Question: is ur work environmentally friendly

Emma Pilgrim answered on 23 Jun 2010:

Hi

Yes it is. As an ecologist my main aim is to find out how insects, plants, birds interact with the environment and what we can learn from this. In my current job my mian aim is to try and work out how we can increase the production of nutritious food yet without having to damage the environment as we have in the past. before we thought much more about food production at the expense of everything else. Don’t get me wrong we needed the food to feed a hungry population, but unless we can use things such as fertilisers more effectively (e.g. by putting them on the land when the plants (grass or crops need these added nutrients for growth) then we can reduce the amount of excess nutrients from the fertilsers which end up being washed into rivers. Once in the rivers algae growth increases, reducing oxygen in the river so other river dwelling organisms such as fish die. The news isn’t that great for us as any water won’t be fit for us to drink!

The current challenge is to learn from our past mistakes to see if we can use our improved knowledge of agricutural production, with new technologies and our improved understanding of the environment to make this happen.