tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/the-lake-district-28759/articlesThe Lake District – The Conversation2023-01-04T13:27:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1961292023-01-04T13:27:28Z2023-01-04T13:27:28ZWilliam Wordsworth and the Romantics anticipated today’s idea of a nature-positive life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502403/original/file-20221221-12-9wf35m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C6%2C1491%2C1129&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wiliam Wordsworth lived and wrote in Grasmere, in England's Lake District, from 1799-1808.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Grasmere_from_Stone_Arthur.jpg">Mick Knapton/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Musical performances usually happen in concert halls or clubs, but famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma is exploring a new venue: U.S. national parks. In a project called <a href="https://www.yo-yoma.com/news/yo-yo-ma-at-the-grand-canyon-big-time-and-our-common-nature/">Our Common Nature</a>, Ma is performing in settings such as the Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. By making music and bringing people together in scenic places, Ma aims to help humans understand where they fit in the natural world.</p>
<p>“What if there’s a way that we can end up thinking and feeling and knowing that we are coming from nature, that we’re a part of nature, instead of just thinking: What can we use it for?” Ma mused in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/arts/music/yo-yo-ma-our-common-nature.html">recent New York Times article</a>. </p>
<p>There’s a buzzword for this outlook: nature-positive. And it’s cropping up at high-level meetings, including the 2021 <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/50363/g7-2030-nature-compact-pdf-120kb-4-pages-1.pdf">G-7 summit in Cornwall, England</a> and the COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal that adopted an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/climate/biodiversity-cop15-montreal-30x30.html">ambitious framework for protecting nature</a> in December 2022.</p>
<p>As a group of environmental leaders <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/what-is-nature-positive-and-why-is-it-the-key-to-our-future/">wrote in 2021</a>: “A nature positive approach enriches biodiversity, stores carbon, purifies water and reduces pandemic risk. In short, a nature positive approach enhances the resilience of our planet and our societies.” </p>
<p>This is a dramatic shift from the mentality that has driven industrialization and global economic growth over the past 250 years. But it’s not new. As a researcher in the humanities and author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Wordsworth-Poet-Changed-World/dp/0300169647">Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World</a>,” I see nature positivity as a welcome revival of an outlook that English poet William Wordsworth and other Romantics proposed in the late 1700s.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Cellist Yo-Yo Ma plays ‘In the Gale,’ an original piece for The Birdsong Project, a collaboration to support bird conservation.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The birth of the sublime</h2>
<p>In the preindustrial era, when life was dominated by hard manual labor, wild nature wasn’t viewed as a terribly attractive place. In the 1720s, writer Daniel Defoe, <a href="https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/tour-through-the-whole-island-of-great-britain-ebook.html">touring across the island of Great Britain</a>, denounced the mountains and lakes of northwest England as “the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over.” </p>
<p>The mountains were horrible to look at, impossible to pass over and, worst of all, had “no lead mines and veins of rich ore, no Coal Pits,” Defoe wrote. They were “all barren and wild, of no use or advantage either to Man or Beast.” </p>
<p>Attitudes began to change a generation later, with the expansion of a middle class that had the leisure and resources to enjoy a spot of tourism. Early guidebooks gave directions to viewpoints, or “stations,” that opened onto spectacularly beautiful vistas. </p>
<p>Philosophers and poets began to view natural phenomena such as ocean waves, lightning flashes over a mountain or the darkness of old-growth forests with awestruck pleasure rather than fear. They called these sights the “sublime,” a word that we still reach for when contemplating, say, the vastness of the Arctic or the Amazon. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/obituaries/barry-lopez-dead.html">Barry Lopez</a>, author of “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/103565/arctic-dreams-by-barry-lopez/">Arctic Dreams</a>,” once wrote, the “sublime encounter” with such places offers us a profound “resonance with a system of unmanaged, nonhuman-centered relationships”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The aurora borealis, or northern lights, have become a modern tourist draw that attracts people to remote northern locations.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Romanticism emerged as the steam engine and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/spinning-jenny">spinning jenny</a> were driving mass urbanization. As workers flocked from farms to grimy cities in search of manufacturing jobs, a reaction set in: yearning for a return to nature. This became the hallmark of the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm">Romantic movement</a> that flourished across Europe through the mid-1800s. </p>
<h2>‘A sort of national property’</h2>
<p>Many writers, thinkers and artists contributed to this outpouring of nature-positivity. Beethoven’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/06/12/5478661/beethovens-symphony-no-6-in-f-major-op-68">Pastoral Symphony</a> and the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558">paintings of J. M. W. Turner</a> are examples. But in the English-speaking world, none were more influential than <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2020/04/radical-lessons-william-wordsworth-250-years-jonathan-bate-biography-review">Wordsworth</a> (1770-1850).</p>
<p>Born and raised in England’s Lake District, Wordsworth felt alienated from fellow students at Cambridge. As an aspiring journalist in London, he was stunned to discover that many people did not know their next door neighbor’s name. Only when Wordsworth returned to nature – first in the English west country and then when he went home to the Lakes – did he become his true self and write his greatest poetry. </p>
<p>In verse and prose, Wordsworth made a series of revolutionary claims. In the preface to his 1800 collection of poems, “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2">Lyrical Ballads</a>,” he argued that men and women who live indigenously within a natural environment are uniquely in tune with “the essential passions of the heart” because their very humanity is “incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.” </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a man with arms folded, standing on a rocky point" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">‘Wordsworth on Helvellyn,’ a mountain in the Lake District (1842), by Benjamin Robert Haydon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth#/media/File:Wordsworth_on_Helvellyn_by_Benjamin_Robert_Haydon.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
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<p>In his “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/guide-to-the-lakes-9780198848097">Guide to the Lakes</a>,” Wordsworth warned against such innovations as planting non-native conifers that spoiled the beauty and eroded the soil of his native region. Instead, he proposed preserving places of outstanding natural beauty like the Lake District as “a sort of national property.” </p>
<p>This idea later would help to <a href="https://exhibits.lib.byu.edu/wordsworth/">inspire the U.S. national park system</a> and England’s <a href="https://www.hdrawnsley.com/index.php/2-uncategorised/111-no-man-is-an-island">National Trust</a>. Today the concepts of <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-30-of-earths-surface-for-nature-means-thinking-about-connections-near-and-far-180296">conservation zones and protected areas</a> are central to the goal of a nature-positive world.</p>
<p>Inspired by Wordsworth’s idea that the health of human society depends on a healthy relationship with the environment, the great Victorian social thinker <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/john-ruskin-environmental-campaigner">John Ruskin</a> turned economic theory on its head. In polemical pamphlets and public lectures, Ruskin argued that the basis of what was then known as “political economy” should be not labor and capital, production and consumption, but “<a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/white-thorn-blossom">Pure Air, Water, and Earth</a>.” </p>
<p>Almost exactly 150 years later, on July 28, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3982508?ln=en">resolution</a> recognizing a universal human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CmTUNuTu27X/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Colonial conservation?</h2>
<p>Wordsworth’s influence on the conservation movement wasn’t entirely benign. Late in life, he lamented that his very advocacy of the beauty of the Lake District had brought in a mass tourist industry that had the potential to <a href="https://www.johndobson.info/Tourists/NumberedPages/Page_39.php">destroy the very beauty he sought to preserve</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, protecting wild places risks displacing indigenous peoples who have lived in harmony with the land for centuries. Creating conservation zones and protected areas in the rain forests of Central America and the Amazon basin has sometimes <a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/12/08/conservation-zones-exclude-indigenous-people-drive-deforestation-report/">shut out local tribes</a>. </p>
<p>Organizations such as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/sierra-club-apologizes-founder-john-muir-s-racist-views-n1234695">Sierra Club</a> and the <a href="https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/29/century-theft-indians-national-park-service">U.S. National Park Service</a> are now striving to transcend this long history of “<a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/conservation-policy-and-indigenous-peoples">colonial conservation</a>.” The importance of working together with indigenous peoples and learning from their time-honored values and conservation practices received new attention at major conferences on climate change and biodiversity in 2022, although some observers argued that the resulting commitments <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/words-that-didnt-make-the-cut-what-happened-to-indigenous-rights-at-cop27/">fell short</a> of <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/cop15-biodiversity-conference-fails-protect-indigenous-peoples-rights">what was needed</a>.</p>
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<p>In my view, Wordsworth knew that the truly nature-positive are those whose livelihoods and senses of self and community are wholly bound to their native places. As he wrote in “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2/Michael">Michael</a>,” the great pastoral poem at the climax of “Lyrical Ballads”:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd’s thoughts.
... these fields, these hills
Which were his living Being even more
Than his own blood—what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
</code></pre><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The idea that human activity threatens nature, and that it is important to protect wild places, dates back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.Jonathan Bate, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1894812022-08-26T14:43:01Z2022-08-26T14:43:01ZExtensive algal blooms in England’s lakes: here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481306/original/file-20220826-1650-8ddjov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There have been reports of extensive blooms of blue-green algae on Lake Windermere this summer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fishing-boat-on-green-water-aerial-1804469569">Sergey Muhlynin/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year has seen growing public concern over the state of England’s largest lake, Windermere. Campaigners, local residents and visitors have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/24/it-stinks-lake-windermere-plagued-by-blue-green-algae-as-toxic-as-cobra-venom">reported</a> extensive blooms of blue-green algae at the site, with concern for its impact on health and ecology.</p>
<p>Somewhat misleadingly, blue-green algae are not actually algae. They are a type of bacteria, called cyanobacteria, which use sunlight to obtain energy and grow. There are many species of cyanobacteria. These can grow as single cells, too small to be seen with the naked eye, or in large clusters.</p>
<p>Cyanobacterial blooms are not new. They originated approximately <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2021/photosynthesis-evolution-origins-0928">3 billion years ago</a> and, through photosynthesis, they oxygenated the Earth’s atmosphere – helping to make other life possible. Cyanobacteria are found in a wide variety of freshwater habitats worldwide, including lakes such as Windermere.</p>
<p>The nutrients in wastewater, such as phosphorus, are critical for the formation of cyanobacterial blooms. The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the Freshwater Biological Association have carried out <a href="https://uk-scape.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/projects/cumbrian-lakes-monitoring-platform">long-term monitoring</a> of the lake. These data show that Windermere frequently experienced blooms in the past. </p>
<h2>What causes a cyanobacterial bloom?</h2>
<p>Blooms occur when cyanobacteria, usually present at low concentrations, multiply rapidly. This process is often invisible to lake users. However, during calm weather conditions, the cyanobacteria float to the surface and accumulate along the shoreline, where they are visible as “scums” or “slicks”. </p>
<p>High nutrient concentrations are needed to support large amounts of cyanobacteria. In Windermere, waste treatment sites combined with sewer overflows, run-off from nearby farmland and release from lake sediments can leak phosphorus into the lake.</p>
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<img alt="A sewer outflow discharging water into a river." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481316/original/file-20220826-16-ij15fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sewer overflows can leak phosphorus into the lake, fuelling cyanobacterial blooms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/discharge-untreated-water-into-natural-lake-1630211617">Slavik Rostovski/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Nitrogen concentrations can be important too. Some cyanobacteria can use dissolved nitrogen gas from the air to fuel their growth. This can give them a competitive advantage over other algae when nitrate concentrations are low.</p>
<p>Windermere is also <a href="https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/lakes-hot-water-warming-trend-revealed-eight-decades-cumbrian-lake-temperature">warming</a> rapidly. The lake’s mean surface water temperature has risen by 1.7°C over the past 70 years, while warm summer conditions this year have contributed to <a href="https://seatemperature.info/windermere-water-temperature.html">above average</a> water temperatures for August. Fuelled by increasing nutrient concentrations, these warmer conditions have stimulated a rapid increase in cyanobacteria in Windermere.</p>
<p>As the climate continues to change, we can expect these weather conditions to become more frequent, and the risk of cyanobacterial blooms to increase.</p>
<h2>Are these blooms harmful?</h2>
<p>Cyanobacteria can produce potent toxins that can cause illness in humans and be fatal for animals.</p>
<p>However, not all blooms are toxic. This depends on both the species of cyanobacteria and the environmental conditions at the time. It is impossible to tell which blooms are toxic by sight and this can only be confirmed by laboratory analysis.</p>
<p>In addition to toxicity, the decomposition of dead cells from large blooms can reduce the oxygen content of the water. While this can reduce the habitat quality for aquatic wildlife, it can also <a href="https://ciglr.seas.umich.edu/spring-2021-e-newsletter/spotlight-dead-zone-sediment-p-release/">alter</a> the chemistry of the water and lake sediments. The reduction in oxygen concentration causes phosphorus that has been bound to iron in sediment to be released, which may stimulate further cyanobacterial growth.</p>
<h2>Can we reduce levels of harmful algae?</h2>
<p>To reduce the incidence of harmful blooms in lakes, the extreme weather conditions caused by climate change must be addressed. Mitigation of climate change can only come from coordinated international policy and action.</p>
<p>Locally, it is more feasible to manage the discharge of nutrients into lakes. However, both their source and pathway to the lake need to be established. </p>
<p>Further scientific evidence is required to determine what level of nutrient reduction is possible, and to guide measures to reduce the most significant sources. The Environment Agency has spent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-62560942">more than £700,000</a> over the past decade on tackling cyanobacterial blooms.</p>
<p>Another challenge lies in forecasting how lakes will respond to differing future climate change scenarios. We cannot necessarily return lakes such as Windermere to a pristine state because the climate, human activities, land use in the surrounding area and species populations at the lake have all changed.</p>
<p>The sustainable management of our ecosystems for people and nature will require further research to forecast what the future of our freshwater ecosystems could be if we act now and, crucially, what will happen if we fail to do so.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Thackeray receives no personal funding, but UKCEH long-term research at Windermere and other lakes is funded by Natural Environment Research Council award number NE/R016429/1 as part of the UK-SCAPE programme delivering National Capability.</span></em></p>Windermere has seen extensive algal blooms, attracting attention over its ecological consequences. But this is nothing new.Stephen Thackeray, Lake Ecologist and Modeller, UK Centre for Ecology & HydrologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1020792018-09-04T10:17:46Z2018-09-04T10:17:46ZClimbing with Dorothy: the Wordsworth who put mountaineering on the map<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234417/original/file-20180831-195307-1t43wa7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain is a popular place to climb, both as part of the <a href="https://www.threepeakschallenge.uk/">Three Peaks Challenge</a> and for walkers in search of the sublime Lake District scenery. But it wasn’t always this way.</p>
<p>In the early 19th century – when mountaineering at all was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/13/guardianfirstbookaward2003.gurardianfirstbookaward">still an unusual activity</a> – Scafell Pike was rarely climbed. But that didn’t stop Dorothy Wordsworth and her friend Mary Barker ascending the mountain in October 1818. In an age when women walking by themselves – let alone in the remote uplands – was frowned upon, this was a daring feat.</p>
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<span class="caption">Great Gable mountain and Scafell Pike on the right side.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Wordsworth is best known as the poet William Wordsworth’s sister. The siblings lived together for most of their lives, and Dorothy was an important influence over William’s verse. But she was also an important figure in her own right, and her account of climbing Scafell Pike is among the first written records of a recreational ascent of the mountain – and it’s the earliest such account to be written by a woman. </p>
<p><a href="https://wordsworth.org.uk/exhibition/girl-dorothy-wordsworth-women-mountaineers">As a new exhibition reveals</a>, Wordsworth and Barker’s climb of Scafell Pike was not simply a mountain climb, but a rebellious act that opened up mountains – and mountaineering – for successive generations of women.</p>
<h2>Natural strength</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234104/original/file-20180829-195328-1dfjno7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Barker’s route when they walked up Scafell Pike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Walking was an important part of the Wordsworths’ daily routine, but they were well aware and proud of the fact that <a href="https://archive.org/stream/lettersofwordswo01worduoft/lettersofwordswo01worduoft_djvu.txt">their commitment to almost daily extensive walks was unusual</a>. The Wordsworth siblings walked together most days for the best part of four decades – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_De_Quincey">Thomas De Quincey</a> estimated that William walked 175,000 miles over his lifetime, and Dorothy can’t have fallen far short of this figure. </p>
<p>In her letters, Dorothy repeatedly bragged about the speed with which she could walk – and how little fatigued she was afterwards – until her mid-50s. In 1818, when she was 46, she boasted to the writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Coleridge">Sara Coleridge</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jzcGdSngejUC&pg=PA401&lpg=PA401&dq=walk+sixteen+miles+in+four+hours+and+three+quarters,+with+short+rests+between,+on+a+blustering+cold+day,+without+having+felt+any+fatigue&source=bl&ots=sCicN7M51n&sig=0cQyYSTtjKbbmSU8uGbEJinbAKE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiD7_mB4J7dAhXrLMAKHVNQDxEQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=walk%20sixteen%20miles%20in%20four%20hours%20and%20three%20quarters%2C%20with%20short%20rests%20between%2C%20on%20a%20blustering%20cold%20day%2C%20without%20having%20felt%20any%20fatigue&f=false">that she could</a> “walk 16 miles in four hours and three quarters, with short rests between, on a blustering cold day, without having felt any fatigue”. That’s an impressive pace of a little under four miles an hour around the Lake District hills.</p>
<h2>The climb</h2>
<p>Climbing up Scafell Pike with Barker was perhaps Wordsworth’s most significant walking achievement. <a href="http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/this-girl-did-dorothy-wordsworth-a-pioneer-among-women-walkers-and-mountaineers">Reading the letter</a> in which she describes this feat suggests her way of understanding the mountains went well beyond tales of sporting prowess. She saw that examining the details of a mountainside could be just as rewarding as the view from the summit.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234109/original/file-20180829-195325-nb82na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scafell, Looking North, oil painting by Delmar Banner, 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/resources/images/8434413/">Westmorland Gazette</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one moment she describes a landscape that stretches out for miles from the summit on which she stands. But at the next, when she looks down, she realises that though the summit seemed lifeless at first glance, beauty could be found clinging to the rocks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I ought to have described the last part of our ascent to Scaw Fell pike. There, not a blade of grass was to be seen – hardly a cushion of moss, and that was parched and brown; and only growing rarely between the huge blocks and stones which cover the summit and lie in heaps all round to a great distance, like Skeletons or bones of the Earth not wanted at the creation, and here left to be covered with never-dying lichens, which the clouds and dews nourish; and adorn with colours of the most vivid and exquisite beauty, and endless in variety. (quoted with permission from The Wordsworth Trust.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In focusing on these details close to hand, rather than only rhapsodising on the distant prospect, Wordsworth anticipates writers like <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-30277488">Nan Shepherd</a> – who is best known for her account of the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain – by proposing an alternative to more familiar accounts of mountaineering exploits that emphasise a victory over a feminised Mother Nature when the climber conquers the summit. Instead, Wordsworth recognises that paying close attention reveals unexpected features even on a barren mountaintop. </p>
<h2>Dorothy’s Legacy</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234276/original/file-20180830-195322-16z2txs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawing of Dorothy Wordsworth in middle age.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wordsworth’s account of the ascent of Scafell was later included – without attribution – in William Wordsworth’s <a href="https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/guide_lakes">Guide to the District of the Lakes</a>. The implication was that it was William who had undertaken the ascent. As a result, her legacy in climbing Scafell is blurred into William’s, and many of the people who followed in her footsteps were unaware that it was her they were emulating.</p>
<p>Despite this, her ambitious walking practices helped to establish women’s walking as an accepted habit – with many following in her footsteps. Wordsworth and countless others after her made it clear that walking and other forms of mountaineering were as much for women as for men, and in this way they helped to make the mountains more culturally accessible places for everyone to explore.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dorothy Wordsworth’s ambitious walking practices helped to encourage female mountaineers to follow in her footsteps.Joanna Taylor, Presidential Academic Fellow in Digital Humanities, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/921332018-05-15T09:36:55Z2018-05-15T09:36:55ZHow a ‘smart countryside’ can use technology for greener ends<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218441/original/file-20180510-34015-17mdvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ullswater in The Lake District National Park.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/learning/freephotos">Andrew Locking</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/smart-cities-19207">Smart cities</a> are often discussed as being the key to future urban living. The increase in capacity for more complex information can help solve human and environmental problems by saving energy and regulating traffic flow. <a href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/aboutus/media-centre/latest-news/news-releases/report-calls-for-national-parks-to-get-smart">A study</a> has now highlighted the potential of adapting the concept of “smart” for national parks.</p>
<p>Historically, outdoor recreation gained its popularity because of its juxtaposition to urbanisation. Motivations included adventure, simplicity and immersion in “wilderness” – away from human progress. In many cases this is still true. We are often told that greater exposure to green space and natural environments benefits <a href="http://jech.bmj.com/content/60/7/587.short">health and well-being</a>. </p>
<p>But how can the so-called “smart” tech improve our relaxing countryside experience? The challenge lies in integrating technology into outdoor recreation while retaining these crucial elements of the experience. Here are some simple smart options for the future ramblers.</p>
<h2>Waste control</h2>
<p>The Lake District example suggests that sensors on bins can alert the national park authorities when they are full, which reduces the problem of litter and helps conserve the landscape. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09669581003721281">Research</a> has shown that these kinds of messages work. </p>
<h2>Smart car parks</h2>
<p>It is also suggested that “smart” car parks will transmit information to motorists when car parks are full. This can reduce carbon emissions by reducing trips to multiple car parks. However, encouraging more travel by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0966692395000372">public transport</a> and non-motorised modes of transport reduces carbon emissions more effectively. This alternative should be given priority.</p>
<h2>Car-sharing apps</h2>
<p><a href="http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/30009/1/Smith%20et%20al%202017%20JO%20access%20version.pdf">Planners and managers of national parks</a> have long seen the need to reduce visitor car use. Aside from decreasing carbon emissions, <a href="https://trid.trb.org/view/184826">visual pollution</a> from large numbers of cars in natural areas is a long-standing problem. It takes away from the “natural” and “simple” aesthetics which are so important in attracting visitors.</p>
<p>There is considerable need to encourage car sharing, especially because the infrastructure in rural areas is less resilient to large numbers of cars. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13683500.2012.718323?needAccess=true">Academics</a> are increasingly pointing to the power of new data sharing and smart capability to solve this through measures such as car-sharing apps and better planning for integrated travel. </p>
<p>People who travel to, from and within national parks can do so sustainably with greater confidence if they have reliable information on public transport – as well as walking and cycling options – at their fingertips.</p>
<h2>Smartphone navigation</h2>
<p><a href="http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/16166/">Research</a> on walking tourism in natural settings highlights the growing use of mobile technology as a navigational aid. The internet is increasingly used both to showcase and research walks in national parks. But practitioners urge caution for more adventurous forms of recreation. </p>
<p>Interviews with national park staff revealed that in particular, mountain rescue services can be stretched when hillwalkers <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-41913754">rely too much on technology</a>. Navigating solely with a mobile phone or GPS cannot substitute map-reading skills when faced with difficulties.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218442/original/file-20180510-185500-3kz7j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walkers in Windermere.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/learning/freephotos">LDNP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21568316.80">Walking tourists</a> differ in their preference for heavily managed walking routes. Some look for relative simplicity of “wild” surroundings, isolation and solitude. Others prefer abundant directional signs, information and flat, well managed paths. These differences point to an important dichotomy as technology permeates more of the previously “untouched” areas of the world.</p>
<h2>“Smart-free” is needed too</h2>
<p>Technology is redefining how we engage with the natural environment. <a href="https://www.sportengland.org/media/3275/outdoors-participation-rr-spreads.pdf">Sport England’s</a> research on UK outdoor activity acknowledges a need for connectivity even in the most remote natural areas and particularly for younger participants. Rapidly improving mobile technology and information capacity epitomise the fast society many live in. </p>
<p>There are clear benefits to integrating smart technology into rural and natural areas. Tourist in particular are a key focal point because of the capability for improving sustainability in national parks. But the wider implications surrounding this development still need to be considered.</p>
<p>National parks should continue to cater for all preferences and preserve some “smart-free” elements, enhancing the experience of those seeking adventure and wilderness. People should also rethink their relationship with nature. If smart technology can help the environment, preserve biodiversity and protect sensitive areas, then it should be considered as an antidote to past human negative effects.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Smart technology can help the environment, preserve biodiversity and protect sensitive areas, such as national parks.Nick Davies, Research Fellow, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/807752017-07-12T13:29:37Z2017-07-12T13:29:37ZHow poets and painters of the past put the Lake District on the map<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177850/original/file-20170712-11073-w1me9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With its rolling hills, fresh water lakes and family attractions, it’s not hard to see why the Lake District is the UK’s most popular national park. Every year more than <a href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/learning/factsandfigures">18m people</a> take a trip there to enjoy the stunning scenery.</p>
<p>Those numbers are now set to soar, as the area recently became a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-40547691">UNESCO World Heritage Site</a>, joining iconic locations like the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China and the Great Barrier Reef.</p>
<p>The fascination with Lake District isn’t just a modern one, it first emerged as a tourist destination as far back as the late 18th century. Artists and writers, drawn to the region’s dramatic scenery, arrived alongside the tourists. They helped to increase the Lake District’s notoriety, and shaped the way the landscape was managed. The region quickly became fashionable among aficionados of the picturesque. </p>
<p>For many, the Lakes District’s appeal lay in its striking visual dynamism: its ability, under the influence of the weather, the season, and the time of day, to change dramatically from scenes of beauty to spectacles of sublimity. This meant that artists could sketch drastically different views of the same scene. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177684/original/file-20170711-29258-6oe38e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas Allom, the English architect, artist, and topographical illustrator captured the changes in mood at Ullswater in the 1830s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guides to the Lakes</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177685/original/file-20170711-28771-1am3i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From peaceful and picturesque and to stormy and sublime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guide to the Lakes.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even more than artists such as Thomas Allom, <a href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/localspecialities/famouswriters">writers</a> contributed immeasurably to the region’s fame. From Romantic writers, such as <a href="https://wordsworth.org.uk/home.html">William and Dorothy Wordsworth</a>, to eminent Victorians, like <a href="http://www.ruskinmuseum.com/content/john-ruskin/who-was-john-ruskin.php">John Ruskin</a> and <a href="http://historysheroes.e2bn.org/hero/whowerethey/4286">Harriet Martineau</a>, the Lake District has been home to an array of literary celebrities. Some of these writers, notably Wordsworth and Martineau, even <a href="http://www.lakesguides.co.uk/html/lakemenu.htm">published guidebooks</a> which proved highly popular and influential.</p>
<p>Then there were the icons of 20th century children’s literature. Writers including <a href="https://theconversation.com/beatrix-potters-kitty-in-boots-may-well-delight-adults-more-than-children-53896">Beatrix Potter</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/swallows-and-amazons-will-give-children-and-adults-a-heady-sense-of-freedom-and-adventure-63149">Arthur Ransome</a> – of Swallows and Amazons fame – brought the region to life for new generations in famous works that are still loved by children (and adults). </p>
<h2>Visitor hotspots</h2>
<p>Thanks to <a href="http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/lakesdeepmap/">our new research</a>, we now know that (not unlike today) visitors to the Lake District in the past mainly devoted their attention to places near to Bowness, Ambleside and Keswick, as well as the heart of <a href="https://wordsworth.org.uk/attend-events/2016/04/01/wordsworth-country.html">Wordsworth Country</a> around Grasmere. </p>
<p>Our work involved looking at publications by famous Lakeland writers, such as the Wordsworths, and by important but less well-known authors, like <a href="http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Fiennes">Celia Fiennes</a> (an ancestor of Ralph and Ranulph).</p>
<p>To find out where these literary travellers of the past visited in the Lake District <a href="http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/lakesdeepmap/">our research</a> used exploratory mapping methods to analyse a <a href="https://github.com/UCREL/LakeDistrictCorpus">collection of historical writing</a> about the region. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177686/original/file-20170711-29258-1v0bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our research maps show where writers dared to roam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The collection contains some novels and place-specific poetry, but it mostly comprises travel narratives and guidebooks – as these sorts of publications were especially pivotal to the growth of the Lake District’s reputation as a tourist destination. And studying the places these works mention can tell us a great deal about how travellers experienced the Lake District in the past – and how they have influenced understandings of nature and landscape to this day.</p>
<h2>Off the beaten track</h2>
<p>While our research shows that the places most Lake District visitors travelled in the 18th and 19th centuries are still among the more popular tourist haunts today, we can also learn a great deal from considering the blank spaces on these maps. </p>
<p>For instance, the mountainous region in the Western Lakes that includes the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sca_Fell">Scafell massif</a> was less frequently discussed and visited. These sorts of localities maintained a reputation for being a wilderness – somewhere that might trap you if you went too far away from the beaten track.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177853/original/file-20170712-14421-w5kqd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View of the Scafell massif from Yewbarrow, Wasdale, Cumbria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37790329">Dougsim</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But today, the sheer number of visitors to even these more remote areas of the Lake District mean that this cherished landscape is threatened by the very thing that economically sustains it: tourism. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.threepeakschallenge.uk/">Three Peaks Challenge</a>, for example, is a way many people encounter Scafell – it has been estimated that a population the size of Detroit attempts the challenge every year. These vast numbers have <a href="https://www.thebmc.co.uk/the-three-peaks-challenge--what-do-you-think">serious consequences</a> for the mountain’s environment, which is why, in awarding World Heritage Site status, the UNESCO committee made two recommendations. These were that the effect of tourist activities be monitored, and that conservation efforts in the region be improved. </p>
<p>It is hoped this new status will maintain the Lake District as an important place for visitors to experience the great outdoors – following in the footsteps of the great writers and artists. But more than that, hopefully it will also mean more resources, care and attention to help the landscape, and the communities that live there, to flourish.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The 'Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities: A Deep Map of the English Lake District' project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2015-230).</span></em></p>Literary and artistic engagements have helped to shape the region into the iconic landscape it is today.Joanna Taylor, Senior Research Associate, Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities, Lancaster UniversityChristopher Donaldson, Lecturer in Regional History, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/631492016-08-19T13:52:27Z2016-08-19T13:52:27ZSwallows and Amazons will give children (and adults) a heady sense of freedom and adventure<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133523/original/image-20160809-18034-3glm5x.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The new film version of Swallows and Amazons set in the Lake District.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://press.optimumreleasing.net/press/?id=1836">Studio Canal</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The hotly anticipated <a href="http://www.swallowsandamazonsforever.co.uk/">Swallows and Amazons film</a> will introduce a whole new generation to the tales and adventures of John, Susan, Titty (renamed <a href="https://theconversation.com/titter-ye-not-swallows-and-amazons-goes-all-victorian-64020">Tatty for a modern film audience</a>) and Roger – who spend their summer holidays sailing, camping, fishing and exploring on the great waters and hills of the Lake District.</p>
<p>For many modern viewers, stories of exploration and piracy, may seem quite far removed from children’s lives today – the characters in the book are free to go off and explore by themselves for most of the summer holidays, which is a lifestyle that many of today’s British children don’t know much about. </p>
<p>In the novel, the children require physical and emotional distance from the adults and adult-controlled perceptions of the world. This is crucial to the kind of childhood engagement with the landscape that they experience and the sense of escapism they are able to achieve.</p>
<p>At the same time, the question of how much independence is appropriate is raised in each book by near disasters – including the children sailing at night alone with the potential of crashing or getting injured and lost on the hilltops. For any modern parent, one of the most striking features of the narrative is the high level of freedom the children are allowed – far higher than any parent would be happy with today.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EWkPCRjNyqM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Of course, in writing Swallows and Amazons, the book’s author Arthur Ransome was himself escaping into his own remembered past, to a place of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallows_and_Amazons">childhood memories of Lake District holidays</a> spent outdoors while his academic father – a professor of history at the University of Leeds – marked scripts and undertook some desultory research. </p>
<p>And Ransome needed to escape – from a world turned upside down. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/13/arthur-ransome-double-agent">Ransome was war correspondent for the Daily News</a>, reporting first from the Russian Front and then on the early stages of the Russia Revolution. A strong Bolshevik sympathiser he played chess with Lenin and went on to marry Trotsky’s secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, after he had divorced his first wife. The two of them escaped Russia in 1919 and lived in the Baltic states for five years before returning to England and the Lake District. </p>
<p>There have also been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/10/russia.books">claims that Ransome was a spy for the Foreign Office</a> but his strong sympathy and personal friendships with the revolutionaries make this questionable. </p>
<h2>An imagined place</h2>
<p>Swallows and Amazons is primarily set around a lake which resembles <a href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/placestogo/aroundconiston">Lake Coniston</a>, with the hill of Coniston, also known as <a href="https://www.walklakes.co.uk/walk_2.html">The Old Man of Coniston</a> behind. But it also draws upon Windermere for the town on the lake and the island, as well as <a href="http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/placestogo/explorederwentwater">Derwent Water</a> for the “peak at Darien”. In relation to this merged geography Ransome explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There has to be a little pulling about of rivers and roads, but every single place in all those books exists somewhere and by now I know the geography of the country in the books so well that when I walk about in actual fact, it sometimes seems to me that some giant or earthquake has been doing a little scene-shifting overnight. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the author, it is clear that the imaginary geography of the book almost replaces the real so that it is the world of “actual fact” that appears distorted. But this idealised montage of all the best bits of the landscape also proves crucial to the sense of place that the children in the book are able to experience. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133520/original/image-20160809-18014-1n0glii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rewriting the landscape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is because it allows them to reject reality and make their own map of the world they inhabit. They take imaginative possession of the island that they sail to and camp out on by renaming it and everything seen from it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After that they were tired and went up to the lookout place to watch the shipping on the lake and to agree about the names for all the places on the island. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Literary lands</h2>
<p>It is clear, that works of literature about place allow the reader to escape into an earlier, easier world – and in the case of the Lake District, a world fixed in that perfect past by virtue of being a National Park. </p>
<p>This type of literary tourism seems to be a peculiarly British phenomenon – think Shakespeare’s Stratford, Dickens’ London, The Bronte’s Yorkshire, Hardy’s Wessex – but one that is attractive to visitors worldwide. </p>
<p>And with the release of Swallows and Amazons, it may well be that more children want to head to the Lake District to follow in the footsteps of John, Susan, Titty and Roger, spending their time canoeing or building campfires, and reconnecting with nature.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133524/original/image-20160809-9203-1gpcq6k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tribe wars in Swallows and Amazons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://press.optimumreleasing.net/press/">Studio Canal</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, in the wake of Brexit, let’s turn our backs on the troubling present, remove ourselves from the pressures and tensions of globalisation, and retreat to the rural English landscape and fond memories of long, hot summer holidays. And what better way to do it than through Arthur Ransome’s idealised Lake District childhood in Swallows and Amazons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63149/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Bushell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How the new film could inspire parents and children to head to the Lake District, to spend time canoeing, building campfires and reconnecting with nature.Sally Bushell, Professor of english & creative writing , Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/616162016-08-09T09:24:42Z2016-08-09T09:24:42ZHow DNA evidence could be a game-changer in monitoring freshwater fish<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128083/original/image-20160624-28362-u129g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Krzysztof Odziomek/shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Water may well be everywhere, but freshwater lake ecosystems are among some of the most vulnerable on Earth. In recent decades, freshwater species have suffered double the rate of decline of land species. And <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012DC0670&from=EN">nearly 50%</a> of fresh water lakes, rivers and streams across Europe failed to meet the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/index_en.html">EU Water Framework Directive</a>, which aimed to achieve “good ecological status” of freshwater in Europe by 2015.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that current tools used to monitor the so called “health” of a lake can be costly, time consuming, inefficient, and in some cases, lethal to the organisms they are sampling. Which is why our <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13660/abstract">new research</a> is pioneering a new way of monitoring water species – using techniques more familiar to fans of crime TV shows.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320714004443">Environmental DNA</a>, also known as eDNA works in the same way as regular DNA testing, but rather than using saliva or hair, samples of water, soil or even air are taken and tested. The method works because every creature in freshwater leaves behind traces of its eDNA as it swims around, shedding minute flakes of skin, eggs, sperm or in the case of plants, pollen or seeds. </p>
<p>The majority of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bij.12516/full">eDNA studies</a> so far have focused on detecting single species using highly specific DNA-based procedures which focus on detecting one species at a time. Our study instead used a form of DNA testing called “metabarcoding”. This is where a single region of DNA called a “barcode” is simultaneously sequenced from a whole community of organisms. This enabled us to analyse millions of DNA sequences from water samples, identifying the DNA of a broad range of species and looking at whole communities of organisms – rather than just detecting single species.</p>
<p>Metabarcoding of eDNA is a very new technology, and has only been tested in controlled conditions – such as in aquaria – or on a small scale in natural environments. But this technique has the potential to be a game changer for biodiversity monitoring, as it is completely non-invasive and extremely sensitive. It detects more species than established methods, and gives a surprisingly good indication of how abundant they are within the water environment. </p>
<h2>DNA in action</h2>
<p>We used this method of testing in Lake Windermere, England’s largest lake, to discover what fish species are living in the water and their relative abundance. And the information provided by these humble water samples exceeded all our expectations. </p>
<p>Windermere’s fish population has been monitored since the 1940s, by the <a href="https://www.fba.org.uk/">Freshwater Biological Association</a> and, more recently, the <a href="https://www.ceh.ac.uk/">Centre for Ecology and Hydrology</a>, using a combination of established fish survey methods such as netting, angler’s catches and hydroacoustics. </p>
<p>So to see how eDNA would compare to these established methods, earlier this year we braved all that the Lakeland weather could throw at us – from blizzards to glorious winter sunshine – to collect over 60, two-litre water samples – from the very northern tip to the southern tip of the lake.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132040/original/image-20160726-7028-17rpxsd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research in action.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Winfield</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The eDNA metabarcoding detected 14 of the 16 species ever recorded in Windermere – perch, roach, brown trout, pike, Arctic charr, bream and eel were the most common. Only the two rarest species, river and sea lamprey, were missed, but it is possible they are not present in the lake at the time of sampling. Whereas only four species were detected in the corresponding net survey. </p>
<h2>Healthy lakes</h2>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bij.12516/full">Previous studies</a> suggested that estimating how many fish are in an area of water from eDNA data would be problematic. Encouragingly though, our data indicated that eDNA may be better as measuring the quantity than previously thought. And we also found a clear pattern in the spatial distribution of eDNA in the lake.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132043/original/image-20160726-7064-dgzkgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Views from the boat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Windermere is divided into two separate basins, the north and the south basin. With the South Basin more nutrient rich – also known as “eutrophic” – than the north. eDNA from species that don’t like nutrient rich conditions – such as Arctic charr – were found to be more common in the North Basin, while species that aren’t choosy were detected throughout the lake. This suggests that eDNA data could reliably indicate the ecological condition of lakes.</p>
<p>These results are a highly encouraging step towards eDNA becoming a game-changer in biodiversity monitoring. And we are now working closely with the Environment Agency and other groups to drive this research forward – to help ensure that the health our lakes is monitored in the most efficient and cost effective way possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61616/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lori Lawson Handley received funding from the Environment Agency and Scottish Environmental Protection Agency in relation to the work discussed in this article. </span></em></p>Scientists are pioneering a new way of monitoring water species, using techniques more familiar to fans of crime scene TV shows.Lori Lawson Handley, Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.