Arts & Science Festival 2017

Description

A journey through deep time: plants, rocks, and carbon dioxide

The natural world, its biodiversity, and its constituent ecosystems are critically important to our wellbeing and economic prosperity. Trees and forests are a key link in the ecological chain that permits life to flourish on Earth. World-leading ‘big science’ has come to the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) in the form of a Free-Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) facility, built into established English woodland in Staffordshire. BIFoR aims to provide fundamental science, social science and cultural research of direct relevance to forested landscapes anywhere in the world. Drawing from the Lapworth Museum of Geology’s rich archive of geological specimens and maps, the Earth and Environmental Sciences team explore the geology of the BIFoR site, a journey marked by periods of major climatic change, which have shaped our planet over Deep Time. Professor Rob MacKenzie, Director of Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR), will also discuss BIFoR’s scientific mission to understand and respond to the climatic changes unfolding before our eyes and its quest to answer the question: how will our forests respond to the atmosphere that will surround them in the year 2100?

Period	16 Mar 2017
Event type	Conference
Location	Birmingham, United KingdomShow on map