Volunteers have been collecting ecological data for centuries. However, volunteercollected data are frequently challenged because they lack the precision and rigour of scientific studies. This thesis evaluates the advantages of volunteer‐collected data and the importance of such data for the study of ecology and conservation, and considers methods to verify data to avoid or reduce inaccuracies. Different case studies aimed to answer questions relating to species’ ecology, habitat selection, and behaviour. Charismatic mammals were selected in order to increase volunteer participation (Water voles Arvicola terrestris; dormice Muscardinus avellanarius; North American otters Lontra canadensis; hedgehogs Erinaceus europaeus). Simple, rapid data collection methods were used so that volunteers and citizen scientists could easily follow instructions. The findings show that simple methods such as scales and estimates can be an effective way of studying water vole habitat associations; however, inter‐observer variability was highly problematic when volunteers collected data based on subjective estimations. A volunteer‐collected long‐term dataset on dormouse nestbox occupancy provided excellent information on habitat selection despite some irregularities when the data were recorded. Untrained citizen scientists could not record activity budgets for captive otters despite simple instructions, whereas citizen scientists were able to record habitat variables within their gardens, but false absences were found to be an issue when they recorded hedgehog sightings. Overall, this thesis suggests that volunteer‐collected data can provide useful insights into various aspects of ecology, for example, for studying distributions and species‐habitat interactions. Encouraging volunteers to collect ecological data has additional benefits such as increasing the health and wellbeing of participants, and it also raises public awareness of conservation issues. Recommendations on how to increase participation rates while minimising sources of error and bias are given.

This study seeks to determine the extent to which chemostratigraphy can supplement other stratigraphic tools in determining the effects of climate change in loess-palaeosol sequences. Geochemical change has been used to illuminate the effects of glacial/interglacial climate change in Chinese loess-palaeosol sequences; less work has been done to examine the effects of stadial/interstadial climate change and little work has been carried out in Europe on either aspect. Two loess-palaeosol sites were selected in northwestern Europe that were known to provide good records of the last ice age. This study has produced detailed descriptions of variation in concentrations of the major, minor and rare-earth elements. These are compared with variation in the standard sedimentological parameters (grain size, organic carbon content and carbonate content) and in enviromagnetic characteristics, which are accepted as palaeoclimate proxies. The existing polymineral-based luminescence chronology at each site has been enhanced using a quartz-based approach,which broadly confirms the accuracy of previous ages and generates estimates of increased precision. That chronology facilitates comparison of these analyses with evidence for palaeoclimatic: change in the wider record, including GRIP ice-core data. Grain size is shown to be a strong proxy for variation in mean wind strength and in accumulation rates which can be correlated in detail with GRIP. The study has established that geochemical heterogeneity now apparent at the sites has been imposed by weathering. Carbonate weathering is a reliable indication of major pedogenic episodes but its detailed interpretation is tempered by carbonate mobility. Silicate weathering occurs at lower intensity than carbonate weathering but is a permanent record since silicates are not subject to reprecipitation under these conditions. The study concludes that chemostratigraphy is a climatological proxy, detecting periods of significant amelioration. It is not a replacement for conventional proxies, it complements them and provides additional evidence upon which climatic reconstructions can be made.

The root cause of the majority of environmental problems lies not in surface manifestations such as carbon dioxide and ozone, but with social and cultural factors that encourage people to consume far more than they need. Environmental education can be divided into two main kinds: micro approaches, which the majority of current approaches fall under, and macro approaches, which are currently emerging. Micro environmental education considers environmental problems in terms of surface manifestations, and proposes micro-changes such as recycling to address them, without questioning the possibility of a cultural shift away from consumerism. This form of environmental education typically seeks to change the behaviour of social actors by building and appealing to their environmental consciousness in the expectation that they will act rationally. It is argued here that this expectation fails to recognise that social actors are subject to plural rationalities and that their behaviour is driven by complex interrelationships with other social actors. As a result, micro environmental education, despite its best intentions, often fails to adequately address and change the environmentally unsustainable behaviour of the social actors it targets. This thesis firstly aims to uncover why micro approaches to environmental education exist and persist. Primary qualitative research with environmental educators drawn from formal, free-choice and accidental channels of environmental education was conducted and is presented alongside a review of the historical development of environmental education. The second aim of this thesis is to argue against a reliance on micro approaches to environmental education and environmentalism in general and propose instead that environmental education becomes embedded within a wider macro approach. Macro approaches seek to change behaviour through the development of a critical understanding of interrelationships among social actors, leading ultimately to environmentally positive changes in them. Findings from the primary research also help reveal the conditions necessary for macro approaches to emerge from the current environmental education infrastructure. The thesis concludes that macro environmental education is both necessary and possible and calls for further research into its development and practice.

This research is concerned with the dynamic relationship between agricultural advisers, knowledge and soil in England. On the basis that agricultural advisers have always played a central role in linking research and farming practice and implementing policy on the farm, the thesis explores the role of the adviser in facilitating a shift towards sustainable soil management (which encompasses a range of complex and knowledge intensive practices) and to the realisation of policy objectives in this domain. Specifically it aims to provide detailed empirical evidence of the role that agricultural advisers play in the acquisition, utilisation, generation and transfer of knowledge about soil best management practice and to elicit the factors that enable and constrain these knowledge processes. Conceptually, the research draws on approaches to knowledge and knowledge processes in agriculture from the allied disciplines of rural geography, rural sociology and extension science. An actor-oriented Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) approach provides the basis for examining adviser interactions with both the research and farming communities. While the AKIS describes the factors that enable and constrain how advisers engage in knowledge processes in terms of connections across institutional interfaces between research, advice and farming, an actororiented approach, which understands knowledge processes as social processes operating across social interfaces, enables exploration of how individual advisers behaving as autonomous agents resolve these constraining and enabling factors. The- study, combining quantitative and qualitative methods, employs an extensive postal questionnaire survey of a 163 agricultural advisers from across England and three detailed case studies where sustainable soil management is a central theme, namely: the Landcare Project; the UK Soil Management Initiative; and the SUNDIAL Fertiliser Recommendation System. The data describe an advisory community with a range of involvement, concerns and competence in soil management. Patterns of acquisition and utilisation of knowledge about soil best management practice revealed by the questionnaire data suggest that advisers are actively seeking and using knowledge about soil management, although some are more constrained than others in accessing it. These patterns, however, only provide a partial understanding of the complex knowledge processes in which advisers engage as they operate at the boundaries between science and practice. As such, qualitative data from the case studies are used to reveal that, in bridging the different institutional cultures and life worlds of research and practice, advisers encounter different understandings and expectations of soil best management practices. Rather than simply acquiring, utilising and transferring knowledge, the data reveal that advisers negotiate, adapt, transform, generate and integrate knowledge about soil as they struggle to reconcile the principles of research-based soil best management practice with the practical and business constraints of the farm. In doing this advisers, and agronomists in particular, tend to closely align themselves with the interests of the farming community and as such are more likely to reject or question soil best management practice. In addition the apparent lack of advisers' competence and skills in certain knowledge intensive soil best management practices and their reliance on experiential knowledge further explains their reluctance to engage in soil best management practices derived from national research. Integration of knowledge through dialogue and understanding emerges as key to overcoming these tensions and providing the basis for facilitating sustainable soil management. Advisers are shown to have a central role in integrating knowledge from research and from farmers. The processes and relationships that enable this integration are identified. The thesis concludes with some policy relevant suggestions to improve the effectiveness of advisers' participation in the transition to sustainable soil management in England. These include: exploiting a diverse and flexible advisory community; improving advisers' skills and expertise; instilling in them confidence to provide credible and practical soil best management practice; and improving the quality of communication between the advisers, researchers and farmers. Future research directions are reviewed in the context of the proposed implementation of Soil Management Plans on all farms in England as a component of cross compliance within CAP reforms.

This thesis develops a chronology of ice retreat in the Monadhliath Mountains (Scotland) and Rodna Mountains (Romania) during the late Pleistocene using glacial geomorphology and surface exposure dating with cosmogenic 10Be. In the Monadhliath Mountains, 10Be exposure ages indicate deglaciation of the Last Devensian ice sheet at 15.1 ka (n = 2). Boulders from moraines in three Monadhliath cirques yielded exposure ages between 11.8 ka and 9.8 ka (470 – 600 m), suggesting that a Late Glacial readvance occurred during the Younger Dryas stadial (n = 9). The limited extent of these YD glaciers in the Monadhliath Mountains is explained in terms of the drier climate experienced by the eastern part of the Central Highland ice cap, but also in terms of local factors such as topography and snow blow. The resulting glacial reconstruction largely confirms that a SW to NE precipitation gradient dominated Scotland during the Younger Dryas. In the Romanian Carpathians, located at the southern periphery of the NW European ice sheet, there was only limited coverage of ice, mostly at higher elevations in the form of mountain glaciers. Field evidence suggests that during the last local maximum glaciation ice reached lower elevations than previously suggested in the Rodna Mountains. Glacially transported boulders were abandoned at 37.2 – 26.6 ka (n = 4) at an elevation of ~900 m. Glacial erratics and bedrock samples (n = 27) provide a consistent chronology for deglaciation during the Lateglacial, suggesting that ice retreated towards higher ground between 18.3 – 13.2 ka (1100 – 1800 m altitude). Final deglaciation took place at 12.5 - 11.2 ka (n = 9). These new chronologies are compared to other climate archives in Europe and the climatic oscillations recorded in the North Atlantic region. This analysis increases our understanding of past atmospheric circulation across Europe, and gives insights into the climatic forcing mechanisms during the last maximum extent of ice sheets and glaciers. During the last glacial episodes, the pattern of climate cooling from the western high latitudes towards the eastern mid latitudes was complicated, triggering different responses in local climates that appear to have been out of phase with the broader north-western European trend. Located in the NW Europe, Scotland was influenced by the wetter and colder conditions from the Atlantic which led to the expansion of the British Ice sheet during the global Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). However, smaller ice masses located further southwards and south-eastwards of the European ice sheet responded faster to the climatic oscillations in the North Atlantic region. During the LGM, the southward repositioning of the Polar Front and the presence of the ice sheet changed the atmospheric circulation across Europe. There was limited supply of moisture to the Rodna Mountains, especially because of blocking by the eastern Siberian high pressure system, and the glaciers experienced a slow retreat in a very cold and dry environment. However, a more synchronous Younger Dryas is likely to have occurred due to a more northern position of the Polar Front. This allowed for stronger wet and cold westerly winds to reach most of Europe at the same time.

The ways in which climate change is understood by members of the UK public, are considered across a fifteen year period spanning 1997-2011. Qualitative datasets from six separate projects are analysed to trace commonalities and variation over time in the conceptualisation of climate change as a physical, social and personal phenomenon. Ways of understanding are presented as a series of discourses. These relate to people’s appraisal of climate science, the apprehension of climate change through informal evidence, and how climate is seen in relation to natural systems; as well as the means by which climate change is contextualised to social systems, to cultural and historical conditions, and with respect to daily life. Climate discourses across all domains are found to be relatively stable over time, though with subtle shifts in meaning and emphasis. Emergent trends include recent evidence of climate ‘fatigue’ and an increased tendency to question the anthropogenic component to climate change, but also the view that action on climate change has become normalised in recent years. Survey data are also used to explore the prevalence of identified ways of understanding, and to examine longitudinal changes in these. There is some evidence of decline in climate change concern and increase in scepticism over the past decade, though these trends are not pronounced. Cold weather events from 2009/2010 are interpreted by people as evidence of the veracity of climate change (more so than as disconfirming it). Cultural worldviews are found to underlie perceptions. Findings are interpreted in the context of cultural theoretical and discursive frameworks. These present the opportunity to explain the recurrent, patterned and socially-shared nature of public perspectives, and the ways in which these are used both to understand climate change and to account for the actions of oneself and others. The development of combined secondary and longitudinal qualitative analytic techniques is a central methodological concern of the thesis. The advantages and drawbacks, practicalities, and epistemological considerations of such an approach, are outlined in detail.

The main goal of this study was to improve the contribution of higher education to sustainable development in Vietnam, specifically in the area of engineering education. The study mapped the current scenario of sustainable development and engineering in higher education in Vietnam as well as investigated how a cultural perspective may influence change strategies in higher education for sustainable development. This study addressed the need for empirical research on the education for sustainable development experience in Vietnam. It argued for and contributed to an emerging international dialogue about how to accelerate progress towards engineering curriculum transformation for sustainable development in different cultural contexts. Located in the interpretivist tradition, the study utilised a wide range of qualitative research techniques to collect and validate data including open-ended questionnaires, interviews, group discussions, participant observation and documentary review. Empirical data was generated between May 2010 and August 2012 in both Vietnam and the UK through three research stages. The first stage was informed by a qualitative survey which captured baseline data collected through a large group of stakeholders from different sectors and various levels of governance. The study mapped the current responses to sustainable development in Vietnam, and confirmed the need and expectation for change in Vietnamese engineering education towards sustainable development. Case study research was carried out at three Vietnamese engineering universities during stage two. The focus was on understanding the current processes and opportunities for curriculum change for sustainable development, as well as investigating how the specific contextual and cultural factors might influence the desired change. The study found evidence of issues which hampered the current efforts in education for sustainable development in the engineering universities in Vietnam. The analysis also provided insights into the Vietnamese values, attitudes and expectancies, and behavioural preferences which contributed to explaining why these issues existed.

Having arguably led the world in the transition to a high carbon economy, much of Wales today is economically and socially deprived. Even so, a devolved Welsh Government has set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions in the devolved areas, while creating employment and economic opportunities, reducing fuel poverty, thereby helping to solve Wales’ entrenched social and economic problems. A low carbon transition in the built environment is critical to achieve such targets. This PhD study aims to provide theoretically informed and empirically grounded insights into the development of low carbon building technologies in Wales through examining how the functions of the innovation systems of two selected emerging technologies i.e. ‘Welsh grown timber for construction’ (WTC) and ‘building integrated solar energy systems’ (BISE) have been fulfilled. Having first established a bespoke analytical framework, the functional patterns of the two technological innovation systems (TIS) are documented, assessed and compared. The study further explores how the functional analyses may offer a bottom-up perspective on the policy implications for regional governance in Wales, which might alter the functional patterns, and improve the innovation capability of relevant Welsh organisations. The functional analyses of the WTC and BISE TIS shows that, although both TISs have reached their formative phases in Wales, there is no guarantee that either system will eventually move onto the phase of market diffusion, due to the inherent system weaknesses and uncertainties likely arising in technology, policy-making, and market. Whereas regional governance in Wales can introduce policy interventions, they matter only when breakouts from certain forms of institutional ‘path-dependence’ are induced. In this respect, the thesis concludes by discussing four streams of policy-thinking that may instigate different pathways in Wales, namely: technology foresight; the regulation-induced innovation hypothesis; demand-oriented policy measures; and, support for small business innovations through, e.g. R&D consortia.

This thesis presents the results of a 6-year research project to investigate the radioecology of temperate coastal sand dunes. Samples (n = 617) of soil, water and biota were collected from the Drigg coastal sand dunes (West Cumbria, UK) between February 2005 and October 2007. Biota groups sampled included amphibians, birds, invertebrates, mammals, reptiles, plants (including lichens and mosses) and fungi. All samples were analysed for 40K, 137Cs and 241Am. A sub-set of samples (n = 26) was analysed for 90Sr, 99Tc, 238Pu and 239+240Pu. Additional soil analyses included soil moisture, bulk density, pH, organic matter content, carbonate content and cation concentrations (Ca2+, K+, Na+ & Mg2+). The application of three publicly-available environmental radiation protection models (ERICA, R&D128/Sp1a & RESRAD-BIOTA) to an assessment of ionising radiation impacts at the Drigg coastal sand dunes site was evaluated. Soil activity concentration data were used as input data and model results compared with measured activity concentrations in sand dune biota. Radionuclide concentration ratios (CRs) were identified as an important source of variation in model predictions. For sand dune small mammals, Am, Cs and Pu CRs were found to be 1 – 2 orders of magnitude lower than those for small mammals in other terrestrial ecosystems. For reptiles, the variability could be attributed to the paucity of data on transfer to this vertebrate group. Through literature review, mining of unpublished data sets and analysis of samples collected from the Drigg coastal sand dunes, CR databases were developed for reptiles (across a range of ecosystem types) and for sand dune biota. Analysis of sand dune soil data suggested that both sea-to-land transfer and the transport of sand grains in saltation influence the soil activity concentrations in coastal sand dunes. The low CRs for sand dune biota may be due to low bioavailability of particulate-bound radionuclides.

Pollen allergy affects a substantial proportion of the European population, and in many European countries the greatest rates of sensitisation are found for grass pollen allergen. Pollen allergy incidence rates tend to be greater in urban than in rural areas, likely due in part to the effects of urban air pollution on the allergy-causing potential of pollen grains. Background pollen concentrations measured at roof level monitoring stations are typically used as a proxy for exposure, but may differ considerably from the exposure experienced by allergy sufferers. In a 2003 report on phenology, the World Health Organisation highlighted the need for an improved understanding of the relationship between pollen monitoring station data and actual personal exposure. Four studies are presented in this thesis. Three of these address three different aspects of urban exposure to grass pollen, whilst the fourth supporting study concerns pollen sampler effciency. In Study A, the relative efficiency relationships between three models of pollen sampler were established under field conditions, and effciency correction factors derived. These factors enable the quantitative comparison of data collected with different samplers, as is often necessary during exposure assessment. The results contribute to Study B, in which background grass pollen concentrations measured at roof level were compared with those at street level within an urban canyon. A tendency for lower concentrations within the canyon was observed, consistent with the deposition of pollen from the recycling component of within-canyon air, and indicating that monitoring station data typically overestimates exposure in the canyon environment. In Study C, grass pollen dose rates estimated through personal sampling were compared with monitoring station data, and dose rate/background concentration ratios determined. These ratios, which as far as the author is aware have not been reported previously, may be used to estimate inhaled pollen dose from monitoring station data. In Study D, diurnal grass pollen concentration profiles were shown to vary systematically throughout the pollen season, with this variation apparently associated with a succession of different grass species with different flowering patterns dominating pollen emission as the season progresses. Profles averaged over entire seasons are commonly used to advise allergy sufferers on avoidance strategies, however such systematic intra-seasonal variation is not thought to have previously been demonstrated. As far as the author is aware, each of these four studies represents a novel contribution to the area of pollen exposure assessment. As a body of work, this thesis furthermore lays foundations for the development of a human exposure model for grass pollen, an important constituent of an integrated pollen exposure assessment strategy.