My research focuses on palaeoecological change in upland areas, particularly integration with ecology & history to understand links between long-term biodiversity change & socio-economic conditions. Current work includes the overlap between neo- & palaeo-ecology in the recent past. I have also worked on trade-offs between conservation, land-owner & public interests in current environmental management.
The concept of resilience has become increasingly important in ecological and socio-ecological li... more The concept of resilience has become increasingly important in ecological and socio-ecological literature. With its focus on the temporal behaviour of ecosystems, palaeoecology has an important role to play in developing a scientific understanding of ecological resilience. We provide a critical review of the ways in which resilience is being addressed by palaeoecologists. We review ~180 papers, identifying the definitions or conceptualisations of ‘resilience’ that they use, and analysing the ways in which palaeoecology is contributing to our understanding of ecological resilience. We identify three key areas for further development. First, the term ‘resilience’ is frequently defined too broadly to be meaningful without further qualification. In particular, palaeoecologists need to distinguish between ‘press’ vs ‘pulse’ disturbances, and ‘ecological’ vs ‘engineering’ resilience. Palaeoecologists are well placed to critically assess the extent to which these dichotomies apply in real (rather than theoretical) ecosystems, where climate and other environmental parameters are constantly changing. Second, defining a formal ‘response model’ – a statement of the anticipated relationships between proxies, disturbances and resilience properties – can help to clarify arguments, especially inferred causal links, since the difficulty of proving causation is a fundamental limitation of palaeoecology for understanding ecosystem drivers and responses. Third, there is a need for critical analysis of the role of scale in ecosystem resilience. Different palaeoenvironmental proxies are differently able to address the various temporal and spatial scales of ecological change, and these limitations, as well as methodological constraints on inherently noisy proxy data, need to be explored and addressed.
Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest chal... more Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest challenges facing ecological economists today. Frameworks for valuing nature increasingly include shared/social values as a distinct category of values. However, the nature of shared/social values, as well as their relationship to other values, has not yet been clearly established and empirical evidence about the importance of shared/social values for valuation of ecosystem services is lacking. To help address these theoretical and empirical limitations, this paper outlines a framework of shared/social values across five dimensions: value concept, provider, intention, scale, and elicitation process. Along these dimensions we identify seven main, non-mutually exclusive types of shared values: transcendental, cultural/societal, communal, group, deliberated and other-regarding values, and value to society. Using a case study of a recent controversial policy on forest ownership in England, we conceptualise the dynamic interplay between shared/social and individual values. The way in which social value is assessed in neo-classical economics is discussed and critiqued, followed by consideration of the relation between shared/social values and Total Economic Value, and a review of deliberative and non-monetary methods for assessing shared/social values. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of shared/social values for decision-making.
ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintain... more ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintained by extensive pastoral agriculture. Documentary sources indicate the complexity and longevity of regulations designed to protect the hill grazing resource from over-exploitation but these systems leave relatively few traces on the ground. Consequently pollen analysis is an important method for establishing the impact of centuries of grazing on the quality of hill pastures. This is demonstrated at Wether Hill, Northumberland, where a pollen sequence details changes in vegetation composition and diversity over the last c. 1,500 years. These are correlated with historical evidence over the last c. 800years for a more complete understanding of the socioeconomic context that governed the use of hill grazing. Changes in grazing regimes had a profound influence on these hill pastures, contributing to permanent changes in the relative abundance of heather, grasses and herbs, and causing a severe decline in habitat diversity within the last c. 200 years. The results have many regional parallels, indicating extensive reductions in the biodiversity of upland habitats. This has implications for future management and conservation policies and shows the contribution that an understanding of environmental and land-use history can make to debates surrounding current environmental issues.
This study shows how data from very different disciplines can be combined to address questions re... more This study shows how data from very different disciplines can be combined to address questions relevant to contemporary conservation and understanding. This novel, interdisciplinary approach provides new insights into the role of economic factors as a driver of biodiversity loss in the uplands. Biodiversity levels have varied considerably over 400 years, partly as a function of land management, suggesting that establishing baselines or “natural” target levels for biodiversity is likely to be problematic. Changes in livestock grazing pressures brought about by changes in prices had statistically significant effects on estimated plant diversity, as did land abandonment. This suggests that longterm management of upland areas for the conservation of diversity should focus on grazing pressures as a key policy attribute. Another policy implication is that drastic cuts in grazing pressures – such as might occur under current reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy - can have adverse biodiversity consequences.
First paragraph: The Caithness Plain in north-east Scotland is a gently rolling, lowland, coastal... more First paragraph: The Caithness Plain in north-east Scotland is a gently rolling, lowland, coastal landscape on the edge of the largest expanse of blanket peat in the British Isles: the 'flow country' (fig 1). It has most often been assumed that prehistoric farming communities retreated in the face of the remorseless spread of blanket peat across such a landscape (Piggott 1972; Barber 1998), but it has also been argued that farmers were not so helpless, because, with effort, blanket peat can be kept at bay by repeated cultivation (Carter 1998). This model has not been closely tested before: Carter's ideas emerged from work at Lairg, Sutherland, and little was understood from that study of the chronology of blanket peat growth (McCullagh & Tipping 1998). Excavation of Mesolithic artefact scatters at Oliclett in Caitliness (Pannett 2002), from beneath a hillside almost entirely buried by blanket and marsh peat, allowed the rates of peat spread across a single hillside to be...
Forgotten Carbon: A Carbon Inventory for Scottish Coastal Waters The poster introduces some initi... more Forgotten Carbon: A Carbon Inventory for Scottish Coastal Waters The poster introduces some initial ideas and concepts from my research (starting October 2013) which aims to create a carbon inventory for sea lochs on the west coast of Scotland; future aims the research will focus on aspects of carbon cycling. There is currently a disparity in carbon research: deep ocean and terrestrial carbon are both intensely researched areas within both a Scottish and global context. In comparison, carbon research in coastal regions is sparse, but there is a growing awareness of key transfers in the carbon cycle at these locations, suggesting that they are key areas for understanding the global storage and cycling of carbon. Coastal environments are the repository of significant quantities of terrestrial carbon, with estimates ranging between 334.5 x10 12 g a -1 (Degens et al. 1991) and 500 x 10 12 g a -1 (Spitzy & Ittekkot 1991). The lack of research in the coastal zones has implications for all...
ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintain... more ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintained by extensive pastoral agriculture. Documentary sources indicate the complexity and longevity of regulations designed to protect the hill grazing resource from over-exploitation but these systems leave relatively few traces on the ground. Consequently pollen analysis is an important method for establishing the impact of centuries of grazing on the quality of hill pastures. This is demonstrated at Wether Hill, Northumberland, where a pollen sequence details changes in vegetation composition and diversity over the last c. 1,500 years. These are correlated with historical evidence over the last c. 800years for a more complete understanding of the socioeconomic context that governed the use of hill grazing. Changes in grazing regimes had a profound influence on these hill pastures, contributing to permanent changes in the relative abundance of heather, grasses and herbs, and causing a severe decline in habitat diversity within the last c. 200 years. The results have many regional parallels, indicating extensive reductions in the biodiversity of upland habitats. This has implications for future management and conservation policies and shows the contribution that an understanding of environmental and land-use history can make to debates surrounding current environmental issues.
The challenges of integrated, adaptive and ecosystem management are leading government agencies t... more The challenges of integrated, adaptive and ecosystem management are leading government agencies to adopt participatory modes of engagement. Collaborative governance is a form of participation in which stakeholders co-produce goals and strategies and share responsibilities and resources. We assess the potential and challenges of collaborative governance as a mechanism to provide an integrated, ecosystem approach to natural resource management, using red deer in Scotland as a case study. Collaborative Deer Management Groups offer a well-established example of a 'bridging organisation', intended to reduce costs and facilitate decision making and learning across institutions and scales. We examine who initiates collaborative processes and why, what roles different actors adopt and how these factors influence the outcomes, particularly at a time of changing values, management and legislative priorities. Our findings demonstrate the need for careful consideration of where and how shared responsibility might be best implemented and sustained as state agencies often remain key to the process, despite the partnership intention. Differing interpretations between agencies and landowners of the degree of autonomy and division of responsibilities involved in 'collaboration' can create tension, while the diversity of landowner priorities brings additional challenges for defining shared goals in red deer management and in other cases. Effective maintenance depends on appropriate role allocation and adoption of responsibilities, definition of convergent values and goals, and establishing communication and trust in institutional networks. Options that may help private stakeholders offset the costs of accepting responsibility for delivering public benefits need to be explicitly addressed to build capacity and support adaptation. This study indicates that collaborative governance has the potential to help reconcile statutory obligations with stakeholder empowerment. The potential of collaboration to reduce the costs of sustainable management remains contentious and, in times of increasing resource constraints, the potential mismatch between resource investment and anticipated goals is likely to become a critical issue, which may challenge the goals and capacity of the state and existing managers.
Aim We aim to compare fine resolution pollen data from a former seasonal pasture with historical ... more Aim We aim to compare fine resolution pollen data from a former seasonal pasture with historical evidence for grazing and woodland use. We discuss the complexities and benefits of integrating qualitative and quantitative information, and the implications for studies of past wood ...
... themes in upland archaeology, particularly in northern Britain, but there is increasing evide... more ... themes in upland archaeology, particularly in northern Britain, but there is increasing evidence to challenge these assumptions, notably in the palynological record. An alternative model for land-use in a highland valley is developed using three high spatial-resolution pollen ...
The concept of resilience has become increasingly important in ecological and socio-ecological li... more The concept of resilience has become increasingly important in ecological and socio-ecological literature. With its focus on the temporal behaviour of ecosystems, palaeoecology has an important role to play in developing a scientific understanding of ecological resilience. We provide a critical review of the ways in which resilience is being addressed by palaeoecologists. We review ~180 papers, identifying the definitions or conceptualisations of ‘resilience’ that they use, and analysing the ways in which palaeoecology is contributing to our understanding of ecological resilience. We identify three key areas for further development. First, the term ‘resilience’ is frequently defined too broadly to be meaningful without further qualification. In particular, palaeoecologists need to distinguish between ‘press’ vs ‘pulse’ disturbances, and ‘ecological’ vs ‘engineering’ resilience. Palaeoecologists are well placed to critically assess the extent to which these dichotomies apply in real (rather than theoretical) ecosystems, where climate and other environmental parameters are constantly changing. Second, defining a formal ‘response model’ – a statement of the anticipated relationships between proxies, disturbances and resilience properties – can help to clarify arguments, especially inferred causal links, since the difficulty of proving causation is a fundamental limitation of palaeoecology for understanding ecosystem drivers and responses. Third, there is a need for critical analysis of the role of scale in ecosystem resilience. Different palaeoenvironmental proxies are differently able to address the various temporal and spatial scales of ecological change, and these limitations, as well as methodological constraints on inherently noisy proxy data, need to be explored and addressed.
Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest chal... more Social valuation of ecosystem services and public policy alternatives is one of the greatest challenges facing ecological economists today. Frameworks for valuing nature increasingly include shared/social values as a distinct category of values. However, the nature of shared/social values, as well as their relationship to other values, has not yet been clearly established and empirical evidence about the importance of shared/social values for valuation of ecosystem services is lacking. To help address these theoretical and empirical limitations, this paper outlines a framework of shared/social values across five dimensions: value concept, provider, intention, scale, and elicitation process. Along these dimensions we identify seven main, non-mutually exclusive types of shared values: transcendental, cultural/societal, communal, group, deliberated and other-regarding values, and value to society. Using a case study of a recent controversial policy on forest ownership in England, we conceptualise the dynamic interplay between shared/social and individual values. The way in which social value is assessed in neo-classical economics is discussed and critiqued, followed by consideration of the relation between shared/social values and Total Economic Value, and a review of deliberative and non-monetary methods for assessing shared/social values. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of shared/social values for decision-making.
ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintain... more ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintained by extensive pastoral agriculture. Documentary sources indicate the complexity and longevity of regulations designed to protect the hill grazing resource from over-exploitation but these systems leave relatively few traces on the ground. Consequently pollen analysis is an important method for establishing the impact of centuries of grazing on the quality of hill pastures. This is demonstrated at Wether Hill, Northumberland, where a pollen sequence details changes in vegetation composition and diversity over the last c. 1,500 years. These are correlated with historical evidence over the last c. 800years for a more complete understanding of the socioeconomic context that governed the use of hill grazing. Changes in grazing regimes had a profound influence on these hill pastures, contributing to permanent changes in the relative abundance of heather, grasses and herbs, and causing a severe decline in habitat diversity within the last c. 200 years. The results have many regional parallels, indicating extensive reductions in the biodiversity of upland habitats. This has implications for future management and conservation policies and shows the contribution that an understanding of environmental and land-use history can make to debates surrounding current environmental issues.
This study shows how data from very different disciplines can be combined to address questions re... more This study shows how data from very different disciplines can be combined to address questions relevant to contemporary conservation and understanding. This novel, interdisciplinary approach provides new insights into the role of economic factors as a driver of biodiversity loss in the uplands. Biodiversity levels have varied considerably over 400 years, partly as a function of land management, suggesting that establishing baselines or “natural” target levels for biodiversity is likely to be problematic. Changes in livestock grazing pressures brought about by changes in prices had statistically significant effects on estimated plant diversity, as did land abandonment. This suggests that longterm management of upland areas for the conservation of diversity should focus on grazing pressures as a key policy attribute. Another policy implication is that drastic cuts in grazing pressures – such as might occur under current reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy - can have adverse biodiversity consequences.
First paragraph: The Caithness Plain in north-east Scotland is a gently rolling, lowland, coastal... more First paragraph: The Caithness Plain in north-east Scotland is a gently rolling, lowland, coastal landscape on the edge of the largest expanse of blanket peat in the British Isles: the 'flow country' (fig 1). It has most often been assumed that prehistoric farming communities retreated in the face of the remorseless spread of blanket peat across such a landscape (Piggott 1972; Barber 1998), but it has also been argued that farmers were not so helpless, because, with effort, blanket peat can be kept at bay by repeated cultivation (Carter 1998). This model has not been closely tested before: Carter's ideas emerged from work at Lairg, Sutherland, and little was understood from that study of the chronology of blanket peat growth (McCullagh & Tipping 1998). Excavation of Mesolithic artefact scatters at Oliclett in Caitliness (Pannett 2002), from beneath a hillside almost entirely buried by blanket and marsh peat, allowed the rates of peat spread across a single hillside to be...
Forgotten Carbon: A Carbon Inventory for Scottish Coastal Waters The poster introduces some initi... more Forgotten Carbon: A Carbon Inventory for Scottish Coastal Waters The poster introduces some initial ideas and concepts from my research (starting October 2013) which aims to create a carbon inventory for sea lochs on the west coast of Scotland; future aims the research will focus on aspects of carbon cycling. There is currently a disparity in carbon research: deep ocean and terrestrial carbon are both intensely researched areas within both a Scottish and global context. In comparison, carbon research in coastal regions is sparse, but there is a growing awareness of key transfers in the carbon cycle at these locations, suggesting that they are key areas for understanding the global storage and cycling of carbon. Coastal environments are the repository of significant quantities of terrestrial carbon, with estimates ranging between 334.5 x10 12 g a -1 (Degens et al. 1991) and 500 x 10 12 g a -1 (Spitzy & Ittekkot 1991). The lack of research in the coastal zones has implications for all...
ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintain... more ABSTRACT Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintained by extensive pastoral agriculture. Documentary sources indicate the complexity and longevity of regulations designed to protect the hill grazing resource from over-exploitation but these systems leave relatively few traces on the ground. Consequently pollen analysis is an important method for establishing the impact of centuries of grazing on the quality of hill pastures. This is demonstrated at Wether Hill, Northumberland, where a pollen sequence details changes in vegetation composition and diversity over the last c. 1,500 years. These are correlated with historical evidence over the last c. 800years for a more complete understanding of the socioeconomic context that governed the use of hill grazing. Changes in grazing regimes had a profound influence on these hill pastures, contributing to permanent changes in the relative abundance of heather, grasses and herbs, and causing a severe decline in habitat diversity within the last c. 200 years. The results have many regional parallels, indicating extensive reductions in the biodiversity of upland habitats. This has implications for future management and conservation policies and shows the contribution that an understanding of environmental and land-use history can make to debates surrounding current environmental issues.
The challenges of integrated, adaptive and ecosystem management are leading government agencies t... more The challenges of integrated, adaptive and ecosystem management are leading government agencies to adopt participatory modes of engagement. Collaborative governance is a form of participation in which stakeholders co-produce goals and strategies and share responsibilities and resources. We assess the potential and challenges of collaborative governance as a mechanism to provide an integrated, ecosystem approach to natural resource management, using red deer in Scotland as a case study. Collaborative Deer Management Groups offer a well-established example of a 'bridging organisation', intended to reduce costs and facilitate decision making and learning across institutions and scales. We examine who initiates collaborative processes and why, what roles different actors adopt and how these factors influence the outcomes, particularly at a time of changing values, management and legislative priorities. Our findings demonstrate the need for careful consideration of where and how shared responsibility might be best implemented and sustained as state agencies often remain key to the process, despite the partnership intention. Differing interpretations between agencies and landowners of the degree of autonomy and division of responsibilities involved in 'collaboration' can create tension, while the diversity of landowner priorities brings additional challenges for defining shared goals in red deer management and in other cases. Effective maintenance depends on appropriate role allocation and adoption of responsibilities, definition of convergent values and goals, and establishing communication and trust in institutional networks. Options that may help private stakeholders offset the costs of accepting responsibility for delivering public benefits need to be explicitly addressed to build capacity and support adaptation. This study indicates that collaborative governance has the potential to help reconcile statutory obligations with stakeholder empowerment. The potential of collaboration to reduce the costs of sustainable management remains contentious and, in times of increasing resource constraints, the potential mismatch between resource investment and anticipated goals is likely to become a critical issue, which may challenge the goals and capacity of the state and existing managers.
Aim We aim to compare fine resolution pollen data from a former seasonal pasture with historical ... more Aim We aim to compare fine resolution pollen data from a former seasonal pasture with historical evidence for grazing and woodland use. We discuss the complexities and benefits of integrating qualitative and quantitative information, and the implications for studies of past wood ...
... themes in upland archaeology, particularly in northern Britain, but there is increasing evide... more ... themes in upland archaeology, particularly in northern Britain, but there is increasing evidence to challenge these assumptions, notably in the palynological record. An alternative model for land-use in a highland valley is developed using three high spatial-resolution pollen ...
Quantifying sedimentary carbon stocks in the coastal ocean is key to improving our understanding ... more Quantifying sedimentary carbon stocks in the coastal ocean is key to improving our understanding of long-term storage of carbon in the coastal ocean and to further constraining the global carbon cycle. Here we present a methodological approach which combines seismic geophysics and geochemical measurements to quantitatively estimate the total stock of carbon held within marine sediment. Through the application of this methodology to Loch Sunart a sea loch (fjord) on the west coast of Scotland we have created the first sedimentary carbon inventory for a fjordic system. The sediment of Loch Sunart holds 26.88 ± 0.52 Mt of carbon split between 11.05 ± 0.23 Mt and 15.02 ± 0.35 Mt of organic and inorganic carbon respectively. This quantative estimate of carbon stored in Loch Sunart in significantly higher than previous estimates. Through comparison to Scottish peatland carbon stocks we have determined that Loch Sunart on a per are basis is a significantly more effective store of carbon. This initial work supports the concept that fjords are important environments for the burial and long-term storage of carbon and therefore should be considered as unique environments while considering coastal carbon stocks.
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