. 

We're Gonna Need A Bigger Crane... 

Construction of Heysham 2 began in 1980, 10 years after Heysham 1, and was completed in 1988. They chose Heysham for the site for a couple of reasons:

• It is in a relatively industrial area already.
• The parts that make up the site are so enormous that they could not be transported by road (lorries just aren't big enough) so arrived on ships to the port next door.
• One of the critical phases of the energy making process requires cooling and condensing very hot steam, and they use a lot of sea water to do this (and I mean A LOT - 30'000 litres per second!).

Construction actually worked around the reactor itself (the scary bit), so they put that in first and then built the rest around it. All will become clear why later on. 

There are also some clever bits of planning regarding where things are, with the focus always being safety (reassuring..?). There are four back up power supplies on site, in case the reactors stop producing power to control themselves, and these are located on the four corners of the site, so that one event (like a bomb or a fire) could not take them all out at once and prevent power reaching the controls of the reactors. Also the power cables which supply the control room are spread out as far as possible from one another for the same reason. There is also a train track running around the perimeter which is used for moving the waste fuel up the coast to Sellafield once a week, and only one pylon is needed to transfer all the power to the national grid. 

How It Works (From Someone Who Is Most Definitely Not A Nuclear Scientist)

The nice people at Heysham get their fuel in the form of little pellets of Uranium-235, from a company called Springfield (*insert Simpsons joke here*). The little pellets are placed inside metal tubes, of which about 20 are all held together inside a graphite shell; it looks kind of like honeycomb. When the tubes enter the reactor, there are lots of free neutrons knocking around in there, and when the neutrons hit the uranium atoms, they split them into more atoms, and release more neutrons. All this colliding and splitting and whizzing around generates an unbelievably enormous amount of heat, which is used as the driving force to turn turbines and generate electricity (just as regular coal or gas power stations do). Heysham uses ionized water to transfer the heat to the turbines, in the form of steam, by passing it through lots of pipes near the uranium where it evaporates into steam and then is forced over the turbines. They then use the cold seawater to condense it, and send it round again and again. 

How Do They Get The Fuel In (And Out)?

The reason the plant was built around the reactor is because a huge 90m tall machine is used to pull the old fuel rods out and put the new rods in. Like an arcade grabber and a Transformer had a baby. Across the lid of the reactor (which is many metres thick) is a grid of squares with numbers and letters, and under each one is a column of the fuel rods - 6 of those honeycomb shaped shells stacked on top of one another. Two tracks run down the entire length of each side of the room, so that the huge machine can run down the tracks and on top of the reactor, where it is programmed to know which grid square it needs to work on. It pulls out the old column of fuel, and stores it inside an empty barrel, and then rotates itself to position the new fuel column over the hole and fill it. Like a revolver with its movable chambers. 

The old fuel comes out still generating 400 Mega Watt Hours (MWh) of energy (hotter than the real life depths of Hell), and so is placed in a cooling storage area, and then a cooling tank for about 6 weeks until it is safe to put on the little train up to Sellafield. 

The rods need changing every 7 years, but because they are all at different times along that 7 years, at least one is changed every week, and the process takes 12 hours to complete. 

I've Seen 'Chernobyl Diaries' - Nuclear Power Is V. Dangerous!

I must admit, I had my reservations about entering what I had imagined as a huge human popcorn maker, but actually it is all very safe and is managed more carefully than Donald Trump's hair. Heysham 2 uses 250 cubic tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a day to cool its reactor, and also has a series of 'control rods' which are made of neutron-absorbing graphite than can be plunged into the reactor in only a few seconds to completely stop all reactions going on in there. If the rods don't work for any reason, they can also released millions of graphite pellets into the reactor, or flood it with nitrogen which also absorbs the neutrons. Back-ups on back-ups on back-ups. The reactor itself is also encased in 6 meters of concrete.

Clever Stuff Indeed

Heysham 2 runs 24/7, 365 days a year. The design of the reactor is such that it does not need to turn off to refuel or to do maintenance, and just runs at lower outputs during those times. So, the amount of power it generates is pretty much constant and comes out at 1230 Mega Watts or enough to power 5% of UK homes. 

Miscellaneous Fun(?) Facts 

• The uranium that Springfield supplies is completely harmless before it enters the reactor because no neutrons are hitting it - all the workers even have one of the little pellets on their ID lanyards. 
• The control room looks like something from Star Trek Enterprise, but the first version! It is set below an observation deck, has no windows, and still uses the 1980's computers and technology that it first installed. There are only three desks - one for each reactor and one for the big manager - around which are 100's of buttons and screens with what looks like Teletext on them. They use this old school technology because it is harder to hack!
• There are nearly 600 staff who work at Heysham 2, but the vast majority are human resources and office workers - in fact the entire site could be run perfectly fine with only 40-50 people. 
• Before 9/11, people could very easily visit the site by just signing a register. Now you have to book weeks in advance, fill out many forms for security checks, bring your passport or drivers license, and go through three different checkpoints with scanners. 
• Contrary to common belief that nuclear power releases no greenhouse gases, Heysham 2 actually has a permit to release 1 cubic ton of CO2 per day, from the 250 tons they use to cool the reactor.
• Heysham 2 is currently set to close in 2030, but when I asked that will entail, they didn't really know because it has never happened before. Weird.

This has been quite a bit longer than regular posts, but I thought it was such an interesting subject and enjoyed my visit so much, it would be a waste to not write about it properly! Regardless of your moral stance on nuclear power, you can't deny the level of ingenuity and skill that goes into creating something so huge and powerful is very impressive. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have an electrifying week! I'll see myself out... 

New Research Alert!

Not Geography Geography Lesson 8

Blocked Up Brains

This week is even later than last week but better late than never! We are focusing on some really new and interesting research as recommended by my academic tutor, who was one of the researchers on the project (she keeps her lovely doggo in her office, so you know already it's gonna be good). For the first time ever, she and her colleagues investigated some quite shocking links between vehicle pollution and Alzheimer's disease. This research has only just been published and has been featured on the BBC, Guardian, Independent and Sky (to name a few) already, so it's pretty current stuff!

The Teeniest Tiniest Particles 

Whenever any kind of fossil fuel (oil, coal, petrol, diesel) is burnt to produce energy, it releases a whole host of nasties - carbon dioxide and monoxide, sulphur dioxide (which causes acid rain), and Particulate Matter (PM). PM is microscopic little particles of all kinds of chemicals, which get blasted out into the air and float around undetected because they are so light and small.

This study focused on a specific kind of PM made from the element magnetite, which is a metal with magnetic properties (no prizes for guessing that one). The size of PM, including the magnetite PM can vary, but the focus here is on some of the smallest sizes - 2.5 microns, known as PM2.5. Don't stress too much about how small a micron is, just know that it is very very small. Smaller than an ant's little toenail. Smaller than all the patience I have for golf. Super small.

Magnetite is naturally occurring in little amounts in human bodies without causing any health issues, and is distinguished as being naturally occurring by having jagged edges when looked at under a microscope. 

Braaaaains!

My tutor and her team looked at the amounts of magnetite in 37 different samples of brain tissue, including those of people who had Alzheimer's disease. The donors were from New Mexico (exotic) and Manchester (not so exotic). They found that the brains contained high amounts of the little magnetite particles, but they were not the jagged shapes that they should normally be - they were rounded and spherical. Whilst that doesn't sound very exciting, it actually is because it proves for the first time ever, that PM released from exhausts and factories (which is round not jagged) can enter our bodies through breathing in and actually make its way into our brains! 

They have theorised that the PM gets in there via the Olfactory Bulb, which is a membrane between the top of our sinuses and the front of the brain. Scary stuff.

The Bits of PM Are In The Brain - Now What?

If magnetite was a harmless substance then the story would probably end here. But it isn't unfortunately. Magnetite is a toxic substance, and also is highly influenced by magnetic forces - two very good reasons to not want it making itself at home in your brain. Whilst it isn't going to make your head stick to the fridge door, it has been linked to the development of degenerative brain diseases including Alzheimer's. Hence the link that this research was able to make between traffic pollution and the disease, via inhaling the PM. In fact, I was told with great confidence that living within 40m of a busy road increases your chances of developing Alzheimer's by 17%!

It's Not All Bad Though

Clearly not everyone who does live by a road will get Alzheimer's or a similar disease, and this study is by no means suggesting that is the case. The aim of the study is that by recognising the link for the first time, regulations on traffic pollution will be tightened and incidences where it is occurring will be prevented in the future. The climate effects of increasing car ownership are already well-known, so hopefully the health effects will go some extra way to reducing their emissions further. There is still much work to be done on the subject, before we know all the deets completely. 

Hopefully this week's little insight has been interesting, as it is very new research that has been conducted for the very first time in the whole world! And it doesn't have to be all bad - now we can all get bicycles and have killer legs from riding around everywhere (silver linings people). If you would like to read about my tutor Barbara's research here is the link to the BBC article - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37276219. Cheers and have a good week! 

The Most Bonkers Bird In the World

Not Geography Geography Lesson 7

Crazy Kakapos 

This week's slightly late blog post strays a little bit into ecology again, but I had had the idea to do this topic since the very beginning of starting the blog, and reading up on the topic cheered me up immensely. So without further ado, this week I will discuss the feathered disaster that is the kākāpō bird, and the amazing (and also very amusing) efforts that conservationists have done to save the species. 

What On God's Green Earth Is A Kākāpō?

If Charlie Sheen was a bird, he would be a kākāpō. Whilst few people have ever heard of the mysterious species, it is in fact holder of a couple of bird world records. They are:

- The world's heaviest parrot, weighing around 1.5kg for lady birds, and 2.5kg for gentleman birds (and they can nearly double their weight in the run-up to breeding - a bird after my own heart). 

- They might be the longest living bird species with average lifespans of up to 90 years (!), but scientists aren't entirely sure because they only began studying the birds around 30 years ago. 

- They are also the only parrot which has a 'lekking' system of breeding, where the male birds compete for females by displaying in a shared 'arena'. 

Atop these accolades, the kākāpō is best known for its unfortunate evolutionary history, from which point everything has gone rapidly down hill... 

The Kākāpō  Is Dealt A Rough Hand

Until around 700 years ago, the kākāpō had been living a pretty good life in the forests of New Zealand's various islands. There were no mammals present on the islands, and they had very few or even no predators to look out for, and so over time they actually lost their ability to fly because they didn't need to. Instead they learnt to ramble, run, jump and climb with their large feet. They also developed some rather unusual breeding behaviour, which sees male birds trekking to the mutual breeding arena, digging a hole, sitting in the hole, inflating their chests out like feathery balloons, and producing a 'booming' mating call to bring all the ladies in. They can sit in their holes, booming, for up to 3 months. This bizarre process only occurs every 2-4 years depending on the quantity of food available - if the adults would have to reduce their intake to feed the next generation, they postpone mating until there is enough to go around. Wise owls. 

Whilst the idea of an enormous booming parrot performing an avian steeple-chase through the forest is a weird one, it isn't really a cause for concern until the first Polynesian settlers arrive in the area.

Suddenly This Running Parrot Gimmick Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be 

It did not take long for the original Maoris, and the rats and wild dogs they brought with them, to notice there was a veritable parrot buffet running around on the islands. Being the clumsy, ambling specimens that they are, the kākāpōs were easy to catch and soon their numbers dwindled to dangerously low levels. By the mid-20th Century, there was only a handful of birds left hiding in the remotest corners of the Northern Island. Turns out forgetting how to fly when you are a giant bright green parrot is not the best idea when someone is trying to turn you into nuggets. 

Conservation Efforts

The kākāpō eventually got some good luck its way, when the New Zealand Wildlife Service was founded in the 1950's, which began efforts to save these feathery fools. It was an emotional rollercoaster trying to relocate and breed the last few remaining birds, as most captured were males or died shortly after (or both!). Several attempts to move birds to safer islands were ruined by new predators, and in 1995 only 51 remained. Kākāpō crisis point had been reached.

Thankfully, the conservationists' efforts were not all in vain, as the creation of the National Kākāpō Team, and new Ten-Year Kākāpō Recovery Plan began to prove successful. The idea of a national team of experts dedicated to chasing fat parrots through the forests honestly fills my heart with joy. And, there was an increase in numbers of 68% between 1995 and 2003, and the population currently stands at just shy of 160 birds! Hooray!

The tale of kākāpōs' tumultuous existence is interesting and amusing, but is also quite heart-warming and hopefully their number will continue to increase in future (so long as they can cajole the males out of their holes). You can even donate to the kākāpō recovery efforts, and 'adopt' various ones online, including a handsome fella called Ralph. How sweet!

** Read more or adopt Ralph here! - http://kakaporecovery.org.nz/ **