Welcome to the first Prof. Cost of Michaelmas term.
My guest today is Joe Boyle. Joe's an ecologist and educator and in addition is our sustainability research assistant.
And tell me what you've been up to. Absolutely. And thanks again for having me on the show.
So our primary goal with Worcester has been to try and assess the biodiversity and the water quality in college.
And so over the course of last year, I ran a series of workshops to try and engage people with collecting that data themselves.
So we thought by taking a citizen science approach, we can connect people with the biodiversity in college and understand it better,
as well as understand how people interrelate to that and how that can support wellbeing.
The benefit of taking this approach is that the more people come and the longer it runs,
for the more we will find it, the more will understand about what we have going on.
So we found around 500 species in college, um, through people identifying them on their phones through iNaturalist, which is a brilliant app.
So I'm that is a fantastic app for kind of citizen science data collection.
Yeah. And it all contributes to these global biodiversity assessments.
So and how did you recruit people in who came along.
So we had a lot of people coming from the college and from the university community, particularly to the preliminary workshops.
Um, quite a few colleges and departments expressed interest in taking a similar approach to their biodiversity assessments,
which is great to have Worcester kind of leading the charge on that.
The biggest day of of data collection was the City Nature Challenge, which happens in the last week of April.
Yeah, on that day, I think we had 86 people come by.
But interestingly, the majority of them were local residents who didn't have an affiliation to the college or to the university.
So I think it speaks to how much demand there is for people to engage with these really,
really wonderful pockets of nature and biodiversity that we have.
Because Worcester is known for its amazing gardens and grounds, particularly the lake.
Um, I know lots of our neighbours are really keen to come here and actually sit as part of the Jericho community.
It was a was that what you saw and were you surprised by the local levels of engagement?
I will say that it was higher on that day than it had been in the build up, and I think that that is testament to working with a larger event as well.
Um, there were a lot of families and things like that.
It's a really, really good family activity because it's got this kind of educational component,
but it's quite engaging and it's it's an easy process to participate in.
That said, the kind of workshops in the build up to that were really, really informative to how we ran the day.
Uh, and so you're seeing these kind of nested levels of engagement almost with some things
being very public and other things being perhaps more paying for college membership.
But also it's a really fun thing to do, especially when you know,
the weather's good and it's great time and you've got flowers and bugs and things starting to come out,
and you want to learn a bit about what they are. And so we had, uh, the statistics and geography departments,
green teams come you perfect for me because they offered me a lot of advice on how to use the data that we were generating.
And so you find a lot of species. Um, what surprised you most in terms of what you found?
So one thing that I was really pleased to see was a lot of plants being recorded, and that's partly because it's easier to take pictures of plants.
Um, bugs are more difficult to track down. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
Um, but it was really, really cool to see that some of the most observed species were common plants.
And the native plants, they're plants that contribute to the ecosystem are really useful ways.
Things like the supporting pollinators, some that flower earlier in the season and later in the season,
so that you have a sustained nectar output from the from the forest system and the things like cow parsley,
which I think a lot of people wouldn't even recognise. Normally that was one of our most observed species.
And I think there's something nice in that that goes counter. There's this narrative in a lot of engagement work about plant blindness,
and people aren't interested in plants in the same way as they are an animal.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I think what we found is as counter to that and shows that people do have an interest.
You just have to bring it to them in the right way. And that wasn't just because of the app.
Oh well, I think it definitely helps. It definitely helps.
But I think that any time someone learns the name of a plant, and especially a common plant like that, it can't be a bad thing.
No, no no, I agree, um, I agree, yeah, but were there any very unusual, whether it was plants or things that you hadn't expected?
I suppose I was thinking about orchids. It was probably a bit early for orchids, wasn't it?
Well that's the that was a great one that talked about the B orchids. Did you find B orchids?
We did. We had an observation of a beetle. Okay. And that was one that was a really nice surprise previously.
Yeah. Um, and kind of shows that there is this seed bank waiting.
Yeah. And the soil waiting to emerge, and we just have to create the right conditions.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, yeah, the gardening team doing a fantastic job of that.
And we hope that the way that our data has been generated can inform that that kind of process, but also evaluate the success of it.
And I think it shows that it's been really successful that people are seeing these plants that are quite unusual for Britain, and they're connecting.
Yeah. No. That's great. So it sounds like it was productive.
Lots of species. People had fun. Tell us what happens now to the data.
So having been involved in collecting it, one of the next steps.
So there's a few parts to that project.
And it would be remiss to go into it without addressing the the eco flourishing project, which I'm also working.
Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. So the eco flourishing project is in the Department of Psychiatry,
and we're looking at how social well-being, human well-being and natural wellbeing can be linked together.
And so how one can kind of support the other. Yeah. And we embraced was the college's are living lab.
So a place where we can observe this relationship.
And on the day the biggest day, the public day of data collection, we were trialling some wellbeing assessments alongside.
And so that data has, has shaped the kind of processes of how we run the rest of that project.
The biodiversity data that we collected all goes into this global framework,
so people will be able to access that from wherever they are in the world and see that
this thing was observed in this place at this time that can be used for almost anything.
Right. The wider City Nature Challenge data is a kind of metric in a sense, of the engagement of people around the world.
So that is on six continents, cities from all over the world putting in really, really competitive lists of biodiversity observed.
And so that's a project that I really, really strongly believe in. And it's great to contribute data in a place like this.
So how do people track the data we collected here in Worcester? How do they follow you know, what's happened to the data and access the project?
Sure. So on the Worcester College website we have our report. Yeah.
Um, which explains a little bit on the kind of local level of what we found.
Our data contributed to the wider Oxford Share City Nature Challenge, which can also be found on iNaturalist.
When you go into the app or onto the website, you can search locations. Yeah.
And you can see everything that's been observed within that. And then that data contributes to wider UK scale.
So it's incremental. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And then in future that will continue to be built upon.
So because it is quite self led. Yeah. We don't need to run an event to have people observing.
And there have been people have gone out since okay, been observing things.
So it's a kind of dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not something you have to do every year.
But you might do it from time to time. Absolutely. Anytime anyone's in the Worcester grounds and they say anything that they think is interesting.
Yeah okay. Always invite them. Well that's really important for everybody listening.
And as these kind of approaches sort of mature,
we'll start to see things that were there one year and not the following year, the things that hadn't been observed before.
And you start to see the these really. Um, yeah. And that's like the developments and what we need to do to sustain that kind of growth.
Exactly. So we've been talking about insects and plants.
Um, let's move on to our well-loved lake, which we know has got a few challenges,
uh, at the moment, um, because it's leaking and everyone's really concerned.
Yeah. So in terms of the water assessment, how did that go and who was involved and what did you find?
So that was led by, uh, Doctor Lisa, wedding sustainability fellow, uh, and the head of the seascapes lab.
Yeah, in Oxford. And one of her PhD students, Petr Parola, was doing the direct measurements using the same equipment that,
um, that we use as a lab elsewhere in the world to do water quality analysis.
And that was a real success. I think that as an engagement tool in some of this kind of sci fi looking equipment.
Yeah, a lot of people showed up, didn't they? Yeah, a lot of people came along.
We did some assessments before and also on the day of the City Nature Challenge, we have another one coming up on the 17th of October.
Okay. Um, at 4:00 pm and an opportunity to kind of see how that works as a process.
Yeah, we found some interesting findings. It's ecologically functional and it's relatively healthy, but there's always improvements to be made.
Okay. The gardening team are really, really up on these kind of issues.
And so because they've been working on that for a while, we didn't find anything alarming in the water quality.
As you might expect for a lake like this, particularly a manmade lake that we chop up from the canal, don't we?
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's such an important part of the college identity, almost.
And the kind of the geography of the college is really defined by, in a lot of ways, for me,
as someone who didn't study at this college but often did study with people who were based.
Yeah, yeah, it was always, I should go for a walk around the lake.
Yeah, it's a blow off a bit of steam, and it becomes almost like the unit in which you interact with the environment.
So it's of this huge symbolic value, but ecologically, it also supports some of the most charismatic species, like the kingfishers and things.
Yeah, yeah. Just tell us about the species you found.
Yeah. I would say that the most charismatic pond life that we found were probably the aquatic birds.
And I like the charismatic. That's good. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the things that really striking, whether it's the kingfisher, especially the kingfishers,
really capture people's imaginations because you often just see that like. Yeah. And they're very dynamic.
Yeah. Creatures and the coots and things like that.
And some of these other larger birds, it's a bit more. Time. That's a very interesting looking ducks out there.
Yeah. Um, and did you talk to Ali, who's one of the gardening team?
Yeah. Her bird list has been fantastic. And that captures data through a different approach to the rest of the projects.
But it's been really, really useful. Really. I have long she'd been keeping that list for over a decade.
Yeah, a long time. And it's, you know, everything that's touched the ground within the college.
Yeah. 60 something species. Yeah, yeah. Um, egrets through to herons, but also, I think quite unusual.
Um, migrating birds. Absolutely. And quite remarkable biodiversity for a place like this.
And I think that the connection, the water represents this real connective medium right to places like Port Meadow.
Yeah. We do have a really, really outstanding urban biodiversity.
Yeah. And they can move through the water and through the corridors of trees that are around the canals as well.
Um, and helps kind of tie everything together. Great. So you were relieved that there was not a bad, uh, assessment.
What could we do to enhance the assessment so that I mean, is there anything that we can do, I guess is my question.
Yeah. So we're going to continue monitoring it. And I think the changes throughout the seasons are quite important as well.
One of the key metrics that we looked at is the level of chlorophyll.
So chlorophyll being the pigment that facilitates photosynthesis.
And that's a measure of the level of algae in the water.
And you don't want it to be too high or it risks choking out the rest of the land.
And it was high ish. So that could be brought down.
Yeah. Um, perhaps through some of the practices on the grounds. But as you say, a lot of the water comes from elsewhere and it's hard to control.
Yeah, there's definitely scope for some kind of aquatic planting and things like
that that can help manage those levels through the kind of ecosystem function.
Yeah. Um, but generally we found it to be pretty clean and, and pretty good.
So it's a sign of approval. Few of what's going on. There is always scope to improve it.
Yeah. Um, but I think it would mainly be through the ecology. And you say you could reduce, you know, the algae by planting,
but also you said I think you swept it up into, you know, the approaches that the garden uses.
So what kind of stuff would that be. So one of the main concerns with any kind of body of freshwater is runoff of fertilisers.
Yeah. And so when the first thought I thought that's what it was. Yeah.
Yeah. And so that can sustain these elevated levels of algae.
But of course these are the problem. Yeah. We found that it was it was actually very good for a place like this.
Yeah. Where you have, you know, heavily manicured and and cultivated and maintained space around it.
You often have really high levels. Yeah. Of those fertilisers.
But when we found it to be pretty good, it definitely is good above what we'd expect in some in, in the team.
Yeah. And what about all the rainwater we're talking here on a Friday afternoon.
It's been a really torrential week. Yeah.
Weather wise in Oxford the playing fields are under water.
Um, the front court is looking pretty devastated, you know, with just the sheer amount of water.
It's not good for the lake. I would be lying if I told you with any certainty that, to be honest,
I think that the the situation of the college as being on a floodplain and that being part of the reason for that being so much land,
yeah, that couldn't be developed in other ways. That definitely means it's going to be a dynamic system.
Yeah. But I know that that's something that the gardening team are working with in mind.
Um, and it certainly creates a kind of heterogeneity where you have these pockets, whether the habitats are differentiated.
And that just can only serve to increase your biodiversity.
You know, Joe, from being in college, you know, working as part of the sustainability team that everybody cares about, the gardens and grounds, um,
we're always strapped for cash,
and we're busy trying to raise money to help rescue the lake in the sense that we're trying to repair one of the damaged walls.
But if you had an open chequebook, um, what would you prioritise and how much would it cost?
That is a that's a very, very interesting question. A lot of these things are very interrelated.
And so the well-being of staff and students definitely would benefit in a very tangible way from improvements not just to the biodiversity,
but also ways for people to interpret that and to connect with it themselves.
So I think this is more with my engagement side. Yeah, ecology side.
But I think that something along those lines would be really interesting to look at,
kind of ecological restoration almost of some of the floodplain characteristics, um, particularly with an eye to how the climate is changing.
And we're getting these bigger, bigger rainfall events. Yeah. So tell us what that would mean.
You know, you use the term engagement. Yeah. Broadly. Yeah.
There's a really interesting, um, case of ecological restoration.
And by that I mean reinstating the kind of previous, the previous ecology of a.
Would that mean just coming in there?
You know, we get rid of the sports field and it would just be there are lots of subtle ways that you can incorporate that into garden design.
And I think that the use of the use of substantive native species,
that changing the mowing regime, for example, I, some of the other flowers to come up.
Yeah. Um. Things like that can go quite a long way.
I wonder if I wonder what could be done with the lake by having that as a process that people are engaging with directly,
so having people planting things in the ground. Yeah, that's been found to really, uh, change people's relationship to place,
to help them build a sense of place in the kind of green spaces of a variety of landscapes.
And so I think that would be something I would be most interested in because it addresses these multiple components.
Yeah, it's the ecological function, it's the greenspace maintenance, and it's the connection to nature.
Yeah. All of which can be kind of synthesised in a, in a project where you have people directly planting things, tending to things and cultivating.
Sure. And including cultivating within themselves a sense of stewardship.
Yeah. Um, how much that would cost? That depends. Depends how financially that sounds quite modest, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And what other things would you do, you know, given your focus on sustainability since I've been here,
what's clear is everybody loves the gardens and grounds.
We're all committed to sustainability as part of our strategy.
You know, what I'm keen to understand is, you know, what more would you recommend that we do?
How do we not just talk about our sustainability ambitions, but actually move beyond the rhetoric and talk about tangible things?
It's a really good question.
Again, I think that one of the key components in sustainability is connecting people to it, but also connecting these systems with each other.
Yeah. So things like food production is often a classic.
So whether it's beekeeping. Yeah, foraging or as some colleges have, you know, they're harvesting the deer from woodland for example.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of tying people to the ecosystem I think goes a really long way.
Yeah. We're lucky here that we already have a very, very high level of biodiversity.
Yeah, yeah. That can always be improved. But you start to encounter trade offs which might not be that palatable.
What I do think is that you can always connect people to it more directly.
So we're starting to work in the growing garden across the road.
Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah. Because that has its own different ecosystem, um, with a whole host of different organisms and,
and trying to use that, perhaps as a vehicle to connect people directly to the land that they're working on.
And seeing that sustainability does mean water management in the grounds.
It does mean biodiversity in the grounds. It influences what you have on the menu.
Yeah. And college helps you with places to stay cool on a summer's day, places to stay dry in the rain,
and showing people that within the kind of microcosm of a college,
you can benefit from all of these varieties of what we call ecosystem services,
both kind of physically, chemically, but culturally and a really significant way.
Okay. So I think supporting that kind of connectivity would be the next step.
Um, so anyone listening, particularly students arriving, you know, it's a great way of de-stressing.
Yeah. Is there anything else that you suggest people could do?
I think I mean, cultivating within within oneself the kind of attention to the environment.
So for me, it's been an incredibly rewarding process and motivates a lot of what I do now.
Yeah, yeah. And for people who are going to see this college and its grounds for, for potentially many years.
Yeah, noticing those little things and doing it for yourself,
whether it's mediated through an app that can explain what things are or just noticing the shape of a leaf that you've not noticed before.
That, for me,
is the starting point for a deeper connection to place and to understand how these things change and start to notice how they interrelate.
And that's a lesson that's that's lifelong and goes far beyond any designated space, is something that you can carry with you.
And I think Worcester is a fantastic place to cultivate that.
Yeah, because we have such a dedicated gardening team who are doing such a good job of keeping things really varied and beautiful and interesting.
Yeah, they do a fantastic job. So cool.
And for the gardening team, um,
I asked you that question because today I've hosted a lunch for former students who started here 50 years ago and 60 years ago.
And, you know, their deep connection, not just with the buildings, but with the gardens and the grounds and something, you know, that was obvious.
But also they really talked about. So equipping our students to engage, not just with Worcester, but, you know,
with other locations in the way that you describe would be would be great.
Absolutely. And there's a there's a meeting on the 28th of November.
Yeah. Tell us about what. It's a sort of tea and an explainer about how things are going in college with the biodiversity.
And I think that with the resourcing that we have here, it's a really, really,
almost unique opportunity to connect with the place in that way and to kind of recapture some of what many of us who've grown up in
the West have have lost in terms of our connection to place and the creation of place through engaging with the other life forms.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that that that is a really, really nice way to support oneself and to understand the self as a kind of stakeholder in that environment.
And the college have always been really, really receptive to that idea, and it's been a lot of time seeking feedback through and.
JCR, trying to get feedback from staff and from students on what we can do.
That would be to their preference in the ground. Yeah, so that's the direction I would love to see things go.
Good. Well, let's hope people can come on the 28th. Yeah. Tell us how you got into all of this.
What was your own background and initial interest that took you to ending up as our sustainability research assistant?
So I did it for my my undergraduate degree. I studied in Edinburgh, I studied ecology and environmental sciences,
and I've always been interested in how these systems work and trying to understand the kind of function of these incredibly complex and quite elusive.
But were you a little David Attenborough when you were growing up? Not really. I was I was very into dinosaurs.
Um, that was kind of my thing.
And I always loved watching those kind of shows, but it wasn't something that I actually had a particularly direct engagement and I wasn't out,
you know, digging through the dirt and finding worms and things like that.
It was I think it started off as a kind of as a puzzle, much as anything else.
And then over time, I've come more into it and had more contact with it, and it's become more embodied and more personal.
So after my studies, I worked for the RSPB or a number of charities for around five years, doing a lot of engagement and education work,
which I'd started doing as a teenager, but really developed it into a full time profession.
Right. And in that, I think, comes an understanding of if you want to work with land, you have to be working with people,
and people's views are really, really important and how we should be shaping that land.
Um, and it should all kind of be in service of this wider social ecological system.
Yeah. Um, so that for me is the primary motivation. And I thought Worcester is just an amazing place to do that.
And what brought you to Oxford? I came here for a masters, so I started 20, 22 to 23.
I did a master's in, uh, biodiversity conservation and Management.
Mhm. Yeah. I've just wanted to jump back into that stuff.
I've been kind of keeping some research projects on the backburner while working in these charities,
and I always found the science just as much fun as the engagement.
Yeah. Okay. And I wanted to kind of bolster that a little bit. And I've been really, really lucky to have had some fantastic academic mentors.
Yeah, throughout my studies. But but particularly in the last couple of years working with Lisa.
Brilliant. And what next? I'm not completely sure, but, uh, that's part of the joy of it, I think.
And having built a broad base of experience and really had my confidence in that approach,
um, supported, uh, by a number of members of staff in the university,
I'm going to try and and see how that goes, jump around a little bit,
do some different kinds of field work, work with different teams and departments.
I'm presently working with geography, biology and psychiatry,
and I really hope to carry that on for the next couple of years and build out a truly kind of broad and interdisciplinary practice,
while learning from lots of people and lots of different research approaches in the kind of what's the one step back?
And psychiatry with a difficult whenever? No, I at least they let me think it was my choice.
Okay. They were they're fantastic to work with and really valuing the input from a different way of understanding.
Yeah. Similar thing where you have this ecological intersecting with the kind of individual lived experience.
Yeah, we're coming at it from different points of view, but there is something synthetic about what happens in between.
And they've been really, really embracing that in this disciplinary perspective and a pleasure to work with.
So do you have any advice for people listening to the podcast or people in the Worcester community?
I think the most important thing is to to pay attention.
I find it gives me a great perspective on what else is going on in, you know,
five minutes just to step out of my own head and peer into the grass and see what's crawling around.
It's not something I practice as often as I'd like to, but it's always quite, uh, rewarding.
And I think that that first stage of observation and connection and I say observation, but it can be through any of your senses,
in any of your interests, whether that's going for a run on Port Meadow or however you choose to interact with these things.
Having an embodied experience gives you something to work with.
Yeah. So finding what you really resonate with, whether it's the sound of birds or the smell of rain or whatever.
Yeah. If you can find what that thing is, I always found that to be a very grounding and rewarding experience.
And for me, it kickstarted an interest in so much else and is now more or less what I do all the time.
Right? You're lucky. Yeah. Very lucky. Very lucky.
Final question is just about, you know, the state of the planet, because, you know,
we're a small part of a society which aspires to deal with the climate emergency.
You know, what's your your view about what we're doing and what we should do?
And I guess what we should stop doing? Yeah.
I mean, it's described by a lot of people that know much more about it than I do as the one of the great super wicked problems.
Um, and there's so much that it birthed as these other issues that can become a lifelong pursuit just to understand in one dimension,
I think the scale of it can be really overwhelming.
And I find that that kind of think global act local mentality does have a real utility in that because you can.
Whoever you are, there's always something that you can be doing to, uh, improve something, whatever you deem to be an improvement.
Yeah. Uh, and I find that to be really, um, restorative because it is quite daunting.
Yeah. And, um, particular projects that I've worked on, a ways of understanding the kind of natural world that can be a real downer.
Yeah. And, uh, and and that is useful.
But I think we can turn that to action. Some of the work that we've been doing, uh, with the eco flourishing lab through kind of education,
work with the Department for education and looking at how we engage young people in the ecology for their well-being is really,
really important because at the moment we have, uh, an increasing understanding of the impacts of the climate crisis and how it operates.
But that's not necessarily being met with something that can nourish the spirit in light of that.
And I think a lot of people have a great deal of anxiety, particularly young people have a great deal of eco anxiety around the state of the world.
But there is always hope within that. There's a brilliant writers.
Uh, Michela Loach is one who comes to mind, who writes about a kind of hope in action and ways that we can meet almost the spiritual needs.
Mhm. Um, and find fulfilment in taking on some of these huge, huge issues.
And I think that Worcester is a great place for a lot of those things to come together.
Brilliant. Joe, thank you for everything you've been doing for Worcester.
Uh, it's been a pleasure talking to you, but also listening to how we can start small, collect the data.
Uh, but also, you know, create the kind of community that cares not just for our immediate environment,
but also contribute to, you know, wider, uh, ecological preservation change and identification.
So those are the right words. But no, it sounds great to me that thanks so much for having me as part of this brilliant podcast and the wider project.
Thank you.