Quantifying the nature and scale of human-mediated environmental
and land-cover change in the UK over millennia

People have been influencing natural landscapes in the UK for
millennia. These climate-sensitive ecosystems have experienced a
range of land-use pressures including; deforestation, agricultural
development and increasing influx of pollutants. Ecosystems under
pressure become more sensitive to climate-driven disturbance
dynamics such as droughts, flooding, fire and pests. It is predicted
that these climate-induced disturbance events will become more
frequent, increasing the vulnerability of these environments.
Peatlands and forests are important carbon sinks susceptible to
erosion. Ecosystem management is important to regulate these
natural ecosystem services and there is a shift towards
environmental stewardship including upland and river rewilding for
natural flood management, and rewetting of peatlands and
expansion of forests for increased carbon storage.
To further understand ecosystem functioning and potential risk of
landscape change, we need better regional coverage in available
data. Palaeoecology data is available as a past analogue for past
environmental conditions, land-use change and ecosystem recovery.
In particular, Bronze age forest landscapes may provide an analogue
for rewilding upland Britain, but past records remain poorly
resolved. The key challenge for this PhD student is to fill the gaps
and test these hypotheses.
The aim of the project is to quantify local, regional and national
anthropogenic-driven environmental change and land-use history
under varying scales of human-mediated influence.
● Objective 1 - Reconstruct local and regional land-cover
change for upland NW Britain using a multi-proxy
palynological approach
● Objective 2 - Integrate those reconstructions to build a
better spatial and temporal pattern of environmental change
and land-use change across the UK
● Objective 3 - Model environmental and ecological thresholds
to then explore future risk scenarios with each validated
against past observations.
This PhD will incorporate palaeoecological fieldwork, laboratory
analysis, data collection, meta database analysis and modelling. Key
proxies will include pollen analysis (vegetation), charcoal (fire),
geochemistry (flooding), heavy metals and nutrient cycles
(pollutants) across ecological thresholds spanning the Neolithic,
Bronze Age and Iron Age establishment of agriculture and industry.
Other key environmental records may include biological pathogens
and water quality indicators (testate amoebae and diatoms).