Actually it IS rocket science!

British Science Week started on Friday and is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths.

 

But what does that have to do with countryside conservation? 

You'd be surprised how many of our conservation careers are underpinned by a science qualification.  A degree level qualification in countryside management, ecology or agriculture is led by the science faculty and results in a Bachelor of Science degree which is often the basic requirement needed for many of the jobs you see advertised in CJS - not always but it certainly helps. Although rangers might not have an engineering degree their knowledge of basic physics and practical engineering experience has saved many a footpath, bridge, signpost from an untimely end. So you see science and countryside do mix well together! Have a look at some of the courses providing relevant countryside science qualifications here.

Taking children on a journey

Of course a big part of the week is to encourage children into science and the theme this year is journeys.  The BSW website has a series of activity packs full of suggestions which you can use at home or build into your environmental education and events programmes this year or perhaps might spark inspiration for next year. Suggested activities include creating tunnels, keeping a nature log and mummifying an orange - I think there might be one of those at the bottom of our fruit bowl!

Become a citizen scientist and help to tackle climate change! 

This year the British Science Week is partnering with Operation Weather Rescue,  a team of researchers working tirelessly to digitize old weather records and they need your help!

They have identified two decades of important historical weather data that has never been digitised – and need help to rectify this.  The Challenge is to see how much of this data citizen scientists can digitise during the week, to give you an idea of the scale of the problem there are around 2.5million items of data to enter.  Once digitised the raw data will be available climate scientists and meteorologists to work on climate change and weather predictions and models.

How can you get involved? 

During British Science Week, go to: Zooniverse.org/projects/edh/weather-rescue and click “Get Started 

Read the instructions in the pop-up box and when you get to the end, select “Let’s go!”