Stories Sustain Us #42 – Restoring UK’s Rainforests: Dr. Thomas Murphy on Nature, Mental Health, and Climate Solutions

Summary
On Stories Sustain Us, Episode 42, Dr. Thomas Murphy shares his journey from a challenging childhood and academic struggles to finding purpose in environmental science and restoration. He discusses his mental health crisis, the importance of nature in his recovery, and how volunteering led him to pursue a career in environmental research. His experiences highlight resilience, the value of community, and the transformative power of nature. In this conversation, Thomas Murphy shares his journey from a PhD student to a lecturer in environmental sciences, emphasizing the importance of teaching and empathy in education. He discusses his current research on woodland restoration and stormwater management, highlighting the challenges posed by climate change and the need for community involvement in ecological restoration. The conversation culminates in a call to action, encouraging listeners to engage in local restoration efforts and maintain hope for a better future.

About the Guest
Dr. Thomas Murphy is an Environmental scientist who specialises in application of nature-based solutions. His work uses field studies, trials, and spatial modelling to better understand woodland restoration and expansion processes to enhance resilience, functioning and ecosystem service provision. Work to date has focused around the restoration of UK native woodland restoration particularly Atlantic oak woodlands (NW Europe Temperate Rainforest). 

Show Notes:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-murphy-phd-5253a894
Personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/drthomasrmurphy/home

Takeaways
•Thomas Murphy reflects on his winding journey to his current role.
•He emphasizes the importance of nature in his life and recovery.
•Volunteering played a crucial role in his personal and professional development.
•His academic struggles were intertwined with personal challenges.
•He found a passion for environmental science later in life.
•Mental health interventions helped him regain confidence.
•He discovered a love for research during his studies.
•His PhD focused on the restoration of temperate rainforests.
•He values the importance of storytelling in science.
•Community engagement is vital for personal and professional growth. Teaching and empathy are crucial in education.
•Community involvement is essential for ecological restoration.
•Climate change poses significant challenges to woodland areas.
•Woodland restoration can mitigate flood risks.
•Engaging local communities can lead to successful restoration projects.
•The importance of understanding the interconnectedness of ecosystems.
•Using technology like GIS can enhance restoration efforts.
•Hope and optimism are vital for tackling environmental issues.
•Planting trees can have multiple benefits for the environment.
•Collaboration across disciplines can lead to innovative solutions.

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Transcript

Steven 
What if the keys to fighting floods, restoring ecosystems, and building climate resilience lies not just in science, but in storytelling, empathy, and the power of trees? And what if the person leading this charge once struggled to believe he had a future at all? Hey everybody, I'm Steven Schauer and welcome to Stories Sustain Us, where we explore the incredible journeys of people who are transforming our world through hope, determination, and sustainability.

Today's guest, Dr. Thomas Murphy, is living proof that the path to purpose isn't always linear. In this episode, Tom opens up about his winding personal and academic journey, from mental health challenges and academic setbacks to discovering healing in nature, the joy of volunteering, and a late blooming love for environmental science. He'll take us deep into the heart of the UK's Atlantic oak woodlands, also known as temperate rainforests.

and share how woodland restoration isn't just about ecology, it's about people, community, and resilience. We'll hear how GIS technology and green infrastructure are changing the game for restoration work, and how engaging local communities can not only help mitigate flood risks and fight climate change, but also restore hope. And through it all, Tom reminds us of the vital role storytelling plays in science and in building a more connected, empathetic world.

Dr. Thomas Murphy is an environmental scientist who specializes in nature-based solutions. His work integrates field studies, trials, and spatial modeling to better understand woodland restoration and ecosystem resilience, particularly in the UK's native temperate rainforests. With over a decade of restoration experience, Tom is the lead author of the State of Southwest England's Temperate Rainforests. He's hosted the UK's first rainforest conference

and currently supervises two PhD students in the field. He lectures in environmental sciences at the University of Plymouth, where he also teaches across sustainability and environmental management programs. And coming up real soon in June, 2025, he'll host an international webinar on temperate rainforests. So if you've ever wondered how planting trees, telling stories, and embracing second chances can shape the future of our planet, this is the episode for you.

So let's dive into this inspiring conversation with Dr. Thomas Murphy here on Stories Sustain Us, where we're inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Hello, Dr. Murphy, how are you? Tom, good to see you.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, great to see you Steven. Yeah, all good. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

Well, thank you for joining me on Stories  Sustain Us. I've been ⁓ eagerly awaiting this opportunity to chat with you since, I know, reached out to a month or six weeks ago to kind of see if you'd come on the show. So thank you for taking time to join me and tell me your story and some of the great things you're working on over in the UK. I'm in Seattle. It's a nice sunny morning actually here in Seattle, which is ⁓ we need the rain, but I'll take the sun when I can get it. So you are aware. Let's tell everybody where you are today.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, so I'm in a little village just outside of a town or a city called Plymouth, which is down in the southwest of England. And yeah, so it's a very small little village about 30 minutes outside of Plymouth. So it's in the wet zone of, so a bit like Seattle in that sense, very much in the wet zone of the UK. So we're in the temperate rainforest zone. So yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

Nice.

All right. Well, know you, part of why we're here is to talk about that and all your work with ⁓ the rainforest and restoration work that you're doing in the woodlands of the UK. But before we get into that, let's jump into your life, Tom. Tell me a little bit about you. Did you grow up in this area or what's your journey to getting to this little village outside of Plymouth?

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, no thanks that Steven. Yeah, my journey, because it's not often in life you get the chance to look back actually. We're always constantly looking forward. ⁓ So was really, it was actually really, really nice to be able to do that. it's firstly thank you for the opportunity to do that and the invitation to come on today. It's really nice to do that. So yeah, my journey is definitely a winding path, let's say.

Steven 
Sure.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
So, yeah, so I'm actually not from this little town, little village called Birelston in Devon. That's where I've sort of made my home. Yeah, so I grew up in a ⁓ part of England called East Anglia, very flat area. My parents had moved there from their hometown in Bristol in the west of England. So my dad had moved as a young technician.

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
with a pregnant wife to East Anglia. So I grew up in a town called Stowmarket, which was a very, you know, quite an industrial, rural town, not that much going on. A few small group of friends. My parents didn't know anybody, so it was quite a close-knit sort of family group. And yeah, she loved...

Loved, well, I think one of my parents is sort of thinking about, OK, well, how am I where I am today? I one of the standout things that I always remember is really enjoying walking. So my parents talk about, you know, so it's to give you a picture of what East Anglia is like. It's a rural area, it's sort of countryside and there's a small little stream, sort of very

Steven 
Yeah, please.

Thomas Murphy 
It's a place where Constable basically did lots of quite famous paintings describing a rural idyll of England centuries past. I spent a lot of time walking along rivers and enjoying nature. I went to a school in the nearest...

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
sort of town, so there's a place called Ipswich, which is, you might know that from football actually, so that's probably one of the famous things about Ipswich, Ipswich is the football team, which were quite successful, successful again, hopefully. And yeah, maybe. No, I don't know how long that's gonna last for. yeah, but yeah, so I went to school in that town, so my fam, my.

Steven 
yeah.

I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, they're in the premier league. I don't know they're gonna stay up, but they're Yeah, yeah

Thomas Murphy 
parents are Catholics, we went to a Catholic school, was a really, so we went to a really interesting school, actually. So it was, it was a Catholic, but it was a comprehensive. So we had kids from different backgrounds. So we had Italian kids, kids with Polish background, we had kids with semi-

Steven 
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Thomas Murphy 
my parents background as quite a bit of Irish family. So was quite multicultural and it was a really nice school. But we had kids from, you know, local council estates as well. So was it was a good social grounding, I think, and it sort of prepared me for speaking to and, yeah, basically supported my love of actually speaking to

Steven 
Okay. Yeah, nice.

Thomas Murphy 
lots of different people and that's something I get to do in my job actually which is really really nice. So yeah so that's ⁓ the place I went to school and grew up. Maybe I could talk to about some of what well I wasn't exactly that successful at school so I was

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, I was

going to ask you about your academics. You kind of talked about getting this early love of nature from walking along the rivers and being outside and everything. Academically, were you drawn towards that profession early on or not? Because you just hinted at you weren't necessarily the highest achieving student. yeah, what was your academic journey like?

Thomas Murphy 
Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, wasn't really, I didn't think I was academic, which is interesting. So I would enjoy school for seeing my mates, so socialising and playing football. So I love to play football. that was, I sort of, yeah, that was really how I saw school. So a lot of what went in, went in one ear and then came out the other, really, to be honest. So, but I did always enjoy art.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, grew up doing the same thing. ⁓

Yep, me too.

Thomas Murphy 
So I had a real passion for drawing and those sort of being outside really sort of inspired me to be creative. So I used to have quite bad problems when I was young with anxiety and stress and I found it really therapeutic. I ended up that was the thing I really enjoyed. So I remember doing my GCSEs and excelling in art. I did okay at the other subjects, given the amount of

Steven 
Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice.

Thomas Murphy 
effort I put into them, which wasn't particularly much, but I really, really enjoyed the art and also geography. So I enjoyed a subject where I could learn about nature a bit more, but I didn't really do too much revision. But I did my GCSEs, which is sort of high school, then when I went to do my A levels and I chose a very

Steven 
You

Okay.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
quite a mix of subjects. So I chose biology because I loved, I was interested in the natural world, but I chose geography. I chose maths. Sorry, not maths. I chose physics and I chose art. So it's quite a mix of subjects there. And it probably reflected that I didn't really, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was just enjoying being a teenager, enjoying having friends and

Steven 
Yeah.

That is a wide range. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sure.

Thomas Murphy 
you know girlfriends and etc you know so I looked back at that time with real fondness yeah and then didn't do didn't I probably should have put a bit more work into my a level results and then I ended up falling into I ended up going to art school so I did a foundation degree in art at a local college so the Suffolk College

Steven 
Yeah.

Nice.

Thomas Murphy 
after, well, I sort of look back and think maybe it was the decision I made at the time, you know, but I sort of halfway through that I had some really, well, I ended up splitting. So I really enjoyed it. went to, well, part of it, went, I did a project on trees. So I did a...

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

This is an art project?

Thomas Murphy 
An art project, yeah, it was all about

Steven 
Yeah, okay.

Thomas Murphy 
trees and it was about the negative space between trees. So we've got these really nice big oak trees in a nearby park and I ended up doing some lots of drawings and illustrations. So I thought in my head, OK, that's my path. I want to be an illustrator anyway. Yeah, halfway through that I sort of very much. Yeah, I fell out of it really. I did actually, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
I split up with a girlfriend at the time. had my mum, she moved away. So my parents split up when I was about 10 or so. So yeah, I found that really difficult. So mentally, I sort of struggled a bit. Life was happening. was being a teenager and it was quite difficult.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, life was happening. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for

sharing that vulnerability about that. Those are real stories, right? I those things happen to folks everywhere and those are hard situations for a young mind to kind of understand and to manage. So that makes a lot of sense.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely something that I think when I was thinking about today, doing the reflecting, it's like, yeah, it's important for my story really. It sort of inspired me. yeah, following that I had yeah, yeah, I quite a bad sort of period. So I fell out of the course. I ended up, yeah, feeling really depressed and I got to a really, yeah, quite a bad point at one point and

Steven 
Yeah, nice. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, was mentally and I was not in a good spot. was didn't know what to do with my life. I failed basically my A level, my my art degree, didn't have a qualification. Yeah, wasn't I was definitely feeling, yeah, not not good. Yeah, yeah, and it does happen at that age and you know, you don't know what to do and you're

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, things sounds like pretty heavy for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

⁓

Thomas Murphy 
you're feeling sort

of, you know, what I'm going to do in my life. So yeah.

Steven 
Yep, had a very similar,

yeah, when I kind of finished with my undergraduate degree and like, well now what, you know? Yeah, yeah, and not having any real sense of clear direction. It was a hard time, so I can relate to some of the things that you're sharing, so, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's

good. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, it's, can be really difficult at that age. And that's why with the students I now talk to, I have a lot of, a lot of time for them because I think they have a tough time. You know, it's a tough age. Finding your confidence and finding your feet in life is, difficult. And some people, you know, it's easy, but you know, some people, you know, it can, it can start off, you know, difficult. So, yeah, so was, was certainly difficult for

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thomas Murphy 
a while so I dropped out like I said of this this this art school and then I yeah I working at a ended up so when I was 16 I had a weekend job basically working in a newspaper distribution centre so I was very manual labour working in a factory but it was yeah it was it was a bit of job for a while

Steven 
Yeah. Sure.

Thomas Murphy 
And yeah, life went on and I had a... Well, I suppose my life got to a of a crisis point, actually. I actually got so far where I had a really bad period where I couldn't... So by this time I was early 20s. So it had been two or three years since I dropped out of this foundation degree, this art degree. And yeah, I was...

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
pretty much on the verge of trying to jump over a cliff or actually, yeah. So it got that bad. Yeah, it got really serious. had a real mental health crisis at one point.

Steven 
wow. Yeah. That got that serious. Wow. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Thank

you again, Tom, your, just for your honesty. mean, these are real things that happen to people and these aren't things that need to be hidden or shamed or anything. These are real human experiences and I'm sorry you went through that, but I'm...

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah. Yeah.

No. No.

Steven 
I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of the story about how you eventually found a lighter path away from some of that darkness. But again, thank you for your honesty. That's really important. So, I appreciate it.

Thomas Murphy 
No thanks Steven. I was deciding if I should mention those sort of things, but I think actually it's really important to be honest about these sort of things.

Steven 
Yeah, it is. is. Other people need to know

that normalize those types of hard situations because they happen. They happen. If we don't talk about them, then people feel like they're alone and isolated when they're in those circumstances. you know, there's so many of us have experienced hard times like that. And if we don't ⁓ share openly ⁓ to whatever degree of comfort we have around sharing those personal things, but sharing it, it helps normalize it for somebody else listening to this or hearing it that

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, they do. Yeah.

Steven 
I'm not alone, somebody else feels that way and it's hard, there are ways to move through that and life does get better. ⁓ again, I'm really grateful for your sincerity and your willingness to share that deep part of your story. So ⁓ I guess I'll stop interrupting, but continue please.

Thomas Murphy 
No,

no, yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, yeah, it's good to talk about that. And yeah, and it's part of my story. So, yeah, so, yeah, I had this this crisis early 20s. It was a was a crisis point. And luckily, it was a turning point as well for my life and my pathway moving forward. it meant that I got

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
some help, some mental health intervention. I got some medication and my, it was a, I can always remember it was spring of 2012 and spring ⁓ is a wonderful time of year and I could feel my mind and vision clearing and becoming a bit more coherent.

Steven
Good. Great.

Perfect.

Thomas Murphy 
but also more hopeful about the future. was in a, one of the things I did as part of that recovery, I suppose, was I started volunteering at a local wildlife trust. There's a charity in the UK called the Wildlife Trust. So I basically did some volunteering and it was enough to take me outside into the woodlands with a small group of people.

Steven
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
doing very simple things, practical work like fencing and deer brashing. So basically protecting woodland from deer, doing sort of simple but useful and I guess mindful tasks, you'd call it nowadays, in the woodlands. And that was a great...

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
great process for me, a process of healing I found. was really, really nice. So yeah, so had a wonderful spring and summer of that year and that really built my confidence and I thought, okay, I'm in a really good spot here. What am going to do with my life really? You know, I need to do something. I need to change what I'm doing. You know, I'm not academic, but maybe I can...

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Maybe I can do something. And so I started looking at courses. So I thought, OK, art college didn't work too well for me. So let's try the nature side. I'm really, really passionate about. I could see the value of being in the woodlands and ⁓ work in these areas. So said, OK, well, let's apply for something that's vaguely environmental. So I was looking at geography courses because.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
When I was growing up, I was always put off science. I did science, but I always imagined it was someone in a white coat with a test tube. And I didn't really see myself in that role. So I was always playing, getting lucky at school, ⁓ going for walks. And I didn't see I was a scientist. So I sort of initially put off the idea of science. And then luckily, the university ⁓

Steven 
Sure. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
University of Plymouth. They had a foundation science course and they accepted me. So it had been a while since I'd done A levels. They weren't that great in the first place, but they said, Plymouth said, come on down and we'll have a look. We can do these modules on biology, statistics, maths. We'll get you to a certain level where you can then go on to the degree that you want to do. So I thought, yeah, that's a great opportunity.

Steven 
Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
I'd

been to Plymouth before, it's in really nice part of the world where it's got lovely scenery and it's by the coast and I thought, yeah, I can get into surfing and have a good time basically. So I moved down to Plymouth, which was initially scary, so moving away from my dad, but I had some family close by in Bristol, so I thought, okay. ⁓

Steven 
Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
So, yeah, I can really vividly remember turning up at the first lecture and being terrified thinking, OK, I'm not academic. How's this going to go? And I can remember getting the first bits of coursework in and going, ⁓ OK, how am I going to do this? But yeah, it's something that I really, really enjoyed.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
course I got confidence from actually doing a write, you know, it was was really I think it's probably the age where I could sort of apply myself basically so yeah.

Steven
Yeah, yeah.

Sure. Sure, and I'm

imagining some of the help that you'd received earlier in your crisis situation was also providing you some tools ⁓ to continue to work through some of those self-doubts and move towards a more confident ⁓ approach to life as well. I think all those kind of steps led you to that place where you could take on these new challenges and be successful.

At least that's what I'm imagining of your story. I hope that's accurate.

Thomas Murphy 
Definitely.

Yeah, no, is.

no, it's definitely I mean, that's sort of why. Yeah, definitely why I mentioned that period, because it gave me actual real resilience tools. I'd always been a willful person, but it actually gave me real resilience to say, yeah, now I'm going to I can get through a lot. You can you can do this, Tom. You know, you can really you can really sort of, yeah, make a do what you want to do in life. And if you you put hard work in so.

Steven 
Yeah, perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, I gained confidence from that and yeah, I started getting better results and started working and reading and really enjoying studying. And I was like, yeah, well, this is actually, I'm enjoying this. And then I finished, well, one of the good key moments actually of that year and making me feel settled in the area was I started volunteering because I mentioned I was

Steven
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
spent some time with the wildlife trusts in my home county when I was sort of in that crisis point. I wanted to have something similar where I could spend some time outside and yeah, meet a nice group of people and I, yeah, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, connect with other people. Yeah. lot of important

healing parts and just connecting to a community. Right. Right.

Thomas Murphy
Exactly,

yeah, so I thought, okay, new town, I'm going to get to know some people who are not just students and as nice as students are. But we had a great, yeah, I met an organisation called Mortrees. We have a volunteering fair and there was a lovely chap there called Brian who unfortunately sadly passed away this year, but he was a real big, character in my life actually. ⁓

Steven
You

Hmm.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, Brian was a lovely man who was very, very good with people. And we had a lovely conversation about what more trees this organization did. And they were a volunteer organization who collect local seeds from woodlands. They grow those seeds on in their community nursery, and then they plant them out at range of different sites. thought, yeah, that sounds really good.

Steven 
of it. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
So went out with those guys, had a fantastic time, met a really nice group of people from all different ages and walks of life. It was really great, great experience and it made me feel at home and it made me feel like I had the sort of the resilience to keep going with my academic work. And also one of the fantastic things I did is met my future wife volunteering as well. So one of the first days was was meeting my

my now wife planting trees, which is really special. so I went on to ⁓ do a, I went on to environmental science. So there was a very charismatic lecturer called John Ball, he's retired in his 80s now. He only just retired recently, passionate person. And he said,

Steven 
Nice, nice. That's lovely. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
If you want to change the world and make it a better place, then do some environmental science, take our course. So I was really taken by that passion. thought, OK, well, I want to be taught by someone like him. So I went down the environmental sciences path. And then I got onto my undergraduate degree. And yeah, I absolutely.

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
my grades got even better and I ended up doing academically really, really well. like, you know, I'm in the top few marks in the year. You know, it was fantastic. it was just strange because I was doing a science subject and I was good at it and I knew how to apply myself and I was really enjoying it. And then I suppose one of the really important moments of where I am now is one of the two

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, who knew? Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
key ones is one of the good things I did is we had a trip to Malaysia that was all paid for and that was one of the big things I thought about the course because I didn't come from a well-off background, it was a lot of money but they did have this paid for course to the rainforests I thought yeah that would be amazing and that was inspirational so one of the things that we did is we spent four or five days doing a research project.

Steven 
Nice. Yeah.

Sure, sure.

Wow. Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
in Southeast Asia doing work with trees and soils and understanding. I was looking at the buttress roots of big rainforest trees and it was brilliant. So that was really turned me on to research and field work. And the other thing was my dissertation project, was with More Trees, the organization who I started volunteering with.

Steven 
Yeah. Wow. Sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
I was actually, I did my project on a site which I'd planted the year before and I wanted to go and see how are those trees doing and what's the, what is the, so I had a project which basically looking at how the trees were responding to the soils they were planted in but also particularly the vegetation that they were growing in. So they were put into a sort of what was a

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
pasture field and I spent six weeks collecting data going way over the top in terms of data collection. I literally collected enough data for free dissertation projects. I was literally offloading samples and data to other people but I knew from that day on, well from that summer that I wanted to do research. I absolutely loved, I found Manish.

Steven
Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, some, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you'd found your niche.

Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, exactly. I absolutely

loved doing it. And I loved the research and I loved the statistics. And I loved telling the story of what that data meant and communicating it. So, yeah, exactly.

Steven 
Yeah, that's the important part, right? Making sure people understand

it, that who aren't scientists, who aren't engrossed in the data, being able to communicate that is such an incredibly important part of the process that sometimes is missed. yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, it's such a critical element, know, making

sure that that and that's how we change the world, you know, is communicating that in a compelling way. And yeah, so I did really enjoying that. one of the things that reflecting on some of that work is, you know, thinking about, OK, when I was at school, I was thinking science was someone in a white lab coat and and being very serious and

Steven 
Right, yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
And actually you learn that that's actually most of science is about is about having a passion for a subject and keeping going with it. And there's a lot of creativity in the process of understanding about your environment. So, yeah, that was definitely something I learned about how I communicate in a creative way. So using the skills that I really enjoyed when I was doing art.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

Thomas Murphy 
illustration to get across a message. was sort of using it in a using data to be able to do that in a nice way. So yeah, that was like a good learning moment and it set me on the path for definitely my future academic career. then, mean, Steven, I have a go on to my PhD and all the rest of that? And yeah.

Steven
Yeah.

Yeah, give a

quick synopsis of the PhD and that'll kind of lead us up to kind of present day and we can in a short bit transition then into some of the things that you've been doing and are doing now. So yeah, let's not miss out on that little piece of the story. But yeah, if you can kind of surmise how you got from this summer of, you know, rainforest work and research work and just

Thomas Murphy 
Yep.

Steven 
finding your passion for storytelling around data collection and now how did you get to your PhD and the work that you're doing now?

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, after that dissertation I mentioned, I basically started doing a master's project and I was financing that through, I was working, actually cleaning toilets. I've got a claim to fame that half of my PhD was funded or quarter probably, cleaning toilets at a local shopping centre. And so my PhD, well my research master's at the time was looking at ⁓

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
basically oak woodland. so we have Atlantic oak woodland all up the west coast of the UK. This project was going to look at how we can support the establishment of this woodland. So we've just got fragments of this really important habitat type left in the UK. And globally, it's a

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
deemed a temperate rainforest, so it's a globally rare biome, less than 1 % of the planet. So this project was really looking at how we can support the restoration of this habitat, ⁓ and particularly looking at the really early life stages of oak in particular. I was looking at. So yeah, I ⁓ absolutely loved that project. Again, it was more field work.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, nice.

Thomas Murphy 
And then halfway through that project, I managed to get some funding from the Environment Agency to look at how those seedlings and those saplings were changing their environment and mitigating flood risk and changing soil properties. So I had a wonderful time looking at understanding how quickly those trees were altering their soil environment.

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, we did

some great work looking at stakeholder engagement. And yeah, it was a wonderful three years overall doing some spending a lot of time in woodlands very early in the morning as well, which is like a real pleasure to spend time in the woodlands really early in the morning. Yeah, it was great. It was really, really good. And the field work's great.

Steven 
Yeah, sounds sounds lovely. Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
I really enjoyed it. yeah, I sort of, yeah, and that's, that was my PhD. And so looking at the very early life stages of oak, so obviously for your listeners in the UK, we have two ⁓ oak species. We have peduncular oak and sessile oak. So could give their Latin, but they're very ⁓ charismatic trees. So mean, oak and

or the world over are generally large trees. They're quite often long lived. But I was looking at it when they were sort of babies and almost, yeah, and I sort of felt a bit of commonality with them as oaks are quite tough and they go through a bit of abuse and they have a tough time in life, tough stuff, but they make it and they persist. I sort of, yeah, I felt a bit of a connection with those oak trees.

Steven 
Yeah.

Just starting out, yeah.

I like that, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

I'd love that.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
So, yeah, I sort of really, really got into my PhD and then I had to finish my PhD back in 2020. And yeah, I've gone on to postdoc research. as a research fellow on a local project in the area.

This is a slightly left field project. we started to, I was working as a, my formal title was industrial research fellow. So was working with businesses to help them reduce their carbon emissions through lots of different means. So looking at green walls and how we could use plants and understanding between soils and trees and vegetation in a different way.

Steven 
Okay.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
to basically reduce carbon emissions with local businesses. yeah, really love that work. throughout my PhD, I'd been teaching. actually, I went on some work experience. I bring this up because I went on some work experience when I was 14. So I had a week at an architect's office and a week in working as a wildlife ranger. ⁓

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
And I remember really distinctively teaching a few, class of probably 10 year olds when I was 14. So a few years younger than me. And I thought I was definitely an adult and they were definitely children. But looking back, it's definitely not the case. I remember coming out of that and teaching them how to make a bird box. And I can remember the rush of endorphins after I did that was the most wonderful thing. And

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Sure.

Thomas Murphy 
I remember getting that feeling again as demonstrating at the university whilst I was a PhD student, but then also when I was a postdoc supervising undergraduate students with their projects, which were looking at woodland, woodland restoration. Yeah, it was great. It was a really great experience. And yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

I can hear the passion in your voice for teaching and I'm sure that comes through to your students and you shared earlier how you have empathy for your students, particularly those who may be going through a tough time that you know very well yourself. it sounds like all the pieces of the puzzle, while they may have looked messy all over the table.

you know, 10, 15 years ago, it sounds like they've started to all fill in and make a really beautiful life that you're living now. So I'm thrilled for you and appreciate you sharing that journey. And I can connect on a few things in my own journey as well. I started out in after high school and in my undergraduate as a chemistry major thinking I was going to go on to med school for some reason that this seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But, but,

I did spend a fair amount of time in labs, in white coats, in sterile environments and was like, this is not what I want to do at all. And when an environmental science degree opened up at the university where I was at, ⁓ for me was Dr. McLean was ⁓ a, know, inspirational ⁓ professor for me that kind of encouraged me. He was the leader of this new environmental science program. So, you know, where you had your...

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Steven 
you know, the adults in your life, the professors in your life that kind of triggered some new ways of thinking and some change of direction for you. I was like, yeah, it's, and I had a similar message that you received, but if you really want to change the world, environmental science is where you're to want to get into. and, ⁓ so yeah, that, that's led us to this conversation this many, geez, 30 plus years later. ⁓ that was a while ago. so this, yeah, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Yep.

It's amazing how quick life goes, isn't it? And you look back at it, you think, wow, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, it is. was, yeah, I graduated with with my environmental science degree 31 years ago. So does not seem like that should be the case, but I think that's how the numbers add up. ⁓ well, before we get on to some of the work that you're doing now, I have one other ⁓ really important question. Who's your who's your team? You know, you mentioned football earlier, grew up playing it.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, great.

Steven 
⁓ You mentioned Ipswich. ⁓ Who's your club? ⁓

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah,

I am an Ipswich, well I'm a tractor boy, so I grew up in Ipswich, my hometown, so yeah, my football team in the UK is definitely Ipswich town, yeah, that's, yeah, my, yeah, so I'm, when I can, I can try and get to a game and watch them. They're a club with like real history, being the, yeah, from a small town, they've had lots of success over the years.

Steven 
Right on.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
I've had some tough times recently, they're moving on up. yeah, that's my, that's the, I mean, it's been difficult following them definitely because they're not, you know, it'll be an easy life if I followed Manchester City or Liverpool, you know, but yeah, but yeah, they're my team. How about you, Steven, have you got a football team?

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Mostly easy. Yeah.

You know, I, I, I love the sport. grew up playing it. And, at this point, I don't know that I'm a diehard for any, because I didn't, I didn't grow up having access to, watching the top clubs. mean, you know, in the States growing up in the, in, in the eighties, mean, soccer was, you know, here, soccer, ⁓

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Steven 
It was still such a new thing. so being able to watch, you know, top European clubs play that just wasn't a thing until later in life. you know, by the time the nineties and early two thousands, when we could watch, have access to watching it on a regular basis, it was, you know, the era of Man United, you know, crushing everybody and doing so well. And they were always the ones to see Man United or Liverpool. So.

so yeah, so I just, I'm at this point in my life, I just want to see good games. I just want to see the beauty of it, the, the, the skill of it, the, the artistry of it. And so I just love watching the games and, and, ⁓ I don't, don't, you know, cry when this club loses or celebrate when that team wins. I just enjoy watching, watching the sport at this point, which is probably not.

the right answer for someone who's a diehard fan of their club. But that's kind of the way it is. I just love the sport and Champions League games are going on right now and I got that on while I'm at work so I can watch during the day. So yeah, the big clubs over there are all so fun to watch. But what I tell people over here too, sorry we're turning this into a football interview, but.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

You

Steven 
People over here don't really understand how the leagues over there work. that, you know, even if you're at the bottom, like you're fighting to stay up, you're fighting to not get relegated. And that makes every game count, every game. you know, cause everybody's fighting to win, whether they're trying to win the league or just not, you know, get relegated to the lower league. And that's something that the sports over here, people don't understand if.

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Steven 
a team does a bad season, they're still gonna be in the top pro league next year, who cares? And that's just, it's a different atmosphere over there and I love the way you guys do it over there, so.

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Yeah, I know it's definitely that league system is really quite special in that sense, you know, because it is it means everything to people because, you know, it can be the case of someone losing their jobs. So these teams are quite often like the centre of the community in history. They were the foundation of lots of community action. so, yeah, they're...

Steven 
Yeah, every game matters, every point matters.

Right.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, it's definitely, ⁓ yeah, I think that's a very healthy approach in terms of not getting too invested. I've been trying to take that approach and I'm not, I'm a fan of Ipswich, but I'm definitely not a die-hard fan. I don't go to enough away games and stuff, but yeah, I think that's a nice way of looking at sport really, of enjoying the good bits. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks

for the little detour there. just, whenever I'm ⁓ speaking with someone from the UK, I always kind of have to throw that question in there, who they support or if, you know, occasionally some people don't even support anybody. It's not their thing. So, well, tell me, Tom, let's get back into the, we're here. Cause I could talk about football the rest of the day with you. ⁓ but let's, let's also talk about something I can talk with you all day about is, is the work that you're

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah.

No. No. No.

you

Steven 
you're doing with the woodland restoration work and how it ties into stormwater management and you mentioned ⁓ carbon issues. So what's some of the work that you're doing now and ⁓ tell us, I guess, tell us about that.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, yeah, so

Yeah, at the moment I work as a lecturer in environmental sciences at the university that I, the degree I came through, which is really great thing to do. So yeah, my work involves a lot of both teaching and research. So in terms of research, you mentioned the stormwater sort of management. We've got

quite a few projects and research projects that have looked and are looking at how we might ⁓ use trees in different ways to mitigate flood risk. So one of the things that a lot of my research looks at is how we can obviously restore woodland, but we can do it in places where actually it's

it's quite difficult to achieve. for those of you who are not familiar with the UK and some of particularly the north and western areas of the UK that I mentioned, these temperate rainforest zones, they're very, they're generally the hillier areas. So they've got mountains and hills, but they've got a long history of not having many trees because those trees were cleared a long, long time ago.

Steven 
Long ago,

sure, sure.

Thomas Murphy 
And there's real challenges in those areas with climate change. So we have lots more rainfall with climate change, particularly in winter. So we have lots of extreme weather events where more and more flooding is becoming a big, big issue. But we also have dry periods in the summer. I mean, like World Over, our

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
precipitation and rainfall is getting more uncertain, lots more extreme events.

Steven 
Yeah, more

heavy rain events followed by longer periods of drought. Kind of, yeah, it's kind of the story of the world over. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so I mean, just this spring, you know, we haven't had until a few days ago, we had no rain almost for two months, almost two months like the terrible amount of a very tiny amount of rainfall is really, you know, we're millimetres when, yeah, with it, we're sort of we're in the wet area of

Steven 
Wow.

Yeah, yeah, getting a lot more, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
of the UK and we should be receiving rainfall. So it's

really, really noticeable. Really, really noticeable. So yeah, that's causing lots of issues with flooding. Yeah.

Steven 
So when it does

rain, I imagine the flooding issue then, you described a hilly terrain that trees have been removed decades ago, if not centuries ago. ⁓ So what imagining happening then in this area is that rain falls in this, and it just rushes then down the hillside, down to the lower parts, down. is that the kind of the...

the flooding issues, is that what's happening or am I not getting that right in my imagination?

Thomas Murphy 
No, you're yeah, that's perfectly right. Yeah, you're getting a lot more water basically ending up in downstream in villages and towns, a lot more flooding happening. So it's just going straight off those hillsides. There's nothing to hold it back. And these areas are where historically we would have had, I mentioned temperate rainforest, but we would have had these forests that would have been dripping and lichens and mosses.

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
And these

are beautiful habitats. know where you are in the Northwest Pacific, you've got these beautiful temperate rainforest habitats with lots of epiphytes. And it's a wet environment, but they're beautiful. And they're needed functionally to intercept that rainfall. Yeah, so that's one of the challenges that a lot of my research focuses on, is how we can.

Steven 
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah, absorb all that rainfall, right?

Thomas Murphy 
how we can restore these environments across the North, Northwest Europe, which is very, so just to give you an idea, we have around 13 or 14 % woodland cover. So the average for Europe is around over 30 % woodland cover across these areas. So we lost a lot and. ⁓

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, so we're looking at how we can intervene in particular areas. So can we use tree planting? But how can we support natural regeneration to basically decompact some of those soils? And how can we support regeneration of trees in an environment where, so you can imagine these upland areas, not very many trees, lots of rainfall, but

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
very good at growing grass and animals and livelihoods for people. one of the challenges is how you start to change that landscape and make it more functionally coherent and better for nature, but whilst also making sure that people don't feel disenfranchised and that they exactly and that we can still maintain a food system that

Steven 
Yeah, economies aren't lost and right.

Right.

Thomas Murphy 
know, local food systems and maintaining a local supply of food and making sure people don't feel, still feel a connection to that landscape. yeah, a lot of my work, there's one, was quite an interesting project I can tell you about, which was basically, so I sort of crossed the discipline from my environmental science, so looking at

Steven 
Right, right.

Thomas Murphy 
Soil interactions, working with a social scientist and an illustrator. So I got the opportunity to get back into the art. So we ran a workshop which was working with some. So there's some local communities who there's a term for these people called commoners. So they're people who have the right to graze their animals in in these landscapes. So.

Steven 
Yeah.

Okay.

Thomas Murphy 
really tied with grazing and we ran a project which basically tried to get their perspectives of this landscape and where they would basically where they could support trees and how they thought that could happen. So it was really tense. So it's a really big issue at the moment about how we restore these ecosystems. There's lots of talk about rewilding and restore nature recovery.

Steven 
Sure.

Thomas Murphy 
which I'm all for, politically it's quite, you know, it's difficult. there was, I remember going into these workshops and very, very, it was tense atmosphere, know, people had a lot at stake, but we developed a method where instead of recording what people said, so people could be honest and open, well, the illustrator drew it. So we had a drawing way of recording it and it worked brilliantly as a methodology.

Steven 
⁓

Fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
And

one of the great things we had come out of that meeting was an agreement to plant trees in certain areas if we could be a bit more intense, if those grazers could basically ramp up their grazing for animals in some areas. So we actually got some really good progress out of that. one of the things we've, yeah, a bit of a trade off really. ⁓ And one of the things we came up with

Steven 
Yeah, that was kind of the trade-off. Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
So working with the environment agency here in the UK and the university and an organization which represented the commoners was to come up with some plots where we would actually test very small areas. So they're sort of literally 10 by 15 meters wide. And we would test in those small plots. So we said, OK, well, can you give up some of the grazing land? We'll fence off that area.

We're going to put some sensors in to understand how the densities of trees we put in influences the speed at which those soils can recover and might help mitigate flood risk. And they signed up to it, and they were part of helping that being implemented. And that's a really exciting long-term project, which we're

We're going to get sensors in the ground literally this month, I'm hoping, or maybe next month. So sensors in the ground to monitor both how those trees are changing the soil properties in those areas, but also how those trees are developing and how those trees are starting to modify their climate. So we're going to have lots of

Steven 
Yeah, their local environment there.

Thomas Murphy 
survey work

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
with some microclimate sensors in those environments. So I mentioned those temperate rainforest systems. One of the threats from those temperate rainforest is in the summer them drying. So we're going to do some testing to look at, well, how do these interventions and distance to the river and density of trees relate to both changes in microclimate?

but also changes in the biology of what we see. So those epiphytes, how much biodiversity are we going to see recruited into those areas? And also how much might those epiphytes, which look obviously wonderful, how might they functionally help support and mitigate those more extreme precipitation and rainfall events?

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
They hold a lot of water. So yeah, that's just some of the projects. One of the projects we got, one of the things I've been doing is one of the great things I able to be involved with was a group of organizations across the UK in the temperate rainforest zone have started to get together to recognize they have these temperate rainforests. So temperate rainforests, believe it or not, in the UK is actually quite

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
a recently popularized term for our what we would call Atlantic oak woodland or Atlantic forests. But it's amazing how these are temperate rainforest sites. The change of terminology really changes the way people look. It matters. It matters massively. So now we, the public now recognize these as temperate rainforests. There's this groundswell of opinion amongst

Steven 
Language matters. Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
big large sections of the public. So there was a few recent books that have been bestsellers, so times bestsellers in the UK, that have really popularized that we have these temperate rainforests. There's an author called Guy Schrupp, so he'll recommend reading a book called The Lost Rainforests of Britain if you want a snapshot of these habitats and how they're developing.

Steven 
Yeah.

Nice. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
and how beautiful they There's this really movement behind temperate rainforest restoration. Lots of organisations have now started to band together to say, we have this really degraded now and fragmented habitat on our doorstep, so very small amounts of it left. We have quite a big area of our country, reckon around 20 % of...

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
of the UK actually falls within the temperate rainforest zone. They're important areas for flood mitigation. They're really, really key areas for biodiversity. They're going to hopefully help us, like I said, mitigate those more extreme rainfall events. And yeah, so I mentioned these organizations are getting together. One of the things that I've been

Steven 
Wow, yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
been involved in is some research with a local Alliance called the Southwest Rainforest Alliance, which is a group of organizations in the region and they want to produce and they and I've been working on something called the state of report. So it's the first, it's like an audit basically of temperate rainforests. So I've been working on that last year and we've done some literature review with that. We've also done some

Steven 
Okay. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
We've done some modeling and mapping. So one of the things I do with my research is I like to do some trials looking at field work, but also I've now started to use modeling and mapping approaches, so GIS approaches, to understand, OK, well, if we're to restore this habitat, where are we going to restore it? So one of the things that this model does is say, OK, well, our climate's changing.

Steven 
Yep.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
And we may have these very warm, wet conditions now, which are needed for temperate rainforests, these warm, wet conditions. But how is that going to, has that climate changed in the future? And also, where should we be focusing our efforts? So can imagine with lots of, thankfully, lots of new woodlands happening, actually, we should really be focusing our efforts.

Steven 
Sure.

Thomas Murphy 
our energies towards the areas that are going to get the maximum benefit. So this model that we've developed is basically combines topographic features. So it looks at slope angle, slope aspect. It looks at wind speed and something called the Hygrophermi index, which is a precipitation and temperature index, which calculates the oceanicity, essentially, of that climate.

Steven 
Sure. Sure.

Thomas Murphy 
And we combine that with records of those rare species I was talking about. So we have some lichens which are found nowhere else in the world, which for the UK perspective, given we're quite a small island, which was recently glaciated, it's quite a unique thing. So we've got these really important globally rare lichens and briophytes. So it combines a range of factors to say, OK, well, where should we be?

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
focusing our efforts for planting, but also for restoring. And that is really such an exciting piece of work. I get really excited by this because it's really practical research. So it's already being used that model to direct woodland restoration across the southwest of England. And we've just got some great news that we're going to we've got some funding in to do it nationally. So we're going to be basically directing the temperate rainforests and where they

Steven 
Yeah, put our resources and yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Nice, that is wonderful news.

Thomas Murphy 
modelling where they should happen with practitioners across the UK, which is really exciting. yeah. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, congratulations.

Yeah, that's a big deal. That's the

congratulations that that's so, just for the, the, the audience who may not be familiar with some of the, the, the technical terms, you know, you thought you mentioned GIS, that acronym and, and, geographical information systems and, and just to, to simplify some of the, some of the things that I think you're, saying for, for the non-technical audience.

basically you're using digital map technologies, GIS technology that can have different layers of information and you describe some of the information that you're using historical records and modeling. So that then all goes into these models that you can then make future predictions about what happens if we plant here or I'm wondering if you're also doing hydrology and hydraulics.

see how it might be impacting storm water runoff or how many different multi-benefits are you looking at or are you just looking at the best impact for where to grow and restore the temperate rainforest? Are you looking at other aspects in these ⁓ models that you're creating?

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I realized I went, I got excited and got a bit too technical there. So.

Steven 
Yeah, no, it was

very good. ⁓ think I was following most of it, but I want to make sure the people who might not have the technical background are appreciating what you're doing as well. Because it's deeply fascinating work and very important work, but I want to make that connection for a non-technical audience so that they can kind of understand, that's what he just meant.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, sure. Yeah, no, we're essentially doing taking lots of different those variables I mentioned and trying to make a map basically of where we think the priorities are for planting. So which areas are going to see the biggest benefits for, like you say, the hydrology. So

I mean, that's, think, one of the interesting things about the work that we're doing is you've got the biology crossover with flood mitigation. So we want to really focus those areas where we might see the biggest planting efforts and restoration efforts in areas where maybe the soils are most compacted and there's the biggest risks to flooding downstream communities.

Steven 
Yeah. Right.

Thomas Murphy 
And yeah, so that model is and that map, which will be a map, will be hopefully used by those organisations in the region to sort of, yeah, highlight the areas where maybe planting might best support those rare species as well. So those moses and those lichens I mentioned, it might actually help.

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
understand how the areas where those species can move quickest and given our climate is changing massively quite quickly. so one of the things we're going to do is actually project forwards for so expecting, OK, so what's the climate going to look like in 2080? essentially run those different factors again and

And so we can identify, OK, well, where should we planting now that we might see the benefit for future in terms of, you know, biggest benefit for those trees for flood mitigation and decompacting those soils, but also for creating some habitat that's going to be, yeah, that's going to be sort of high quality and is going to allow those really rare species to move.

Steven 
Right.

Thomas Murphy 
I hope that that explain a bit more clear or yeah.

Steven 
It does, yeah.

You're kind of really looking at focusing limited resources. None of us have enough money to do all the planting we want to do or, you know.

human capital, human power to do all the restoration that we want to do. So really using a variety of data sources, bringing them all into one predictive model and then kind of encouraging folks with the final product, the map that's created and based on all of this different information, encouraging people these are the best places to focus your attention, your restoration efforts.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah. Yeah.

Steven 
I like ⁓ the way that this is also ⁓ cutting across different ⁓ benefits. it's benefiting the trees, right? Which is then benefiting the lichen and the habitat, which is also then providing some stormwater runoff benefit for people downstream. you know, looking at how all of these systems are interrelated. think over the last, you know,

few decades, if not few centuries, we've seemed to forgot along the way that all of these things are interconnected. ⁓ So that, you know, you're providing, you know, if you're putting your resources into these targeted areas, it's going to have multiple benefits. It's not just for the trees, it's not just for the lichen, it's not just for the birds or the habitat. There's, you know, the humans benefit from this work as well from safer communities and

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm

Steven 
healthier habitats that we get to enjoy as well as the other species we share it with. So I appreciate the deep thoughtfulness that went into what you're doing to look across all of these different benefits and kind of house them in one place, which is the power of the GIS systems and the modeling and mapping that you're using. So I hope I explained all that correctly as well that I echoed what you said appropriately.

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, it's those co-benefits. So it's thinking, like you say, about, you know, the, you know, one of the things we have, I didn't mention was carbon, you know, so those trees do a fantastic job at pulling all that carbon out of the atmosphere and helping us tackle, you know, the CO2 problem that we have. So just thinking about, you know, where we can best target our efforts. So it's hopefully, yeah, it's sort of directing our

Steven 
Yeah.

Right.

Another benefit, right?

Thomas Murphy 
our hopes and our actions towards priority areas, I guess. So, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, where you get the biggest benefits.

perfect. Well, Tom, thank you for your time. I want to be respectful of your afternoon there as well. So, it seems like we're at a good transition point here to talking about directing ⁓ action and benefits to get to the maximum ⁓ outcome for all of these different.

intertwined things that we all share within our ecosystems and our environments and the communities that we live in. ⁓ Now seems like a good time to do a call to action then. What do you want people who've just heard your story and learned about the great work you're doing over there in the UK, what do want them to do? How can they support your work or how can they get involved in their own communities and

take your lessons learned and apply them to their lives. So what do want people to do? Focus that energy so we can continue to make benefits in the future.

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah, yeah, I definitely I would encourage everybody to, if they haven't, a tree at some point in their life. I mentioned that's something that I met my wife doing and it's something that I think is very, very valuable to do. It's looking forward, you know, there's a saying that, you the best time to plant a tree

was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. So I really passionately believe that.

reaching out to your local community to see what's going on in terms of particularly the native woodland. There's often, so whether it's, you I'd encourage folk to have a look at what's going on in the UK around temperate rainforests. So there's organizations like Woodland Trust, More Trees. But, you know, for folks in different places, there's normally something on your doorstep where you can

You can plant a tree and you can make a difference to your environment. And you can do it in a way where you it's it's a great thing to do. So you get a sense of community. I mentioned how I've got a lot of value from joining this organization, More Trees, and I got a new family, if you like. Me and my wife. Yeah, exactly. Me and my wife got married.

Steven 
Yeah, a lot of multi-benefits.

Thomas Murphy 
a couple of years ago and we had a tree themed wedding and we had all of or many of the people we met at that organization at that wedding and it was really special. So yeah I'd encourage people to have a look around their landscape and get involved with an organization near them. If they want to, particularly around some of the work I do, I'd be very keen for you to visit.

my, you know, I've got LinkedIn profiles, got a personal website. So you're, you're interested in finding out more about the work and the science that I do. If you think, okay, that sounds, you know, that sounds an interesting project. I'd be really keen to work with you. Or if you're in a temperate rainforest in a different part of the world and want to connect, then yeah, reach out over social media. I've got an email address.

I'm sure Steven can share some of my details. yeah, just, yeah, please reach out. And I would say no idea is a bad idea as well in terms of, I've just been contacted quite interestingly by an organization who want to make some music out of the data that we're gonna be getting from some of those plots. So it's encouraging if you've got an interesting idea.

Steven 
wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Murphy
whether you're a musician

or something else, or you work in a totally different area and you're not a woodland restoration scientist like I am, then get in contact. And also, before we bring it to a close, I maintain the hope because I look back at my own journey and it started off, there was rocky times, but actually, you keep the hope,

Steven 
Fantastic.

Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
you normally end up getting and you work hard you normally end up getting seeing the results and so I think that's sort of I sort of think about our environment and our climate crisis that we have I think that's always something to reflect on so yeah.

Steven 
Yeah.

Perfect. Well, that's a great transition to we end every episode talking about hope. So your call to action to keep and maintain the hope is a perfect way to kind of get to me to ask you about your hopes. ⁓ You know, as you just so ⁓ eloquently put, hope is important. It's a really it's not a pink cloud.

fluffy emotion, it's actually a mindset. It's having a vision for a better future, having ⁓ an idea of how to get to that better future. May not have the full plan mapped out yet, but you have an idea that there's a way to get to that better future. And there's a sense of agency that you can do something to get to that better future. since we do talk about hard things on the show, some of the...

you know, emotional and mental health issues that you shared ⁓ earlier and climate anxiety, the climate challenges that we're facing, ⁓ you just mentioned as well, know, life can be hard, life can be difficult. So hope is a really important ⁓ mental mindset and tool to have. So Tom, I want to ask you three questions about hope. And I would ask that you don't think too long about the answer, just kind of...

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Steven 
Go with whatever you first feel like is the best answer. So the first question about hope, Tom, is what is your vision for a better future? It can be for you personally or professionally or for the world, but what's your vision for a better future?

Thomas Murphy 
I my vision is for a better future is people feel like they can change their environment. so the vision is probably I mentioned about being able to sense, create a sense of community and enjoyment about around creating and restoring our habitats and actually being an active part of a community which helps. ⁓

tackle some of those problems. yeah, I think that for me is, I would love to see is actually enjoyment of people gaining real value from their lives by restoring the habitats around them. So you get the marriage between the social, the life we all want to lead, but also we're actually doing something positive for the planet around us.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah. So tell me why that's important. Why is that your vision? Why is it important that people get involved in their community and get involved in restoration efforts?

Thomas Murphy 
Yeah.

important because ⁓

Well, fundamentally, it's important because we do have a lot of stuff to deal with in terms of environment. In terms of specifically the vision, as you sort of touched on earlier, there is a lot of all of us feeling quite powerless in our lives. It's very easy to feel powerless with

24 hour news on, there's a barrage of bad news out there. We often feel very removed from us taking an active role as a citizen to have an impact on that. So I think it's important because if we're all hopeless and we don't have maintained that feeling that we can change our environment, then what do we have?

Steven 
Yeah.

Thomas Murphy 
So yeah for me that's one of the reasons it's important because it will demonstrate that we can actually change our wider environment.

Steven 
Perfect.

So the last question then, Tom, imagine the future you just shared with us, this future vision of people getting involved, getting active in their community, doing restoration work, recognizing that they have the power to change their environment for the better, ⁓ for their own better wellbeing and for that of their community and for future generations. So that beautiful vision you just outlined.

Thomas Murphy 
Hmm.

Steven 
Imagine that's the world we're living in now, that that's happening right now. How does that make you feel?

Thomas Murphy 
it makes me feel so happy. It makes me feel warm inside actually, yeah, it would be fantastic. Yeah, it makes me feel really grateful actually. So, yeah, yeah, it makes me, yeah, it makes me want to sort of do some bad dancing. Or maybe, yeah, yeah.

Steven
Hahaha

Thomas Murphy 
And I've got plenty of bad dancing. Yeah. No bad dancing. Yeah. Yeah.

Steven 
bad dancing. Yeah, there's no bad dancing. Any dancing is good dancing. Yeah, yeah.

Well, gratitude is a superpower. So I'm glad that that makes you feel that way. Because I think gratitude, along with hope, are just powerful ⁓ aspects of humanity. So thank you, Tom. Thank you, Dr. Murphy. Thank you for being here and sharing your

your journey and your expertise ⁓ in woodlands restoration and storm water mitigation and all of the different intersects that that happens. ⁓ So thank you for your time. I will put on our show notes page all of your contact information so you're called action for people to reach out to you. I hope that they do. ⁓ And I will leave you with the last word. Is there anything else that you'd like to share today?

Thomas Murphy 
No, just I suppose echoing my the vision. I suppose, yeah, it's really been a real pleasure to have this conversation. It's nice to really reflect on a journey. yeah, just encourage you to get involved in active woodland restoration or ecosystem restoration. It's a great thing to do. ⁓ And you might change the planet and the world around you. So, yeah, keep the optimism.

Yep.

Steven 
Yeah,

perfect. All right, well, cheers, Tom. Thank you. I wish you all the best. All right, bye-bye.

Thomas Murphy 
Thanks Steven. Yeah, cheers. Great.

Bye.

Steven
What a great conversation with Dr. Thomas Murphy. Today we explored Tom's powerful personal journey from grappling with mental health challenges and academic setbacks to discovering a deep sense of purpose in environmental science. He spoke about the healing power of nature, the importance of volunteering, and how community involvement and empathy are central to both teaching and ecological restoration.

We also learned about his groundbreaking work restoring temperate rainforests in the UK, how woodland restoration can help mitigate flood risks and support biodiversity, and how technology like GIS can help us tell more compelling data-driven stories that lead to real change. One of the things I most appreciated about this episode was Tom's courage in sharing his story with such vulnerability.

It takes real strength to open up and talk about mental health issues, especially in a field where the focus is often on data and outcomes. His willingness to open up reminds us that healing and growth often begin with connection. Connection to ourselves, to nature, and to one another. Tom also reminded us of something I think we all need to hear. Science needs storytelling. We need it not just to share information, but to change hearts and minds.

And I get it, restoration work is deeply challenging. I've seen it firsthand, how difficult it can be to help people visualize what a landscape used to look like before human development reshaped it, and equally important, what it can be like after restoration. When the damage happened decades ago or even centuries ago, it can be hard for today's communities to understand what we're trying to bring back and why it matters.

Good storytelling is essential to helping people understand and support sustainability. We need the science and we need the data. Of course we do. But the science and data need storytelling to get people to care. Whether your perspective is focused on people, planet, or profit, seeing how sustainable choices like temperate rainforest restoration will benefit you and what you care about is what drives real action. That's where storytelling becomes an essential tool.

whether through personal narratives, illustrations, or technologies like GIS. These approaches help us create a shared vision, one that is clear, compelling, and hopeful. So I want to thank Tom for his openness, his wisdom, and his leadership in restoring England's temperate rainforests. His work is truly helping to make the world a better place, not just ecologically, but emotionally and socially as well. If Tom's story inspired you, I hope you'll consider taking action in your own community.

Whether it's planting a tree, volunteering on a local restoration project, supporting mental health initiatives, or simply learning more about your local ecosystem. Every step matters. Your involvement can help restore not just landscapes, but community connections and a sense of shared purpose. And as always, please like and share this episode if you enjoyed it. Your support really does matter. So you sharing it with friends and family is a big deal to me. So thank you for that. And drop me a comment.

And you can reach me on Facebook, Instagram, X or Blue Sky. I'd love to hear from you. I really do appreciate your support. This show is growing and it's because of you, the audience. So thank you very much for all that you do to support me. And be sure to join me next week for the next episode, which will be released on May 20th, when I'll be talking with another incredible professor. She teaches in the environmental design program and brings over 25 years of experience in sustainable planning.

affordable housing policy and urban resilience. Her research uses geospatial modeling to close policy gaps and protect vulnerable heritage sites. She's taught around the world from Florida to Texas, to Egypt and Germany. And now she brings her insight and heart to communities in Colorado. You're not going to want to miss this next episode. You can catch it on May 20th on stories sustain us.com wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Thanks so much for being here with me today.

Please keep showing up, keep doing what you do to make the world a better place, and keep believing in restoration of the land, of the spirit, and of our shared future. Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.