Helen Shaw

National University of Ireland, Maynooth | NUI Maynooth · Department of Geography

https://www.npws.ie/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/IWM153.pdf

HoStIr is a palaeoclimate research project investigating how and why storminess has changed throughout the Holocene in Ireland. The project has three stages: 1) testing proxies for storminess, 2) development of three Holocene storm reconstructions for Ireland, and 3) a data-model comparison of past storminess. Here, we present the preliminary resul...

Pollen diagrams covering the Bronze Age to Roman period from northeast Northumberland are scarce. We present a ¹⁴C-dated pollen record from a peat-filled forest hollow in Chillingham Wild Cattle Park, northeast Northumberland, that spans the Iron Age. For the first time for this part of Northumberland, fungal spores are also analysed to investigate...

To examine the relationship between plant presence and pollen presence, modern pollen samples were collected and counted from natural moss polsters in the UK uplands. The herbaceous pollen signal is difficult to interpret in paleoecological analysis as pollen presence is often rare for individual herb taxa. Indices of association have previously be...

The management of the remainder of Europe’s once extensive forests is hampered by a poor understanding of the character of the vegetation and drivers of change before the onset of clearance for farming. Pollen data indicate a closed-canopy, mixed-deciduous forest, contrasting with the assertion that large herbivores would have maintained a mosaic o...

* Priority question exercises are becoming an increasingly common tool to frame future agendas in conservation and ecological science. They are an effective way to identify research foci that advance the field and that also have high policy and conservation relevance. * To date, there has been no coherent synthesis of key questions and priority re...

Modern pollen samples provide an invaluable research tool for helping to interpret the Quaternary fossil pollen record, allowing investigation of the relationship between pollen as the proxy and the environmental parameters such as vegetation, land-use, and climate that the pollen proxy represents. The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) is a ne...

The vegetation of Europe has undergone substantial changes during the course of the Holocene epoch, resulting from range expansion of plants following climate amelioration, competition between taxa and disturbance through anthropogenic activities. Much of the detail of this pattern is understood from decades of pollen analytical work across Europe,...

The role of anthropogenic land use in the maintenance of culturally-derived ecosystems has been central to the development of thinking in the ecosystems approach (CBD 2000; Defra 2007, 2010). It is now widely recognised that in Europe, where there is a long cultural history of land use, the highly valued semi-natural habitats of the upland commons...

The European Union (EU) Rural Development Regulations (RDR) provide the blueprint for EU rural development policy. A major change with the 2007–2013 funding period has been the decision to mainstream the LEADER programme as a cross-cutting axis for the local delivery of rural development. Delivery of the RDR in England (via the Rural Development Pl...

Environmental historians and palaeoecologists have argued for a long-term approach to the understanding of nature conservation designations and environmental management, favouring long-term views of ecological dynamics. This contrasts with the approach of planning for stasis and stability within reserve-based nature conservation. The current shift...

Adapting Upland Ecosystem Services to Climate Change Planning for the Future at Community Level A 2 day workshop to share knowledge about adapting to climate change in the uplands and to outline and develop a partnership research proposal. 4 th and 5 th

This thesis investigates past structure and dynamics of native Caledonian pine woodland, representing part of the western fringes of the northern European boreal woodlands. The biogeographical extent and Holocene history of the Scottish pine woods are well studied, yet questions remain at finer scales. This thesis is concerned with two factors over...

Glen Affric, a National Nature Reserve of international conservation importance for plant and animal communities associated with Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) woodland is managed for nature conservation and woodland restoration at a landscape scale. Management plans have drawn on information on current stand structure and variation but have not use...