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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JTweedie" data-source="post: 3407353" data-attributes="member: 8075">That sounds like a good idea. The programme is mainly focused on animal behaviour (and just saying this makes me realise how little plants feature in the programme) and it would be brilliant to see something looking at the wider ecology. There's often talk about the focus on preserving charismatic megafauna, but having an understanding of ecosystems and the interactions between their living and non-living components then we can think about all the organisms and how they all play a vital role, from the humblest phytoplankton to a top level predator or keystone species.I've always said that we should see more about the geology too. This underpins everything we see around us. It determines soil types and therefore what plants live where and by extension whole ecosystems. By the very nature of some rocks being more resistant to erosion than others then this determines the paths that rivers take or the shape of beaches and headlands or the formation of cliffs on which birds of prey may be found or rare plants.Looking at rocks also gives a glimpse into past environments - not just fossils, but sedimentary structures can give clues as to what the environment was like at the time the rocks were deposited: for example rounded, pitted grains of sand indicating past desert or beach environments; angular sand indicating transport in rivers. And on top of this we have structures like cross-stratification showing where past dunes and ripples at different scales existed - you could take a walk along a beach today and see these structures being built now. But these beach deposits are often disturbed (bioturbated) by animals and plants and they could show worms, crustaceans and other organisms living in beach deposits today and how they're disturbing the sedimentary structures. You could extend this by looking at the organisms around us today and how they relate to organisms of the past. What groups of organisms have been the successful ones that have come through mass extinctions and left descendants with us, and which lost out and are no longer here? Corals have often been victims of mass extinctions (indeed whole groups are gone) but some groups are still with us today, but facing problems with ocean acidification - let's look at that today, explore the conditions that allowed some to survive and what needs to be done to make sure today's corals are not wiped out by human activity.The British Isles has some of the most varied geology in the world. While it's not particularly active today, there's environments where we've had extensive volcanism and structural change (for example the Moine Thrust fault in the north-west Highlands) as well as areas of extensive carbonate deposits, like the Chalk of south-east England. We've got extensive coal deposits up and down the country showing where there used to be tropical swamp environments during the Carboniferous period. There are absolutely amazing folds in rocks around Cornwall and other parts of the country. The Scottish Midland Valley was an extensional regime similar to the East African Rift Valley - maybe they could tie in migratory birds that travel from one rift valley to another.Geodiversity might not be a word many people have heard of, but it's becoming more and more important. We have geoparks around the country and the focus is to promote and preserve the diversity of our geological landscapes.</blockquote>

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