Fault Line Living, recipients of this year's Land Rover 'Go Beyond' Bursary, have set off at the end of July for Iceland as the first stage of their journey to explore the realities for those living along fault lines begins.

The team - Serena Davies, Tamsin Davies and Adam Whitaker - will travel on to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Iran, covering some 25,000 km in 12 weeks.

Using a seismometer provided by the British Geological Survey to record tremors along the way, they will be working with school students, seismologists and talking to locals of each country to uncover how different communities adapt to the challenges of fault line living.

These communities are often found in the most remote places, such as the interior of Iceland, remote rural regions of Turkey or the deserts in Iran.

Follow their journey:

• Team website
• On Twitter
• On Facebook

About the Grant:

Other example projects:

• Carbon exchanges in the Kalahari
• Fire in the Amazon
• The Dustiest Place on Earth
• Microbes & Glacial Melt

2010 Update

So far in 2010, 84 projects have been supported through the RGS-IBG grants programme, with senior researchers, students, teachers and independent travellers all pushing the boundaries of geographical knowledge in interesting and innovative ways.  

In May, five Small Research Grants and three EPSRC Grants were awarded to support original desk- and field-based research projects by early career researchers. The projects supported show the diverse and exciting research currently being carried out by young academics in UK universities, with subjects under investigation including exploration and disability, urban sustainability and climate change.

April has seen the Society's longest running grant, the RGS-IBG Geographical Fieldwork Grants, awarded to 27 undergraduate, postgraduate and independent team projects. With research being carried out on six continents investigating subjects from the glaciers of Svalbard to the butterflies of Ecuador, these grants enable students to gain valuable experience of planning and carrying out their own research.

In March, our flagship senior research grants were awarded after a rigorous selection process. The RGS-IBG Ralph Brown Expedition Award was awarded to Dr Helen Findlay (Plymouth Marine Laboratory) for a fascinating project in the Arctic investigating ocean acidification; Dr David Rippin (University of Hull) and Dr Jonathan Carrivick (University of Leeds) will also be travelling to the Arctic supported by the RGS-IBG Peter Fleming Award for research on responses of small, cold Arctic glaciers to climate change. Dr Giles Wiggs, Dr Richard Bailey and Dr Abigail Stone (all Oxford University) have been awarded RGS-IBG Thesiger-Oman Fellowships for research projects in the Kalahari Desert. Giles and Richard will be examining how wind erosion affects vegetation in the desert, while Abi intends to reconstruct historical groundwater recharge rates in the dunes of the southern Kalahari.

The Society's independent travel grants were awarded in February, with four exciting projects due to set off this summer. The tenth Journey of a Lifetime Award, run in conjunction with the BBC, has been awarded to Nick Hunt who will be following South Asian economic migrants on their way home from Dubai as the emirate feels the impact of recession; Fault Line Living, the team awarded this year's Land Rover 'Go Beyond' Bursary, will be documenting the lives of people living on the world's most dangerous fault lines. Renowned photographer Nick Danziger, Neville Shulman Challenge Award recipient for 2010, will investigate the progress of the Millennium Development Goals in eight of the world's poorest countries. Also supported through the Neville Shulman Challenge Award is a a biodiversity project run by a multidisciplinary team of students from Falmouth, Exeter and Borneo, led by Martin Holland. Have you got an idea for a geographically exciting journey? This year's deadline for our independent travel grants is 24th September 2010.