Curious About Nature: A Passion for Fieldwork

Notwithstanding the importance of modern technology, fieldwork remains vital, not least through helping to inspire and educate the next generation. Fieldwork has the ingredients of intellectual curiosity, passion, rigour and engagement with the outdoor world - to name just a few. You may be simply noting what you see around you, making detailed records, or carrying out an experiment; all of this and much more amounts to fieldwork. Being curious, you think about the world around you, and through patient observation develop and test ideas. Forty contributors capture the excitement and importance of fieldwork through a wide variety of examples, from urban graffiti to the Great Barrier Reef. Outdoor learning is for life: people have the greatest respect and care for their world when they have first-hand experience of it. The Editors are donating all royalties due to them to the environmental charity, The Field Studies Council, to support student fieldwork at the Council's field centres.

Tim Burt retired as Master of Hatfield College and Professor of Geography at the University of Durham in 2017. His research focuses on catchment hydrology, water quality and climate history. Burt has run the two oldest university weather stations in the UK: the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford (dating from 1767), and the Durham Observatory (from 1850). President of the Field Studies Council and editor of its journal Field Studies, Burt was awarded the Linton Medal by the British Society for Geomorphology in 2017. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the British Society for Geomorphology.

Des Thompson is the Principal Adviser on Science and Biodiversity with Scottish Natural Heritage. With particular interests in field ecology, his books cover a broad range of interests including birds of prey, shorebirds, alpine and upland habitats, and the Cairngorms and other mountain areas. Thompson chairs the Technical Advisory Group advising the UN Convention on Migratory Species on the conservation of migratory raptors in Africa and Eurasia.  Awarded the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management's (CIEEM) Medal in 2019, Thompson is Chairman of the Field Studies Council, and is an elected Fellow of the CIEEM and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.