The director of the Lancaster Environment Centre, Professor Philip Barker, said: “Our postgraduates leave Lancaster with a deep understanding of the environment, a valuable commodity needed more now than ever before. Congratulations to all graduating on their success at Masters and PhD level.

“We encourage all our new graduates to use these wonderful personal achievements and newly acquired knowledge wisely in order to make a difference to all our futures.”

Amongst the graduate researchers is Dr Gemma Davies. Gemma was the first in her family to go to university when she studied geography at Lancaster University 20 years ago. She gained a PhD by Publication, for a series of research projects she has been involved in while working as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Officer at the Lancaster Environment Centre. They include research tracking pollution along the routes children walk to school, a study of food insecurity in remote cities in the Amazon and a project investigating how street layout affects mixing between communities in a divided area of Belfast.

Damien Lascelles from Royal Cress is the first person to complete our MSc in Food Security, a distance learning programme, aimed at people involved in the fresh produce supply chain. Two of his fellow students have won Lancaster Environment Centre prizes for their performances at PG Certificate and Diploma level.

The top performing Masters student is Matt Jones, who gained a distinction in Conservation & Biodiversity. Matt worked with the Lynx Trust for his dissertation, identifying potential areas in the UK for re-introducing the Eurasian Lynx, which was hunted to extinction in medieval times.

See below for a list of all the Lancaster Environment Centre prizewinners.

• Best Overall Performance (MA/MSc): Matthew Jones, MSc Conservation & Biodiversity
• Best Overall Performance (PG Certificate): Carl Lymna-Dennis, PG Cert Food Security
• Best Overall Performance (PG Diploma): Mark Edwards, PG Diploma Food Security
• Best Dissertation: Matthew Jones, MSc Conservation & Biodiversity and Kate Stock, MSc Environmental Management
• Best Industry Based Project (EBP sponsored): Jessie Moravek, MSc Conservation & Biodiversity
• Keith Beven Hydrology Prize: Marvin Dohm, MSc Sustainable Water Management