They have become a summer staple all over the country, and Scotland's biggest has already clashed with nature lovers amid fears T in the Park could disturb rare ospreys.

Now a research team led by Edinburgh University is to carry out the first study in the UK on how green summer festivals are and how people can minimise the impact on the environment at such events.

They will link up with artists and fans at summer festivals in Scotland, including at Scotland's biggest, T in the Park, to ultimately encourage broader sustainable practices for festivals and in general.

Artists and festival-goers at this weekend's Solas Festival in Perthshire will have the chance to link up with the research team to give their views as they take in Raghu Dixit, The Vaselines, Honeyblood and poet Liz Lochhead.

Each year tens of thousands of people take their camping kit to festivals around Scotland, taking cars through country roads and into the fields.

T in the Park at Strathallan, also Perthshire, is the country's largest festival attracting over 200,000 people.

The event on the weekend of July 10-12, featuring Kasabian, the Prodigy and Noel Gallagher this year, was under threat with concerns over the disturbance of nearby nesting ospreys.

Annually crowds of festival-goers leave behind a mountain of rubbish, ranging from tents to drinks bottles, cans, used condoms and discarded clothing, including trainers and boots.

The research team draws from a range of disciplines and backgrounds.

In 2014, when the event was held at Balado, Perth and Kinross, for the final time, organisers spent two weeks fully dismantling the site and clearing the former airfield of litter.

Much of the debris is taken to a landfill site, but organisers generally try to recycle anything that is salvageable. The sweep of the ground includes a final check to pick up any litter trampled into the often muddy ground.

Glastonbury, which takes place next week, annually attracts crowds of 100,000.

However, the Somerset fields where the five-day event takes place are as well known for their muddy conditions whenever it rains, as the gigs.

Organisers have urged revellers not to urinate in the fields as it can kill fish and wildlife in the streams and pollute the site.

In a radical move, unheard of in the hippy 1970s, they have 2,400 compost toilets installed.

The team including Matt Brennan, sociology of music, Angela Connelly, University of Lancaster, creative practice and songwriting, Jo Collinson-Scott, University of the West of Scotland and arts and sustainability organisation Gemma Lawrence, Creative Carbon Scotland.

Researchers, also musicians, will take a travelling band around the country this summer and they will compile an album based on their findings which will be unveiled next year.

Ms Collinson-Scott, known on stage as Jo Mango, will travel with Louie Abbott from the band Admiral Fallow and the singer songwriter Rachel Sermanni.

They will explore themes of travel and sustainability within individual artists' lives and practices.

Songs devised by the artists will be recorded on a digital EP and launched at Celtic Connections in February 2016.

Mr Brennan, a musician and researcher at the Reid School of Music, Edinburgh University, instigated the study: Fields of Green, Addressing Climate Change through Music Festival Communities.

The Zoey Van Goey drummer and vocalist said: "I have a longstanding research interest in live music. Climate change I suspect is on the one hand quite an unsexy issue but if you are trying to make a living out of music festivals maybe you should be aware of it.

"It turns out that musicians think of these things and are concerned. We want to know what festivalgoers think also."

He added: "Fields of Green is a one year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council exploring the environmental sustainability of Scotland's music festivals and their capacity to enable 'greener' audience behaviours within the temporary communities formed during such events.

"The project aims to lay the foundations for a future community of practice of music festival organisers and artists working together towards a greener Scotland."

The project focuses on two Scottish music festival case studies - XpoNorth in Inverness and Solas Festival - in order to develop sustainable development research and support actions enacted by live music festival organisers to encourage audiences to engage with and enact sustainable behaviours themselves.

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