John Crawford, Science Director at Rothamsted Research, explaining how soil regulates the global climate, provides us with almost all our food and water, and is the recycling system that supports most of the Earth’s biodiversity. On the Earth Stage at new Scientist Live 2019
Soil regulates the global climate, provides us with almost all our food and water, and is the recycling system that supports most of the Earth’s biodiversity. It delivers these critical functions by adapting internal connections in response to external inputs in a way that is directly analogous to how the human brain works. Yet, the natural fertility of nearly half of the worlds soil is damaged by the way we manage it. In this talk, John Crawford will show how the world’s oldest scientific experiment is making us think in a totally new way about soil, its health, and how to look after it. John Crawford is currently professor of theoretical biology at Rothamsted Research, the world’s oldest agricultural research organisation. He is a theoretical physicist who has worked on problems in astrophysics, cosmology, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, cell biology, ecology and soil, with soil being by far the hardest and most important to understand. He works with international industry and research organisations to help ensure scientific discoveries can have global impact quickly, and is helping the UK government deliver its strategy to improve the productivity of agriculture and reduce its environmental footprint. He works on projects in South America, China and Borneo.
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Location: ExCel London, One Western Gateway, Royal Victoria Dock,
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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