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Stewart J Clarke

Stewart J Clarke
The National Trust

PhD

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46
Publications
16,601
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1,430
Citations

Publications

Publications (46)
Article
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,...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Technical Report
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Data
Table S2. Justification for risk register scoring and references used to support the scoring.
Data
Table S1. Justification for prioritization of functional relationships between each broad habitat type, benefit and characteristic.
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
* 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...
Chapter
Full-text available
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,...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
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...
Chapter
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
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...

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