2026 BCRA Online Seminars via Zoom
Our monthly seminars are intended to promote the scientific importance of caves and karst,
and they describe ways in which BCRA supports cave research. Some of these talks are jointly
organised by BCRA and the Ghar Parau
Foundation. GPF is a charity that provides grants to British caving expeditions throughout
the world.
We will announce the next few talks in the series as soon as possible. Generally, they usually
happen on the second Monday of the month, with a summer break in July and August.
If, as part of the 2026 season of seminars, you would like to offer a talk on a science
topic that you think would be of interest to a broad caver audience then please contact
Emily Tilby with a title and a few words about your suggested
content.
Click/Tap a link or scroll on down.
Past
Seminars in 2026
Click the pull-down icon to show/hide the list.
Our Seminar Programme
#1 — Mon 12 Jan 2026
Once upon a slime: snottites and biofilms in neutral mine drainage environments in Derbyshire
With: Jo White
Time: Mon 12-Jan 2026, 19:30 to 21:00 GMT.
To Watch: see Joining via Zoom.
Snottites resemble stalactites composed of jelly-like microbial biofilms. They are traditionally defined as living in
highly acidic environments (pH 0–1). However, Derbyshire mine drainage adits (soughs) are pH neutral. To discuss
snottites from these environments required a redefinition of snottites to include a wider range of pH environments. I
therefore developed 3 models of snottite formation to work towards a broader definition of snottites.
Snottites and
other biofilms from pH neutral environments are also largely unstudied. My PhD research focused on examining the
microbial populations of pH neutral mine drainage environments, and their survival mechanisms. Using a combination of
geochemical and microbiological data I constructed metabolic cycles which suggest the processes that microbial
communities are using to survive in these nutrient-poor environments.
Joining via Zoom
You are advised to download and install the Zoom program in advance, from
Zoom Client for Meetings
. If you do
not do this in advance you will be prompted to do it when you join a meeting, and you could have
to spend a few minutes installing it and working out how to use it. It is also possible to attend
a Zoom meeting via a web browser, but this is not recommended unless you cannot get Zoom to
install properly.
Join the next BCRA Zoom Meeting
You can test your connection prior to
the meeting
- If you try to join the meeting before the host enables it, you could be left "in
limbo". Therefore, if your computer has not connected by, say, five minutes before the scheduled
start time, please log out and log back in again.
- If you cannot log in at all, please check our
Facebook page where
we will post any last-minute messages concerning, for example, any technical problems that we are
having.
- We might be using a Zoom passcode for this meeting. If so, it will be displayed
in a pop-up alert when you click on the link. You will need to note it down and enter it manually
when you are taken to the Zoom login page. Some devices might not be able to receive pop-up
alerts. Click here to
test whether you can receive these alerts. If you cannot then you will need to contact us, in
advance of the meeting.
- Please note that this event will not be recorded by BCRA. You can only watch it live,
via Zoom. The reasons for not recording our seminars are because a) obtaining the necessary
copyright clearances can be difficult, and time-consuming; and b) some content may be subject to
embargoes or other academic constraints. If you are interested in obtaining the content of a
particular talk you should contact the speaker privately.
Seminars Archive
View talks given in 2021, 2022 (none), 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026.
Notes for Staff
Notes for IT
- Slide timings are set in the JS variable $global_slide_times in
slides.js.
- The index number of the image to use for the Facebook scrape is set in the JS variable
$talk_for_OGI in seminar_data.js
- After Facebook has been allowed to scrape an image URL, if that image needs to be
changed, then it must be given a new URL in seminar_data.js. Thus if, initially,
$data["use_image"][7] = "/img_lib/talks23-7.jpg" then that must be updated by, say, adding
a version number (e.g. 23A-7) or Facebook will not attempt to re-fetch the file. If the
above syntax is preserved, the new "use_image" filename will still map to the correct actual file
name, as set in $data["image"] .
- Zoom link info written here
- When running locally a debug dump follows. (The HTTP_HOST is currently mail.bcra.org.uk).
