COURSES
CPDs and training courses
A wide range of courses, from 2 hour CPDs through to 4-day residential courses, tailor-made for your needs, are offered directly from the Biosphere Research Institute, covering a wide range of subjects, from design and architecture to business management. Click here for more details.
Field and online course in 2023/4
Celtic Ecology
Dr Keith Skene
Wednesday 6.30/8.30 5 weeks Starts: 14 February, 2024 (Online)
This course explores the Celtic people of the British Isles in terms of their relationship with their ecology, representing a nexus of landscape, nature and each other. As indigenous people, their culture was shaped by their ecology and emergent from it, expressed in their art, community and beliefs. We begin with an examination of who the Celts were and what we know of them. The significance of Nature lies at the heart of all indigenous thinking. We examine this in detail, exploring themes from across the Celtic diaspora, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Scottish Highlands and from Ireland to Turkey. We compare other indigenous communities in terms of their interpretation of how the planet functions and the place of the human within the grand scheme of things, addressing such issues as identity, empowerment, ethics and the central importance of the arts. We explore the oral tradition of the Celts and the origins and significance of the ceilidh house. Cyclic knowledge, cosmology, native epistemology and the sense of place all challenge the modern reductionist, individualistic mantra, but resonate much more closely with current ecological thinking. Their profound traditional knowledge, forged across centuries, provides key insights into many of the environmental, economic and social issues facing us today, and so we ask what we can learn from the Celts in terms of our relationship with each other and with Nature.
Avian paradise: RSPB Scotland Fowlsheugh Nature Reserve
8th June 2024 Starts at 11am, and finishes at 3 pm.
Join Dr Keith Skene as he introduces you to the incredible bird and plant life at Fowlsheugh Nature Reserve, just north of Inverbervie at Crawton. One hundred and thirty thousand birds cling to the four-hundred-million-year-old cliffs, including puffins, kittiwakes, gannets, herring gulls, razorbills, guillemots and fulmars, and together they form one of the three largest bird colonies in mainland Britain. It’s an amazing place and we’ll discuss the biology of these species and the challenges faced by them in these turbulent times. A one-mile walk on grassy paths, a pungent aroma and a bracing wind await! Participants must arrange their own transport. Details will be supplied.
Ancient woodland and a bog-standard treasure: the Den of Alyth and the raised mire of Dun Moss
15th June, 2024. Starts at 11 am and ends at 3pm.
The Den of Alyth, an ancient woodland, is a naturally seeded relic of the deciduous forests that once covered much of lowland Scotland. It is set on the Highland Boundary Fault. We will discuss the geology, history and ecology of this Site of Specific Scientific Interest (SSSI), along 2.5 miles of paths.
Afterwards, we will make the short trip to Dun Moss, an extremely rare raised bog, and another SSSI. Peatlands store more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined. Dr Keith Skene will explain the biology of one of the least known SSSIs in Britain, and just why it is so important.
The natural history of links golf courses: how they came to be.
Bicycle -based field trip to Tentsmuir Natural Nature Reserve.
22nd June, 2024. Starts at 11am. Finishes at 3pm.
For anyone who loves the game of golf, this course is an essential outing, and won’t spoil a good walk. The finest links golf courses are found in Scotland, but just north of the Old Course in St Andrews lies the incredible Tentsmuir National Nature Reserve, a natural, pre-formed links course, but without a sand wedge in sight! Join Dr Keith Skene, the ecologist and writer, and discover how nature, geology and physics designed the best golf courses in the world, as sand dunes became bunkers and slacks became fairways. We will also discuss the importance of these places in terms of understanding the history and future of the planet. We will travel by bicycle for some of this trip as the distances are too long to walk. Participants must arrange their own transport to Tentsmuir, bring a bike, lunch and cycle helmet for this three-mile cycle and walk on forest paths. Details will be supplied.
Between two worlds: ecological zonation along the intertidal zone at East Haven
29th June, 2024 From 1pm to 5pm
The intertidal zone is one of the most fascinating ecological places on the planet, key to so much debate in terms of the impact of climate change, but so often over-looked. Here we find an amazing array of organisms that spend much of their day underwater, and a good part in the open air. This extraordinary challenge has led to some inspiring acts of survival. As we move from the upper shore to the lower shore, we see beneath our feet the intriguing process of ecological zonation.
East Haven is a great place to explore this amazing range of adaptations, from the top of the shore, where the seaweeds are so adapted to terrestrial life that they drown if underwater for more than an hour or two, to the lower shore, where they barely peep above water. And then there are the rockpools – whole worlds full of extraordinary natural stories.
It was at East Haven, in 1994, that Dr Keith Skene discovered why these seaweeds cope with these rapidly changing conditions, as an undergraduate student at the University of Dundee. Join him as he teases apart the magic and history of the rocky shores at East Haven, one of the earliest recorded fishing communities in Scotland. The rocks can be slippery in places so wear shoes with a good grip.