Author: FoNS News

Living with fire: adapting to changing wildfires risks in the Brazilian Amazon

Illustration of the diversity of land management and associated use of fires within the Brazilian Amazon (Illustration from Manini Bansal)

PhD student Michel Valette explain how multi-scalar and inter-disciplinary research could support adaptation to emerging wildfire risks and the development of integrated fire management policies.

In January 2025, the Los Angeles wildfires captured the media spotlight, partly due to the widespread destruction in urban areas, the risks to human life, and the astronomical costs associated with the wildfires. The Los Angeles wildfires add to a growing list of wildfires that have made headlines in recent years, such as the 2023 Canadian wildfires, the 2022 European wildfires, and the 2019–2020 Black Summer in Australia.

(more…)

Restoring the world beneath our feet

Alice Day is a PhD student at the Waring Lab and the Fisher Lab within the Department of Life Sciences. She researches the potential of fungal inoculations in restoring agricultural land. In this blog post, she discusses how modern agriculture has depleted our soils of the microbes that once made them thrive, and how we may one day re-introduce them.

Miss Alice Day, doing fieldwork for her project investigating fungal inoculants.

(more…)

Malaria: A call for action

Krystal Birungi, a field entomologist from Uganda and an advocate for investment in fighting malaria, spoke about the release of the World Health Organisation’s World Malaria Report 2024, In December, Krystal visited the House of Commons to call for increased funding to combat the disease, which claims the life of one child every minute in Africa.

Malaria remains one of the leading causes of death on the African continent, which bears the heaviest burden of the disease. In 2023, Africa accounted for an estimated 94% of global malaria cases and 95% of malaria-related deaths.

Here she shares her thoughts on the new World Malaria Report.

(more…)

Why we created the ultimate toolkit for every aspiring sustainability leader

Eirini Sampson, a PhD student at the Centre for Environmental Policy, co-founded the Sustainability Future Toolkit – an online resource that helps future-proof the careers of students looking to be part of the critical green transition. From helping students develop ‘green skills’ to learning about how to enter specific industries, she explains how her toolkit prepares students for a sustainable job market.

(more…)

Auroras in Cambridge and the future of space weather forecasting

Postdoctoral researcher in the Space and Atmospheric Physics group, Adrian LaMoury, delves deep into the science of auroras and the future of forecasting space weather.

“Any chance of northern lights in Cambridge tonight? Saw a dubious tweet”

This was the message I received from a friend on the evening of 10 May 2024. I replied that it was their best chance in years.

Aurora photo from Cambridge – purple, blue and green lights are in the sky
My friend in Cambridge was treated to quite the display. Image credit: Matthew Roberts

(more…)

5 things we need to start addressing in biodiversity

The Georgina Mace Centre (GMC) Living Planet Debate recently brought together leading biodiversity experts and policymakers to discuss just how effective international treaties and targets actually were in communicating the current global biodiversity crises.

Are goals like ’30 by 30’ – the global commitment to designate 30% of Earth’s land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030 – useful in conveying the urgency of conservation efforts and capturing the science underpinning biodiversity?

Professor Maggie Dallman, addressing the crowd at the debate

Here are our five takeaways from this year’s GMC debate, which is now available to watch on Youtube.

(more…)

Plastics: the breakdown

PhD student Zhenna Azimrayat Andrews breaks down how marine life, alongside ambitious plastic pollution reduction goals, can help us eliminate microplastics from surface oceans.

This story begins in the 1950s, when plastics began to be produced commercially at a large scale. Each and every piece that was produced from that era onwards still exists in some capacity today. The convenience and wide range of applicability of plastic revolutionised consumption patterns for modern society, however, we are now facing the consequences of our resource-inefficient, linear plastic economy.

(more…)