Intercropping: exploitation of biodiversity benefits in arable fields Diversification of crop systems provides great opportunities to make food production more sustainable and resilient but also faces challenges along the whole value chain. A session at the World Biodiversity Forum (26th June to 1st July 2022) co-organised by a James Hutton Institute scientist will summarise current knowledge about the benefits of intercropping and draw attention to ongoing challenges, including the need to provide advice to farmers, access to adapted machinery, and the development of end products from intercropped systems. Taking place as a hybrid event co-organised by ETH Zurich (Christian Schöb) and the Institute (Alison Karley), the session aims to give a voice to scientists and stakeholders from different disciplines and regions to obtain feedback on research findings and practical applications, and guide future developments in intercropping research. Dr Alison Karley, an agroecologist within the Institute’s Ecological Sciences group and co-organiser of the session, said: “Our trials with farmers across the UK - and beyond - have highlighted that intercropping is often hindered by practical issues beyond the farm gate. But when solutions are found, they create exciting opportunities for stakeholders across the value chain.” Confirmed speakers at the session include: • Ivette Perfecto, University of Michigan, USA • Marta Vasconcelos, University of Porto, Portugal • Austin Phiri, Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development, Malawi • Johan Six, ETH Zurich, Switzerland • Lana Shaw, Southeast Research Farm, Canada • Samuel Wuest, Agroscope, Switzerland • Annelies Uebersax, Agrofutura, Switzerland • Sebastian Kussmann, GZPK, Switzerland For more information and registration please visit the conference website. February 2022 21 Comments? Plans afoot for UK’s first purpose-built greenhouse gas observatory in Scotland The state-of-the-art facility is designed as a £1m, 100-metre-tall tower. It will enable the UK to monitor and so mitigate climate change by allowing scientists to measure the composition of greenhouse gases directly and then to model changes mathematically over the coming years and decades. The design allows air samples to be collected from the top of the tower at 100m, where air arrives from right across Scotland on prevailing winds. Instruments and sensors at ground level would then measure concentrations of the gases responsible for climate change, and scientists across the UK will interpret changes in the levels of these gases to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from the land. Tracking whether emissions are deviating from expected declines will provide an early indicator of whether actions and policies are having the required effect or not and allow governments to adjust their plans. “At COP26 in Glasgow, nations agreed that climate change is the biggest problem facing humanity and that decarbonisation of the global economy needs to begin immediately. The Scottish Government has also set an ambitious target for Scotland to become ‘net-zero’ in greenhouse gas emissions by 2045,” says Dr Jagadeesh Yeluripati, a research leader at the James Hutton Institute and co-lead of the project to build the observatory. “Science was at the heart of COP26, providing evidence of how much damage was being done due to climate warming from greenhouse gases but there are still contested issues about exactly how much GHG are being produced from land and a need to know if planned mitigations will work.” Project lead Dr Tim Arnold, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Edinburgh, adds: “Objective scientific evidence is needed to verify progress towards the net-zero emissions target. Our state-of-the-art new monitoring system will aid in this verification by allowing the effect of Scotland’s climate actions to be monitored closely by continuous measurement of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This monitoring will help local and national policymakers to decide the best course of action to reach our climate goals. Currently there is no atmospheric greenhouse gas sampling in Scotland that can support this national action. “Balruddery’s location in eastern Scotland and dominant westerly winds means that measuring gases in the atmosphere here allows emissions from right across Scotland to be tracked, including emissions from agriculture.” The proposed development has been designed with considerations in place to minimise local disturbance. A ‘free-standing’ tower structure has been chosen over a guywired version to reduce ground disturbance, visual impact and ecological disruption and to increase security and safety. The project is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and the James Hutton Institute, with policy support from the Scottish Government and additional backing from the Met Office, the National Physical Laboratory and the universities of Bristol and Strathclyde. It is completely financed through UK Research and Innovation’s Natural Environment Research Council to support climate science in the UK. More information can be found at https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/ soar/. On the back of COP26, planning proposals are being put forward to build the UK’s first purpose-built tower for directly measuring greenhouse gases from land at the James Hutton Institute’s Balruddery Farm, in Angus near Dundee. 20 Hutton Highlights
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