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Welcome to the first Prof. Cost of Michaelmas term.

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My guest today is Joe Boyle. Joe's an ecologist and educator and in addition is our sustainability research assistant.

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And tell me what you've been up to. Absolutely. And thanks again for having me on the show.

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So our primary goal with Worcester has been to try and assess the biodiversity and the water quality in college.

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And so over the course of last year, I ran a series of workshops to try and engage people with collecting that data themselves.

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So we thought by taking a citizen science approach, we can connect people with the biodiversity in college and understand it better,

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as well as understand how people interrelate to that and how that can support wellbeing.

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The benefit of taking this approach is that the more people come and the longer it runs,

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for the more we will find it, the more will understand about what we have going on.

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So we found around 500 species in college, um, through people identifying them on their phones through iNaturalist, which is a brilliant app.

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So I'm that is a fantastic app for kind of citizen science data collection.

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Yeah. And it all contributes to these global biodiversity assessments.

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So and how did you recruit people in who came along.

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So we had a lot of people coming from the college and from the university community, particularly to the preliminary workshops.

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Um, quite a few colleges and departments expressed interest in taking a similar approach to their biodiversity assessments,

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which is great to have Worcester kind of leading the charge on that.

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The biggest day of of data collection was the City Nature Challenge, which happens in the last week of April.

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Yeah, on that day, I think we had 86 people come by.

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But interestingly, the majority of them were local residents who didn't have an affiliation to the college or to the university.

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So I think it speaks to how much demand there is for people to engage with these really,

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really wonderful pockets of nature and biodiversity that we have.

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Because Worcester is known for its amazing gardens and grounds, particularly the lake.

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Um, I know lots of our neighbours are really keen to come here and actually sit as part of the Jericho community.

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It was a was that what you saw and were you surprised by the local levels of engagement?

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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.

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Um, there were a lot of families and things like that.

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It's a really, really good family activity because it's got this kind of educational component,

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but it's quite engaging and it's it's an easy process to participate in.

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That said, the kind of workshops in the build up to that were really, really informative to how we ran the day.

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Uh, and so you're seeing these kind of nested levels of engagement almost with some things

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being very public and other things being perhaps more paying for college membership.

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But also it's a really fun thing to do, especially when you know,

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the weather's good and it's great time and you've got flowers and bugs and things starting to come out,

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and you want to learn a bit about what they are. And so we had, uh, the statistics and geography departments,

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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.

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And so you find a lot of species. Um, what surprised you most in terms of what you found?

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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.

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Um, bugs are more difficult to track down. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

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Um, but it was really, really cool to see that some of the most observed species were common plants.

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And the native plants, they're plants that contribute to the ecosystem are really useful ways.

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Things like the supporting pollinators, some that flower earlier in the season and later in the season,

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so that you have a sustained nectar output from the from the forest system and the things like cow parsley,

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which I think a lot of people wouldn't even recognise. Normally that was one of our most observed species.

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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,

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and people aren't interested in plants in the same way as they are an animal.

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Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I think what we found is as counter to that and shows that people do have an interest.

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You just have to bring it to them in the right way. And that wasn't just because of the app.

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Oh well, I think it definitely helps. It definitely helps.

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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.

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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?

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I suppose I was thinking about orchids. It was probably a bit early for orchids, wasn't it?

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Well that's the that was a great one that talked about the B orchids. Did you find B orchids?

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We did. We had an observation of a beetle. Okay. And that was one that was a really nice surprise previously.

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Yeah. Um, and kind of shows that there is this seed bank waiting.

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Yeah. And the soil waiting to emerge, and we just have to create the right conditions.

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Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, yeah, the gardening team doing a fantastic job of that.

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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.

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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.

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Yeah. No. That's great. So it sounds like it was productive.

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Lots of species. People had fun. Tell us what happens now to the data.

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So having been involved in collecting it, one of the next steps.

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So there's a few parts to that project.

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And it would be remiss to go into it without addressing the the eco flourishing project, which I'm also working.

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Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. So the eco flourishing project is in the Department of Psychiatry,

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and we're looking at how social well-being, human well-being and natural wellbeing can be linked together.

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And so how one can kind of support the other. Yeah. And we embraced was the college's are living lab.

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So a place where we can observe this relationship.

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And on the day the biggest day, the public day of data collection, we were trialling some wellbeing assessments alongside.

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And so that data has, has shaped the kind of processes of how we run the rest of that project.

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The biodiversity data that we collected all goes into this global framework,

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so people will be able to access that from wherever they are in the world and see that

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this thing was observed in this place at this time that can be used for almost anything.

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Right. The wider City Nature Challenge data is a kind of metric in a sense, of the engagement of people around the world.

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So that is on six continents, cities from all over the world putting in really, really competitive lists of biodiversity observed.

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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.

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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?

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Sure. So on the Worcester College website we have our report. Yeah.

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Um, which explains a little bit on the kind of local level of what we found.

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Our data contributed to the wider Oxford Share City Nature Challenge, which can also be found on iNaturalist.

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When you go into the app or onto the website, you can search locations. Yeah.

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And you can see everything that's been observed within that. And then that data contributes to wider UK scale.

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So it's incremental. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And then in future that will continue to be built upon.

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So because it is quite self led. Yeah. We don't need to run an event to have people observing.

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And there have been people have gone out since okay, been observing things.

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So it's a kind of dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not something you have to do every year.

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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.

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Yeah okay. Always invite them. Well that's really important for everybody listening.

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And as these kind of approaches sort of mature,

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we'll start to see things that were there one year and not the following year, the things that hadn't been observed before.

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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.

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Exactly. So we've been talking about insects and plants.

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Um, let's move on to our well-loved lake, which we know has got a few challenges,

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uh, at the moment, um, because it's leaking and everyone's really concerned.

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Yeah. So in terms of the water assessment, how did that go and who was involved and what did you find?

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So that was led by, uh, Doctor Lisa, wedding sustainability fellow, uh, and the head of the seascapes lab.

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Yeah, in Oxford. And one of her PhD students, Petr Parola, was doing the direct measurements using the same equipment that,

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um, that we use as a lab elsewhere in the world to do water quality analysis.

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And that was a real success. I think that as an engagement tool in some of this kind of sci fi looking equipment.

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Yeah, a lot of people showed up, didn't they? Yeah, a lot of people came along.

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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.

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Okay. Um, at 4:00 pm and an opportunity to kind of see how that works as a process.

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Yeah, we found some interesting findings. It's ecologically functional and it's relatively healthy, but there's always improvements to be made.

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Okay. The gardening team are really, really up on these kind of issues.

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And so because they've been working on that for a while, we didn't find anything alarming in the water quality.

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As you might expect for a lake like this, particularly a manmade lake that we chop up from the canal, don't we?

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Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's such an important part of the college identity, almost.

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And the kind of the geography of the college is really defined by, in a lot of ways, for me,

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as someone who didn't study at this college but often did study with people who were based.

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Yeah, yeah, it was always, I should go for a walk around the lake.

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Yeah, it's a blow off a bit of steam, and it becomes almost like the unit in which you interact with the environment.

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So it's of this huge symbolic value, but ecologically, it also supports some of the most charismatic species, like the kingfishers and things.

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Yeah, yeah. Just tell us about the species you found.

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Yeah. I would say that the most charismatic pond life that we found were probably the aquatic birds.

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And I like the charismatic. That's good. Yeah, yeah.

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I mean, the things that really striking, whether it's the kingfisher, especially the kingfishers,

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really capture people's imaginations because you often just see that like. Yeah. And they're very dynamic.

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Yeah. Creatures and the coots and things like that.

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And some of these other larger birds, it's a bit more. Time. That's a very interesting looking ducks out there.

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Yeah. Um, and did you talk to Ali, who's one of the gardening team?

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Yeah. Her bird list has been fantastic. And that captures data through a different approach to the rest of the projects.

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But it's been really, really useful. Really. I have long she'd been keeping that list for over a decade.

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Yeah, a long time. And it's, you know, everything that's touched the ground within the college.

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Yeah. 60 something species. Yeah, yeah. Um, egrets through to herons, but also, I think quite unusual.

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Um, migrating birds. Absolutely. And quite remarkable biodiversity for a place like this.

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And I think that the connection, the water represents this real connective medium right to places like Port Meadow.

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Yeah. We do have a really, really outstanding urban biodiversity.

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Yeah. And they can move through the water and through the corridors of trees that are around the canals as well.

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Um, and helps kind of tie everything together. Great. So you were relieved that there was not a bad, uh, assessment.

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What could we do to enhance the assessment so that I mean, is there anything that we can do, I guess is my question.

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Yeah. So we're going to continue monitoring it. And I think the changes throughout the seasons are quite important as well.

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One of the key metrics that we looked at is the level of chlorophyll.

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So chlorophyll being the pigment that facilitates photosynthesis.

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And that's a measure of the level of algae in the water.

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And you don't want it to be too high or it risks choking out the rest of the land.

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And it was high ish. So that could be brought down.

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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.

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Yeah, there's definitely scope for some kind of aquatic planting and things like

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that that can help manage those levels through the kind of ecosystem function.

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Yeah. Um, but generally we found it to be pretty clean and, and pretty good.

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So it's a sign of approval. Few of what's going on. There is always scope to improve it.

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Yeah. Um, but I think it would mainly be through the ecology. And you say you could reduce, you know, the algae by planting,

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but also you said I think you swept it up into, you know, the approaches that the garden uses.

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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.

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Yeah. And so when the first thought I thought that's what it was. Yeah.

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Yeah. And so that can sustain these elevated levels of algae.

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But of course these are the problem. Yeah. We found that it was it was actually very good for a place like this.

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Yeah. Where you have, you know, heavily manicured and and cultivated and maintained space around it.

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You often have really high levels. Yeah. Of those fertilisers.

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But when we found it to be pretty good, it definitely is good above what we'd expect in some in, in the team.

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Yeah. And what about all the rainwater we're talking here on a Friday afternoon.

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It's been a really torrential week. Yeah.

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Weather wise in Oxford the playing fields are under water.

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Um, the front court is looking pretty devastated, you know, with just the sheer amount of water.

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It's not good for the lake. I would be lying if I told you with any certainty that, to be honest,

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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,

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yeah, that couldn't be developed in other ways. That definitely means it's going to be a dynamic system.

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Yeah. But I know that that's something that the gardening team are working with in mind.

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Um, and it certainly creates a kind of heterogeneity where you have these pockets, whether the habitats are differentiated.

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And that just can only serve to increase your biodiversity.

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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,

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we're always strapped for cash,

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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.

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But if you had an open chequebook, um, what would you prioritise and how much would it cost?

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That is a that's a very, very interesting question. A lot of these things are very interrelated.

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And so the well-being of staff and students definitely would benefit in a very tangible way from improvements not just to the biodiversity,

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but also ways for people to interpret that and to connect with it themselves.

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So I think this is more with my engagement side. Yeah, ecology side.

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But I think that something along those lines would be really interesting to look at,

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kind of ecological restoration almost of some of the floodplain characteristics, um, particularly with an eye to how the climate is changing.

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And we're getting these bigger, bigger rainfall events. Yeah. So tell us what that would mean.

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You know, you use the term engagement. Yeah. Broadly. Yeah.

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There's a really interesting, um, case of ecological restoration.

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And by that I mean reinstating the kind of previous, the previous ecology of a.

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Would that mean just coming in there?

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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.

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And I think that the use of the use of substantive native species,

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that changing the mowing regime, for example, I, some of the other flowers to come up.

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Yeah. Um. Things like that can go quite a long way.

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I wonder if I wonder what could be done with the lake by having that as a process that people are engaging with directly,

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so having people planting things in the ground. Yeah, that's been found to really, uh, change people's relationship to place,

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to help them build a sense of place in the kind of green spaces of a variety of landscapes.

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And so I think that would be something I would be most interested in because it addresses these multiple components.

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Yeah, it's the ecological function, it's the greenspace maintenance, and it's the connection to nature.

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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.

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Sure. And including cultivating within themselves a sense of stewardship.

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Yeah. Um, how much that would cost? That depends. Depends how financially that sounds quite modest, doesn't it?

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Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And what other things would you do, you know, given your focus on sustainability since I've been here,

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what's clear is everybody loves the gardens and grounds.

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We're all committed to sustainability as part of our strategy.

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You know, what I'm keen to understand is, you know, what more would you recommend that we do?

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How do we not just talk about our sustainability ambitions, but actually move beyond the rhetoric and talk about tangible things?

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It's a really good question.

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Again, I think that one of the key components in sustainability is connecting people to it, but also connecting these systems with each other.

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Yeah. So things like food production is often a classic.

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So whether it's beekeeping. Yeah, foraging or as some colleges have, you know, they're harvesting the deer from woodland for example.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of tying people to the ecosystem I think goes a really long way.

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Yeah. We're lucky here that we already have a very, very high level of biodiversity.

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Yeah, yeah. That can always be improved. But you start to encounter trade offs which might not be that palatable.

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What I do think is that you can always connect people to it more directly.

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So we're starting to work in the growing garden across the road.

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Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah. Because that has its own different ecosystem, um, with a whole host of different organisms and,

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and trying to use that, perhaps as a vehicle to connect people directly to the land that they're working on.

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And seeing that sustainability does mean water management in the grounds.

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It does mean biodiversity in the grounds. It influences what you have on the menu.

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Yeah. And college helps you with places to stay cool on a summer's day, places to stay dry in the rain,

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and showing people that within the kind of microcosm of a college,

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you can benefit from all of these varieties of what we call ecosystem services,

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both kind of physically, chemically, but culturally and a really significant way.

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Okay. So I think supporting that kind of connectivity would be the next step.

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Um, so anyone listening, particularly students arriving, you know, it's a great way of de-stressing.

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Yeah. Is there anything else that you suggest people could do?

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I think I mean, cultivating within within oneself the kind of attention to the environment.

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So for me, it's been an incredibly rewarding process and motivates a lot of what I do now.

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Yeah, yeah. And for people who are going to see this college and its grounds for, for potentially many years.

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Yeah, noticing those little things and doing it for yourself,

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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.

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That, for me,

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is the starting point for a deeper connection to place and to understand how these things change and start to notice how they interrelate.

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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.

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And I think Worcester is a fantastic place to cultivate that.

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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.

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Yeah, they do a fantastic job. So cool.

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And for the gardening team, um,

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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.

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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.

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But also they really talked about. So equipping our students to engage, not just with Worcester, but, you know,

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with other locations in the way that you describe would be would be great.

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Absolutely. And there's a there's a meeting on the 28th of November.

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Yeah. Tell us about what. It's a sort of tea and an explainer about how things are going in college with the biodiversity.

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And I think that with the resourcing that we have here, it's a really, really,

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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

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the West have have lost in terms of our connection to place and the creation of place through engaging with the other life forms.

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Yeah, yeah.

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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.

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And the college have always been really, really receptive to that idea, and it's been a lot of time seeking feedback through and.

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JCR, trying to get feedback from staff and from students on what we can do.

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That would be to their preference in the ground. Yeah, so that's the direction I would love to see things go.

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Good. Well, let's hope people can come on the 28th. Yeah. Tell us how you got into all of this.

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What was your own background and initial interest that took you to ending up as our sustainability research assistant?

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So I did it for my my undergraduate degree. I studied in Edinburgh, I studied ecology and environmental sciences,

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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.

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But were you a little David Attenborough when you were growing up? Not really. I was I was very into dinosaurs.

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Um, that was kind of my thing.

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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,

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you know, digging through the dirt and finding worms and things like that.

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It was I think it started off as a kind of as a puzzle, much as anything else.

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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.

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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,

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which I'd started doing as a teenager, but really developed it into a full time profession.

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Right. And in that, I think, comes an understanding of if you want to work with land, you have to be working with people,

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and people's views are really, really important and how we should be shaping that land.

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Um, and it should all kind of be in service of this wider social ecological system.

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Yeah. Um, so that for me is the primary motivation. And I thought Worcester is just an amazing place to do that.

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And what brought you to Oxford? I came here for a masters, so I started 20, 22 to 23.

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I did a master's in, uh, biodiversity conservation and Management.

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Mhm. Yeah. I've just wanted to jump back into that stuff.

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I've been kind of keeping some research projects on the backburner while working in these charities,

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and I always found the science just as much fun as the engagement.

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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.

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Yeah, throughout my studies. But but particularly in the last couple of years working with Lisa.

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Brilliant. And what next? I'm not completely sure, but, uh, that's part of the joy of it, I think.

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And having built a broad base of experience and really had my confidence in that approach,

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um, supported, uh, by a number of members of staff in the university,

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I'm going to try and and see how that goes, jump around a little bit,

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do some different kinds of field work, work with different teams and departments.

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I'm presently working with geography, biology and psychiatry,

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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,

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while learning from lots of people and lots of different research approaches in the kind of what's the one step back?

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And psychiatry with a difficult whenever? No, I at least they let me think it was my choice.

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Okay. They were they're fantastic to work with and really valuing the input from a different way of understanding.

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Yeah. Similar thing where you have this ecological intersecting with the kind of individual lived experience.

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Yeah, we're coming at it from different points of view, but there is something synthetic about what happens in between.

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And they've been really, really embracing that in this disciplinary perspective and a pleasure to work with.

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So do you have any advice for people listening to the podcast or people in the Worcester community?

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I think the most important thing is to to pay attention.

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I find it gives me a great perspective on what else is going on in, you know,

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five minutes just to step out of my own head and peer into the grass and see what's crawling around.

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It's not something I practice as often as I'd like to, but it's always quite, uh, rewarding.

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And I think that that first stage of observation and connection and I say observation, but it can be through any of your senses,

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in any of your interests, whether that's going for a run on Port Meadow or however you choose to interact with these things.

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Having an embodied experience gives you something to work with.

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Yeah. So finding what you really resonate with, whether it's the sound of birds or the smell of rain or whatever.

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Yeah. If you can find what that thing is, I always found that to be a very grounding and rewarding experience.

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And for me, it kickstarted an interest in so much else and is now more or less what I do all the time.

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Right? You're lucky. Yeah. Very lucky. Very lucky.

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Final question is just about, you know, the state of the planet, because, you know,

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we're a small part of a society which aspires to deal with the climate emergency.

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You know, what's your your view about what we're doing and what we should do?

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And I guess what we should stop doing? Yeah.

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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.

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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,

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I think the scale of it can be really overwhelming.

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And I find that that kind of think global act local mentality does have a real utility in that because you can.

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Whoever you are, there's always something that you can be doing to, uh, improve something, whatever you deem to be an improvement.

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Yeah. Uh, and I find that to be really, um, restorative because it is quite daunting.

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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.

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Yeah. And, uh, and and that is useful.

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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,

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work with the Department for education and looking at how we engage young people in the ecology for their well-being is really,

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really important because at the moment we have, uh, an increasing understanding of the impacts of the climate crisis and how it operates.

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But that's not necessarily being met with something that can nourish the spirit in light of that.

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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.

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But there is always hope within that. There's a brilliant writers.

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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.

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Mhm. Um, and find fulfilment in taking on some of these huge, huge issues.

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And I think that Worcester is a great place for a lot of those things to come together.

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Brilliant. Joe, thank you for everything you've been doing for Worcester.

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Uh, it's been a pleasure talking to you, but also listening to how we can start small, collect the data.

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Uh, but also, you know, create the kind of community that cares not just for our immediate environment,

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but also contribute to, you know, wider, uh, ecological preservation change and identification.

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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.

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Thank you.