From India’s agroforests to Scotland’s soils: over the past six months, SPROUT PhD students Erika and Alex, together with research assistant Valeria, have spent long stretches of time in the Western Scottish Highlands for the first season of fieldwork. Their projects seek to understand how native woodland restoration shapes both the abiotic and biotic properties of the region’s organic-rich soils.
For eight weeks, Daisy and Rama, PhD students from POLNET, explored the coffee landscapes of Coorg, India, known for its biodiversity-friendly farms. Hosted by the College of Forestry in Ponnampet, they began fieldwork to identify case study areas and observe plants and pollinators — part of POLNET’s study on how landscape management and intensification affect pollination in agroforestry systems.