Ecosystem resilience and recovery from the Permo-Triassic crisis

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The public and younger learners have long had an intense fascination in the topics of mass extinctions and giant volcanism, as witnessed by the constant media interest in the research results of those engaged in the field. We thus anticipate intense public interest in our research and plan a series of approaches to achieving this impact. Specific public-friendly, research-related materials will be developed, written at New Scientist/Wikipedia level and presented in a dedicated EcoPT website cross-linked with other institutions such as Bristol's Permo-Triassic mass extinction site. Our site will include activities and pages about extinction, recovery, biodiversity, Earth system models and contain media-friendly, newsworthy stories of our research outputs as they become available. Evidence of our skills in this field comes from continuing work in Bristol by the Palaeobiology Research Group (http://bristoldinosaur.com/, http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/research.html http://www.earth4567.com/), and the Lapworth Geological Museum at Birmingham University (http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/lapworth-museum/about/object-archive.aspx).
We have also experience (e.g. Dunhill) of promoting resources for schools, which we will apply to this project. Thus, we will run a series workshops and provide teaching materials for school teachers, in partnership with STEMNet (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network), with a particular focus on mass extinction, resilience and earth-system science themes. We will also directly engage with the public through science fairs in both China and the UK. Thus, we will prepare a high-quality portable exhibit that will be combined with table exhibits for manned displays at venues such as the Edinburgh International Science Festival staffed by project investigators and PDRAs. Individually, investigators will also provide talks to regional scientific societies (e.g. Café Scientifique): the team contains some of the most active contributors to such societies (e.g. Wignall, Benton) who have given 100s of such presentations.
Having prepared the educational materials, we will work with experts in public engagement within the host institutions (e.g. Kathy Sykes, Professor of Sciences and Society at Bristol; Alice Roberts; Professor of Public Engagement in Science at Birmingham) and existing support services (e.g. University of Bristol Centre for Public Engagement; University of Birmingham's Think: Public Engagement) who have extensive experience of organising public discussions and high-impact engagement events, and will continue to pursue such impact approaches.