Scotland's Rural College

Rainfall-induced landslides cause millions of pounds in damage to infrastructure in Great Britain (GB) annually and occasionally result in human fatalities. Despite the risks, Great Britain has few policies or guidelines to mitigate landslides, and limited research has characterised their regional incidence. Peat landslides, found mainly in the British Isles and a handful sub-Antarctic islands, have recently gained attention for their destructive impacts and the loss of valuable terrestrial carbon. Given the environmental significance of peat, we examine the current knowledge gaps regarding the mechanical conditions that trigger peat failures and compare these with those governing failures in mineral soils. We start by empirically characterizing landslide incidence in GB considering landslide events recorded in the British Geological Survey (BGS) database. Soil texture, topographic, and antecedent rainfall data were acquired for the considered landslides. Organic landslides had significantly steeper slopes and higher antecedent rainfall sums than mineral landslides and occurred most frequently in late summer and early autumn months. Landslides in loam-textured soils were an order of magnitude more frequent than in other textures, and remained the most frequent after normalisation by soil-texture area, although other groups exhibited comparable area-normalised failure rates. Using a K-means clustering analysis, landslide groups exhibiting similar slope, soil, and rainfall characteristics were identified revealing unique inter-cluster spatial and temporal patterns. Organic landslides in the database could be roughly segregated as those that failed on shallow slopes with low antecedent rainfall in summer months ‘bog flows') and those that failed on steep slopes with varying antecedent rainfall which were interpreted to largely be mineral failures with a peat veneer (‘peaty-debris flows'). The failure mechanism of the former was likely seasonal drops in peat moisture content, which facilitated rainwater infiltration through desiccation cracks raising pore pressures within the peat mass, increasing peat landslide susceptibility in late summer months. These results can be used to guide more accurate landslide risk management considering region and preconditioning factors which is pertinent for recent peatland restoration activities in GB.

Synthetic polymers are widespread in modern life and pose growing environmental problems, especially in agriculture, where water management and soil health are crucial. Eco-friendly materials that balance performance and environmental safety are desperately needed as sustainable alternatives remain understudied. This study emphasizes the potential of lignin, a naturally occurring, abundant, and underutilized biopolymer, and its conversion into lignin-based hydrogels. Lignin hydrogels offer distinct benefits for agricultural applications due to their inherent antibacterial, biodegradable, and biocompatible properties. Their ability to swell improves soil water retention, promotes plant development in drought-prone areas, and permits regulated release of fertilizer. Lignin-based hydrogels can promote sustainable agricultural methods and lessen the dependency on synthetic polymers by customizing these characteristics. This study points to potential advances in green polymer technology by highlighting their capacity to bridge the gap between environmental stewardship and agricultural production.

Abstract Large whales are likely the marine megafauna most at risk from vessel collisions. However, studies often identify areas of greatest risk by calculating two-dimensional overlap metrics, overlooking vertical overlap in the three-dimensional water column. This study quantifies collision risk for fin whales in the north-east Atlantic by including dynamic parameters in collision risk models and simulates potential mitigation measures. Dive profiles of 21 fin whales instrumented with time-depth recorders in the Azores were used to estimate the proportion of time spent within reach of vessel draughts across the north-east Atlantic. Fin whales were at greater vertical risk at night, with a median dive depth of 5 m compared to 12 m during daylight hours. When dive depths (vertical risk) was integrated into spatio-temporal variation of vessel characteristics and animal distribution, 972 (796–1200 when incorporating uncertainty in animal density estimates) collisions were estimated to occur annually, of which 641 (525–791) were likely to be fatal – when assuming no avoidance response. This is well above the estimated sustainable potential biological removal level of 131 individuals a year in this region. Simulation of potential mitigation measures indicated that re-routeing shipping lanes may be largely infeasible, whereas vessel slowdowns may be more practical and effective to minimize population-level impacts to a vulnerable species. However, how such measures would be accepted by the shipping industry remains to be seen. These findings provide a quantitative assessment of ship-strike risk and inform mitigation methods, providing an invaluable basis for discussions with environmental managers and maritime authorities.

Polysaccharide-protein composite hydrogels have demonstrated remarkable potential in targeted gastrointestinal delivery owing to their excellent biocompatibility, adjustable physicochemical characteristics, and intelligent responsiveness. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the underlying mechanisms and diverse applications of these composite hydrogels in gastrointestinal targeted delivery, with a particular emphasis on their stimuli-responsive release behaviors triggered by internal and external factors such as pH, enzymes, magnetic fields. Special attention is also given to their advantages in protecting sensitive bioactive ingredients, including curcumin, EGCG, probiotics. Furthermore, this review highlights their capabilities in achieving high encapsulation efficiency, smart controlled release and targeted delivery, while also presenting current challenges associated with material stability, targeting precision, large-scale production, and clinical translation. Finally, future perspectives are discussed, focusing on the development of multi-response system design, innovative biomaterials, advanced manufacturing technology applications, and AI-assisted optimization. These directions aim to provide theoretical foundations and technical strategies for advanced research and practical applications of polysaccharide-protein composite hydrogels in a targeted gastrointestinal delivery system. Overall, this review underscores the significant promise of polysaccharide-protein composite hydrogels as intelligent gastrointestinal delivery platforms and provides a systematic reference for their rational design and future translational development.

Under the current global biodiversity crisis, there is a need for automated and noninvasive monitoring techniques that can gather large amounts of data cost-effectively at various ecological scales, from local to large spatial scales. These data can then be analyzed to inform stakeholders and decision-makers. One such technique is passive acoustic monitoring, which is commonly coupled with automatic identification of animal species based on their sound. Automated sound analyses usually require the training of sound detection and identification algorithms. These algorithms are based on annotated acoustic datasets which mark the occurrence of sounds of species inside sound recordings. However, compiling large annotated acoustic datasets is time-consuming and requires experts, and therefore, they normally cover reduced spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales. This data paper presents WABAD, the World Annotated Bird Acoustic Dataset for passive acoustic monitoring. WABAD is designed to provide the public, the research community, and conservation managers with a novel and globally representative annotated acoustic dataset. This database includes 5047 min of audio files annotated to species-level by local experts with the start and end time and the upper and lower frequencies of each identified bird vocalization in the recordings. The database has a wide taxonomic and spatial coverage, including information on 91,931 vocalizations from 1192 bird species recorded at 72 recording sites in 29 recording locations (mainly countries) and distributed across 13 biomes. WABAD can be used, for example, for developing and/or validating automatic species detection algorithms, answering ecological questions, such as assessing geographical variations on bird vocalizations, or comparing acoustic diversity indices with species-based diversity indices. The dataset is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license that permits redistribution and reuse on the condition that the original work is properly credited.