• 09:00 - 17:00
• Cambridge University Engineering Department

Insights from the Centre for Landscape Regeneration

This conference shares insights from the multi-year study by the Centre for Landscape Regeneration (CLR) on how the intersections between nature, climate, local economies, and communities will shape the future of UK landscapes. Focusing on the Fens, the Cairngorms, and the Lake District, this conference presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that responds to some of the most pressing challenges that UK landscapes face, from food security to climate adaptation to biodiversity recovery, and the interplay of trade-offs between these.

Funded by UKRI NERC, the project aims to discuss how the evidence and insights gathered so far can be used to inform policy and action.

The day features a wide range of perspectives, from the researchers and partner organisations who have shaped this work, to the policymakers.

• Talks & Panel Discussions: Presentations on the latest findings followed by Q&A sessions to discuss their implications.
• Research Posters: An opportunity to engage directly with the researchers and explore their work.
• Collaborative Conversations: Time to discuss how this ongoing research can best serve the needs of those managing and living in the British countryside.

The CLR and CPS invite you to join the discussion around this important update as work continues toward a more sustainable and resilient future for our shared environment.

Morning session: Research insights and emerging evidence
A research-focused session introducing highlights from the research programme on evidence, methods and interdisciplinary questions at the heart of landscape regeneration.

Afternoon session: Landscapes, policy and practice
A place-based session examining what CLR research reveals about the future of UK landscapes in the Fens, the Cairngorms and the Lake District. The afternoon will consider how evidence on food security, climate adaptation, biodiversity recovery and land-use trade-offs can inform policy, land management and practical action.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

The origins and history of feedback control systems will be traced from the ancients through the industrial revolution and to modern times, with demonstrations. Also outlined will be the later development of the theory of control systems, which began with James Clerk Maxwell's 1868 paper on governors, together with examples including suspension systems, rocket landing, nuclear fusion, and feedback in biology. The lecture concludes with a discussion on whether human understanding will be needed to design control systems in the future.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• A V Hill Lecture Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Our behaviour is characteristically organized in a hierarchical structure of goals and subgoals, with many fragments of behaviour contributing to an everyday activity such as making breakfast or attending a lecture.  Such goal-directed structures are often impaired following major damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.  I shall describe a core discovery of human brain imaging – a nine-patch network recruited for addressing a very broad range of cognitive challenges, based in frontal cortex but with additional components elsewhere.  This network is strongly activated by a standard test of “fluid intelligence”, known to predict success in all kinds of activities and presumably requiring mental operations of very widespread importance.  From human brain imaging, I shall move on to electrophysiology in the behaving monkey.  In a network of frontal lobe regions, putatively homologous to regions of the human network, I shall show encoding of core components of a goal-directed plan – current state, goal, component moves and hierarchy.  Damage to this network, I suggest, underlies the broad behavioural impairment that can follow frontal lobe damage.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

The Antarctic environment is changing more rapidly than expected. Over the past few years we have observed warming of the Southern Ocean, melting of ice shelves from below, reduction in sea ice, intense heat waves over the continent and storms that have devastated penguin colonies.

The sea ice that forms around Antarctica as the sea freezes during the winter has been shrinking in extent and has decreased so much around the western Antarctic Peninsula that the UK’s icebreaker, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, has remained south near Rothera station until mid-winter, supporting science in the cold dark conditions for the first time.

These changes impact not only local Antarctic environments and its animals but also affect the whole planet. The loss of ice mass has contributed to global sea level rise and the fresh water entering the ocean will affect global ocean circulation. Antarctica may be remote but change there impacts the rest of the planet, its ecosystems its and people. 

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Early identification of sex related pheromones of agricultural pests opened similar opportunities for insect vectors of human pathogens. Although small molecules, sophistication in structural requirements for biological activity of the often-novel chemical structures for these pheromones and other semiochemicals must be accommodated. This is achieved by exploiting natural catalytic systems for synthesis with the exact natural isomeric chemistry. Particularly useful are promiscuous enzymes from extremophile organisms that can robustly accept wider ranges of biochemical reaction conditions as well as novel substrates. New developments in sustainable food production have followed with delivery including such biotechnological production, plant genetic engineering and ecosystem management. Also are new offers of sustainable opportunities for human health, as potential impact from infectious disease grows. More realistic but radical scientific thinking could provide: the perennialisation of all arable crops; new interventions in achieving the One Health global concept.