Planet Earth online: Recent Episodes
Natural Environment Research Council
Just arrived on Planet Earth? Discover the science behind climate change, biodiversity, earthquakes, volcanoes, life in deep-sea trenches, and much more about the natural world. The Planet Earth podcast - putting you in touch with the latest environmental research.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Phil Manning, Victoria Egerton and Bill Sellers of the University of Manchester are joined by local geologist Paul Ensom at the Isle of Purbeck on Britain's Jurassic Coast to talk about some dinosaur tracks recently found in the area.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ruth Welters of the University of East Anglia and potato farmer, Johnny Giggins explain how environmental science can help the agricultural sector plan for future weather extremes.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sophy Charlton and Oliver Craig of the University of York talk about the work they're doing to find out about our ancestors' favourite foods six thousand years ago.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Alex Ford and Stephen Short of the University of Portsmouth explain why we need to understand the effects of contraceptives, anti-depressants and other prescription drugs on marine organisms to protect our environment.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Greg Sambrook Smith of the University of Birmingham reports from Bangladesh on the effects of river bank erosion on the local people living alongside the Brahmaputra River.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Jerry Blackford and Steve Widdicombe of Plymouth Marine Laboratory talk about the world's first carbon capture and storage leakage experiment which looks at its effects on the marine environment.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Terry Marsh and Mike Acreman from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology talk about their work on UK flooding.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation and Tom Oliver of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology explain how records of millions of moths, citizen science and expert analysis are showing that populations of large moths are under increasing pressure.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Jamie Stevens and Josie Paris of the University of Exeter explain how some fish have adapted to heavily polluted rivers in southwest England.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Stephan Wolf of Queen Mary, University of London, and Jason Lim of Rothamsted Research explain why some honeybees may be struggling to make it back to the hive after foraging trips.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Russell Wynn and Maaten Furlong of NERC's National Oceanography Centre tell us about a just-launched fleet of marine robots that will map ocean life in key fishing grounds off the southwest tip of Britain, in a trial heralded as the start of a new era of robotic research at sea.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Tamara Galloway, Matt Cole and Ceri Lewis of the University of Exeter talk about their research on the effects of fragments of plastics from food packaging, drinks bottles and even facial scrubs on marine wildlife.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Elizabeth Wellington and Greg Amos of the University of Warwick explain how sewage treatment could be helping spread highly drug-resistant bacteria around the environment.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Steve Simpson and Rick Bruintjes of the University of Exeter and HR Wallingford describe a huge experiment to find out how man-made, underwater noise affects cod, plaice, crabs and other marine life.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ilik Saccheri and Arjen Van 't Hof of the University of Liverpool describe how the British Peppered Moth changed from peppered to black during the Industrial Revolution in northern England.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Rosie Graves and Roland Leigh of the University of Leicester explain why they're using electric cars to gauge the amount of fumes drivers, cyclists and pedestrians are exposed to.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Roy Wogelius and Nick Edwards of the University of Manchester explain how they used extremely bright light from particle accelerators to delve into the chemistry of exceptionally well preserved fossil leaves from the Green River Formation in the US.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Helen Hoyle of the University of Sheffield and Jim Harris from Cranfield University describe what a strip of land in Luton, southeast England, is doing for urban biodiversity.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Victoria Egerton, Bill Sellers and Phil Manning of the University of Manchester describe how the bones of a 72-million-year-old, 2.2m-tall 7.4m-long predatory dinosaur reveals intimate clues about how it lived and how it survived massive trauma.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Joanna Bullard and Jonathan Millett of Loughborough University describe the work they're doing to find out how quickly sand dunes along the east coast of England recover from the erosion caused by massive storm surges - like the one that struck the UK coastline on 5 December 2013.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Frazer Bird and William Gosling of The Open University explain why tiny midges are a powerful tool for telling us about past climate change, and how they can help us predict the future.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Gerd Masselink and Paul Russell of Plymouth University talk about the work they're doing to assess the impacts of some of the worst winter storms on record on the communities and coastlines of southwest England.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Steve Ormerod of Cardiff University and John Clark of the RSPB explain why toxic chemicals banned long ago are still causing problems for Eurasian dippers and their chicks.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ranjeet Sokhi and Kevin Douglas of the University of Hertfordshire explain why scientists are calling for greater controls on so-called non-exhaust emissions to combat Britain's air pollution problem.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Michelle Cain of the University of Cambridge and Stéphane Bauguitte of the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements explain how and why they're measuring methane in the atmosphere above the Arctic -- a region that's warming twice as fast as anywhere else on our planet.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Roland Leigh and Joshua Vande Hey of the University of Leicester describe the work they're doing with Leicester City Council to cut light pollution and help the council save electricity.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Tony Cooper and Vanessa Banks of NERC's British Geological Survey give us a unique insight into how sinkholes form and explain why the worst of them may be still to come.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Mike Begon, Andy Fenton and Federico Costa of the University of Liverpool describe the work they're doing to understand how infections like Weil's Disease and bubonic plague move from rodents to people.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Paul Whitehead of the University of Oxford and Mark Barnett of the Environment Agency explain why the UK's River Thames will fail to meet new pollution standards unless farmers and water companies take radical action.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Nancy Harrison of Anglia Ruskin University and Dave Leech of the British Trust for Ornithology talk about why city birds outperformed their country counterparts after the UK's cold, harsh 2012 spring.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ciaran Beggan and Tom Shanahan of NERC's British Geological Survey explain why accurately measuring the Earth's magnetic field is so important.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Kenny Black and Jo Gosling of the Scottish Association for Marine Science describe the work they're doing to make fish farming sustainable.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Phil Kerrison and Lars Brunner from the Scottish Association for Marine Science explain how seaweed could be cultivated to fuel a power station, your car or even aircraft.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Karl Ritz and Robert Simmons of Cranfield University, and Guy Thallon from fresh produce company, Produce World, talk about how they manage one of the most crucial ingredients needed to grow vegetables - soil.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Stuart Cunningham and Estelle Dumont of the Scottish Association for Marine Science describe their part in a major international scientific project to monitor crucial ocean currents in the North Atlantic which shape Britain's climate.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Sanders from the National Oceanography Centre and Captain of the Royal Research Ship Discovery, Antonio Gatti, describe the new 100-metre-long vessel's next-generation scientific capabilities.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Kirsty Penkman, Kirsty High and Nicky Milner of the University of York explain how chemistry can be used to work out which archaeological sites need urgent excavation to save artefacts from degrading.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Buggs and Lizzy Sollars of Queen Mary University of London describe the latest UK efforts to breed ash trees that are resistant to the dieback disease that's currently ravaging East Anglia and the south east of England.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Jason Hopkins of NERC's National Oceanography Centre and Paul Bown of UCL (University College London) describe how microscopic marine creatures that have been absorbing carbon dioxide for more than 200 million years coped with climate change 56 million years ago.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ruth Welters and Marije Schaafsma from the University of East Anglia talk about a ground-breaking project which brings together scientists and economists in a bid to put a value on everything the environment can give us.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Mathew Williams of Edinburgh University and Shaun Quegan of Sheffield University talk about a new earth observation mission recently given the go-ahead by the European Space Agency.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Helen King of Cranfield University, Jim Stevenson of Paxton Pits Nature Reserve, Cas Jewell of Nature after Minerals, and David Payne from the Mineral Products Association explain how environmental science can be used to turn old quarries into brand new habitats.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Alan Blyth and Lindsay Bennett from NERC's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) explain how the work they're doing this summer in a project called the Convective Precipitation Experiment (COPE) may help predict flash flooding and avoid a re-run of the flooding that hit Boscastle, Cornwall in 2004.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Bethan Purse from NERC's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and Matt Elliott and Colin Edwards from the Forestry Commission, talk about a new map that could help control the spread of sudden oak death, a disease that threatens trees and plants like oak, beech, larch and bilberry.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Alex Souza of the National Oceanography Centre and Jon Rees of Cefas talk about how their work could save the dredging industry money, maintain coastal defences and protect salt marshes.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Duncan Cameron, Karl Evans and Despina Berdeni of the University of Sheffield explain how their work on the relationship between fungi and cider apple trees could help Heineken produce better cider, and improve food security and UK biodiversity.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: James Lee of York University tells us about a UK project which is the largest and most comprehensive effort yet to investigate air pollution across London, while Frank Kelly of King's College London describes the link between traffic, pollution and disease.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Alison Tomlin and Joel Millward-Hopkins of the University of Leeds describe a wind map they've developed to help UK homeowners and businesses decide whether or not to install a wind turbine.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Robert Mulvaney and Emilie Capron from NERC's British Antarctic Survey explain how ice cores drilled from Antarctica give us a unique window into Earth's past climate and reveal a worrying trend over the last 50 years.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why the parasitic Yellow Rattle could bring benefits for wildflowers, and how climate change may affect the next generation of nuclear power stations.
This week: how woolly rhinos could bring insights into ancient climates, why breeding salmon is helping conservation and a device that can weigh the oceans.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at ways to reduce the risk of urban flooding; identifying species and building biographies from tiny fragments of ancient bone; new species of fungi from the ocean.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at the potential to generate up to 20 per cent of the UK's electricity from tidal energy; and why understanding the nuts and bolts of turtles' sex lives could help protect those most at risk.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why textbook illustrations of our early ancestors may have to be re-drawn; and why underwater canyons contain a wealth of life, including some rather ugly-looking worms.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: decoding the ash tree's entire genetic sequence to produce a strain which is more resilient to ash dieback; the challenges of extracting biofuels from algae; and the latest news on Planet Earth Online.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how a virus brought to the UK by insects poses a worrying threat to the country's great tit population; and which new technologies could affect global biodiversity in 2013.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why understanding where plankton congregates can help us protect basking sharks and other marine creatures; how primates planning ahead tells us about our own intelligence; and how to predict dangerous climate tipping points.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at some of the highlights from 12 months of the Planet Earth Podcast, including: a hairy crab; earthquake monitoring in Turkey; air quality around London before the Olympics -- and early disease detection; Europe's oldest cave art; what the first creatures to walk on land looked like; and seabirds.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how you can get involved in any one of the wealth of UK citizen science projects that have taken off recently, and why a little-known gas given off by many trees, ferns and mosses, could be contributing to global warming.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: an online tool to identify bats is helping to protect them, and it could make a scientist of us all. Also, an audio diary from a researcher from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science who's on the Isle of Arran in Scotland; and why there's more to ageing than telomeres.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at potential solutions to urban flooding, and why scientists are so keen to measure carbon dioxide flow through the UK's Norfolk Fens.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how conservationists are using science to help protect rare plants found only in Bristol's Avon Gorge, and are feminised fish changing wild fish populations?
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why salt marshes are so important, but are difficult to recreate; how storms are made; and why the ground beneath our feet could provide decades of natural heating.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: the steps scientists are taking to make sure the trees we plant today can cope with tomorrow's warmer climate; tracking gannets to find out how environmental change might affect them; and a tropical Antarctica.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why accurately forecasting solar storms is becoming increasingly important; and how understanding how fish shoal could interest economists.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: what the first creatures to walk on land looked like; the connection between the biodiversity of upland rivers and the ecosystem services they provide; and in an audio diary from Turkey, a University of Leeds researcher on the North Anatolian Fault.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: sex and the survival of honey bee colonies; why rivers are still recovering from the legacy of acid rain; and collecting coral from the Atlantic seabed.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how dairy farming in Africa 7000 years ago led to the speedy evolution of the gene that lets us digest milk; and how climate change could be having a detrimental effect on seabirds and fish in the Southern Ocean.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how browner drinking water presents problems for the water companies; the effect of street lighting on bats and their commuter routes; and how ultraviolet light makes plants emit methane.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at how urban heat islands will alter under climate change, and how these changes might affect your health, as well as our railways, roads and energy supplies. Also: why Europe's oldest cave art might not have been painted by humans at all.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how knowing exactly which bees pollinate which crops may help us grow food more sustainably; and a look at the effects of tiny particles called nanomaterials on the environment and our health.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at how technology designed to measure air pollution may soon be used to smell disease on a patient's breath; and the steps British researchers are taking to put a value on all the benefits of nature that we often take for granted.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: scientists describe why the planet's least understood but most diverse species of coral is under threat. Also, what the meteorite strike that wiped the dinosaurs out would've been like; and why co2 isn't the only greenhouse gas we should be worried about.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: researchers explain why, despite record rainfall, England is in drought. Later, how scientists are using indoor avalanches to figure out where to put buildings and roads. Finally, news of ice loss in Antarctic, and the benefits of bat dung.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: we take a closer look at tiny marine plants, which underpin the entire marine food chain and play a vital role in the Earth's climate. Also, how scientists are using volcanic ash called tefra to tell how people may have responded to rapid environmental changes in the recent past.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how fungal infections could threaten our food security as well as the planet's amphibians; work under way to understand the ecosystems around the hydrothermal vents in the Southern Ocean; and how it's people, not buildings, that use energy.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, Richard Hollingham hears about new air-quality monitoring that could help mitigate the effects of bad-air days; the effect of climate change on Mediterranean dwarf elephants; and exactly how many litres of water it took to make his morning coffee.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham finds out why the American signal crayfish is driving out one of the UK's native species; in our latest audio diary, Hannah Grist from the University of Aberdeen talks us through her research on European shags; and what noctilucent clouds tell us about our changing climate.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sue Nelson goes to the River Thames in central London to find out why nitrate pollution has trebled since the 1930s. Later on, she talks to a researcher about an unusual freshwater bulge in the Arctic, and asks if we should be concerned. Finally, we hear a round-up of some of the news from the natural world.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sue Nelson visits RAL Space at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire to find out how scientists check if the scientific equipment they put on satellites will work properly once in space.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham goes to the River Wandle in south-west London to find out how scientific research is helping to revitalise this heavily-used river; later he goes to Cambridge to hear about some of the hottest conservation topics for 2012.
It's not often that science news goes viral, but when researchers dubbed a new species the 'Hoff Crab' more people than usual seemed to take notice!
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sue Nelson goes to Birmingham to find out how the James Bond film Casino Royale and orang-utan conservation are linked; later she meets a scientist from the British Geological Survey to learn which parts of the UK power grid are most at risk during solar storms.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: we've got an end-of-year bumper edition featuring the best of our audio diaries from 2011. We feature scientists reporting their research from the Arctic, Sweden, Canada, Monterey Bay in California, and the Antarctic.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sue Nelson goes to the Thames Barrier to find out how engineers use science to decide whether or not to raise or lower it, helping to stop storm surges from flooding London; while Richard Hollingham meets a scientist who developed a technique that reveals the colour of truly ancient fossilised birds.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham talks to one of the scientists behind the discovery of the ozone hole to find why it's still there; how research on starlings on an island famous for its sweaters could help bird conservationists; and why forest fires in North America affect people thousands of miles away in Europe.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sue Nelson visits the largest collection of venomous snakes in the UK to find out how researchers are developing antivenoms to help African snakebite victims; and what scientists are doing to understand why populations of the European shag are declining.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham meets scientists and archaeologists who are working to preserve one of the most important Neanderthal settlements in north-west Europe to find out how they lived; later on, he visits the local primary school to find out what schoolchildren make of the Neanderthals.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how scientists find out about life in the oceans' deepest trenches; how identifying proteins from 50 milion year old reptile skin could help us store radioactive waste; and studying the effects of climate change in the Arctic.
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how hikers and walkers could be unwittingly changing the landscape by spreading alien species; what it's like to work as a marine biologist in the Arctic in temperatures of minus 40°C; and exactly how stable is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet?
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: in a geoengineering special edition, we take a closer look at some of the technologies we may have to resort to using to avert dangerous climate change.