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Publications
Publications (46)
Landscape rewilding has the potential to help mitigate hydrological extremes by allowing natural processes to function. Our systematic review assessed the evidence base for rewilding‐driven mitigation of high and low flows. The review uncovers a lack of research directly addressing rewilding, but highlights research in analogue contexts which can,...
We present the results of our 15th horizon scan of novel issues that could influence biological conservation in the future. From an initial list of 96 issues, our international panel of scientists and practitioners identified 15 that we consider important for societies worldwide to track and potentially respond to. Issues are novel within conservat...
We present the results of our 15th horizon scan of novel issues that could influence biological conservation in the future. From an initial list of 96 issues, our international panel of scientists and practitioners identified 15 that we consider important for societies worldwide to track and potentially respond to. Issues are novel within conservat...
Citizen science is increasingly being promoted as a means of gathering more data to help inform the management of ecosystems. Involving the participants in the design of data collection activities is a form of co‐design often proposed by those calling for a translational ecology.
In addition, novel monitoring approaches have the potential to improv...
Widely available ‘fish‐finder’ echo‐sounding devices are beginning to be used in bathymetric studies to estimate geomorphic change. To date, however, there have been no applications in shallow and complex wetlands, where changes in sediment storage are notoriously dynamic in time and difficult to describe accurately in space. Therefore, in this stu...
The article describes a model system for facilitating the transfer of knowledge between researchers and practitioners.
The system described has a focus on a single habitat, floodplain meadows, and a case is made for replicating the model for other habitats.
Even a single habitat has a wide variety of stakeholders, but a focused partnership with rep...
We present the results of our tenth annual horizon scan. We identified 15 emerging priority topics that may have major positive or negative effects on the future conservation of global biodiversity, but currently have low awareness within the conservation community. We hope to increase research and policy attention on these areas, improving the cap...
The National Trust (NT) is often associated
in the public mind with stately homes
and tearooms but as the largest private
landowner in the UK (250,000 ha) and with
over 5 million members, its potential reach
as a conservation charity is significant. In
recent years, the Trust has consciously reemphasised
its role in nature conservation
and at the h...
Aquatic macrophytes play a key role in providing habitat, refuge and food for a range of biota in shallow lakes. However, many shallow lakes have experienced declines in macrophyte vegetation in recent decades, principally due to eutrophication. As changes in macrophyte composition and abundance can affect overall ecological structure and function...
During a fish survey in Bassenthwaite Lake, Cumbria in 2013, a single young vendace (Coregonus albula) was unexpectedly caught in one of the nets. After a 12 year absence, during which it was thought to be extinct at this site, the vendace had returned! The elusive, mysterious vendace remains unknown to many, despite the fact it has been around wit...
Executive Summary The effect of trees on flooding is much debated. In the aftermath of widespread flooding in Cumbria during December 2015 much attention focussed on whether natural solutions, in particular tree planting in upstream catchments, can have a role in reducing flood risk. Despite multiple literature reviews investigating links between l...
Wetlands are an important social–ecological resource, being fundamentally important to many natural processes, human wellbeing and livelihoods. They also contain important stores of information in their sediments which are increasingly being used to improve conservation and environmental management outcomes. We describe how palaeoecology can inform...
Eutrophication is the most pressing threat to highly calcareous (marl) lakes in Europe. Despite their unique chemistry and biology, comprehensive studies into their unimpacted conditions and eutrophication responses are underrepresented in conservation literature. A multi-indicator palaeolimnological study spanning ca. 1260–2009 was undertaken at C...
Highly calcareous (marl) lakes are infrequent but important freshwater ecosystems, protected under the EU Habitats and Species Directive. Chara lakes have been considered resistant to eutrophication owing to the self-stabilising properties of charophyte meadows. However, the opposite is suggested by the large-scale biodiversity declines in marl lak...
Table S2. Justification for risk register scoring and references used to support the scoring.
Table S1. Justification for prioritization of functional relationships between each broad habitat type, benefit and characteristic.
Natural capital is essential for goods and services on which people depend. Yet pressures on the environment mean that natural capital assets are continuing to decline and degrade, putting such benefits at risk. Systematic monitoring of natural assets is a major challenge that could be both unaffordable and unmanageable without a way to focus effor...
While it is acknowledged that changes in the condition of a wetland can be detected through contemporary monitoring programs, this paper explores the extent to which palaeoecological approaches can be used in concert with contemporary techniques to understand benchmark conditions, rates and direction of change. This is done within the context of th...
Freshwater biodiversity is globally threatened and while most conservation efforts are focused on natural and larger freshwater systems such as rivers and lakes, in many lowland agricultural landscapes artificial water bodies including ditches may be equally important as habitats for freshwater species. Ditches occur across the agricultural landsca...
Methods for ecological status assessment of high-alkalinity lakes under the Water Framework Directive (WFD) differ between continental Europe and the UK. In the UK, marl lakes, i.e. carbonate-precipitating lakes, are placed in a separate category in which metrics account for the naturally low phosphorus content and sensitive macrophyte communities...
* 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...
Despite the multiple benefits of naturally functioning wetlands and floodplains, many have been degraded, lost or converted (for example, by drainage) to other uses designed to deliver specific services incompatible with their original condition (such as crop production). Where wetlands are intact, the major reason has been for nature conservation,...
Freshwater habitats are beset by a combination of anthropogenic stresses, resulting from a wide array of human activities that occur either within the habitat itself or within the catchment of the habitat. This paper describes the difficulties of making management decisions in fresh waters in the face of this complexity, and outlines the approach a...
The Shropshire and Cheshire meres of north-west England are characterised by high phosphorus concentrations. This review assesses the importance of phosphorus and nitrogen concentrations in determining the water and ecological quality of the meres. Palaeolimno—logical evidence indicates that the meres may be naturally eutrophic, but that phosphorus...
Current work on adaptation responses for conservation management in the face of predicted climate change has a distinctly terrestrial focus. Existing evidence for the potential impact of climate change on freshwater ecosystems indicates that it is the interaction between direct climate change and current anthropogenic pressures that is likely to de...
Several recent studies have emphasised the need for a more integrated process in which researchers, policy makers and practitioners interact to identify research priorities. This paper discusses such a process with respect to the UK water sector, detailing how questions were developed through inter-disciplinary collaboration using online questionna...
Ranunculus spp. are the dominant plants of lowland chalk stream habitats in England. The spatial variability of sediment characteristics
(silt-clay, organic matter, total phosphorus and total nitrogen content) within stands of Ranunculus spp. was investigated in 12 rivers in lowland England. Variability was found to be high and there were no discer...
River restoration is now widely undertaken and may be considered an increasingly important aspect of river management. Recent developments in European legislation (Habitats Directive and the Water Framework Directive) should give further impetus to river restoration across EU member states, as this legislation places greater emphasis on the process...
Hydrological and geomorphological research in river environments has largely ignored the influence of instream vegetation growth; focusing rather on the role of riparian vegetation as a control on bank stability or as a potential buffer for dissolved and particulate material entering the channel from the hillslope. However, in many lowland streams...
Aquatic macrophytes play an important role in the nutrient dynamics of streams. As a result, there is much interest in their use as trophic indicators. However, the relationship between aquatic macrophytes and the trophic status of rivers is a complex one, partly because of the effects of a wide range of environmental variables and partly because s...
During floodbank raising work as part of a major capital flood defence scheme on the River Torne between 1985 and 1990, selected reaches of the main trapezoidal channel were enhanced. By winning spoil from the channel margins and from borrow pits in the floodplain, a more varied marginal zone was created which maximised the potential habitat for we...