Althea Davies

Looking forward through the past : identification of 50 priority research questions in palaeoecology

Summary 1. 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. 2. To date there has been no coherent synthesis of key questions and priority research areas for palaeoecology, which combines biological, geochemical and molecular techniques in order to reconstruct past ecological and environmental systems on timescales from decades to millions of years. 3. We adapted a well-established methodology to identify 50 priority research questions in palaeoecology. Using a set of criteria designed to identify realistic and achievable research goals, we selected questions from a pool submitted by the international palaeoecology research community and relevant policy practitioners. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Accepted Article 4. The integration of online participation, both before and during the workshop, increased international engagement in question selection. 5. The questions selected are structured around six themes: human–environment interactions in the Anthropocene; biodiversity, conservation, and novel ecosystems; biodiversity over long timescales; ecosystem processes and biogeochemical cycling; comparing, combining and synthesizing information from multiple records; and new developments in palaeoecology. 6. Future opportunities in palaeoecology are related to improved incorporation of uncertainty into reconstructions, an enhanced understanding of ecological and evolutionary dynamics and processes, and the continued application of long-term data for better-informed landscape management. 7. Synthesis Palaeoecology is a vibrant and thriving discipline and these 50 priority questions highlight its potential for addressing both pure (e.g. ecological and evolutionary, methodological) and applied (e.g. environmental and conservation) issues related to ecological science and global change.

Improving the application of long‐term ecology in conservation and land management

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council through the Rural Economy and Land-Use Programme (RES-229-27-0003).

Use of multicriteria decision analysis to address conservation conflicts.

Conservation conflicts are increasing on a global scale and instruments for reconciling competing interests are urgently needed. Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a structured, decision-support process that can facilitate dialogue between groups with differing interests and incorporate human and environmental dimensions of conflict. MCDA is a structured and transparent method of breaking down complex problems and incorporating multiple objectives. The value of this process for addressing major challenges in conservation conflict management is that MCDA helps in setting realistic goals; entails a transparent decision-making process; and addresses mistrust, differing world views, cross-scale issues, patchy or contested information, and inflexible legislative tools. Overall we believe MCDA provides a valuable decision-support tool, particularly for increasing awareness of the effects of particular values and choices for working toward negotiated compromise, although an awareness of the effect of methodological choices and the limitations of the method is vital before applying it in conflict situations.

Review of the historical environmental changes in the UK uplands relevant to management and policy

This review was produced during a research fellowship funded by the Economic and Social Research Council through the Rural Economy and Land-Use Programme (RES-229-27-0003)

Agenda-setting and power in collaborative natural resource management

Collaborative management is a widely accepted means of resolving conflict amongst natural resource stakeholders. Power sharing is central to most conceptualizations of collaboration, but theoretical insights about power are only rarely used to interrogate collaborative processes. Agenda-setting theory was used to analyse cases of collaborative deer management in England, Scotland and Indiana (USA). Collaborative management agendas across scales and social contexts were found to be primarily set by contextual factors, particularly stakeholders drawing on specific cultures and policies, and pre-defining issues. These findings highlight significant gaps between the theory and practice of collaboration. If, in practice, substantial power has been wielded in advance, the capacity of subsequent collaborative processes to share power amongst stakeholders may be severely limited. To provide opportunities for differing cultural perspectives to be expressed and challenged, convenors of collaborative processes therefore need to be aware of and reflexive upon existing power relationships and structures.

Late Holocene regime shifts in moorland ecosystems: high resolution data from the Pennines, UK

Identifying critical shifts in ecosystems caused by human impacts has become a priority for understanding resilience to change and setting realistic landscape management goals. Previous work suggests that many British blanket peats have suffered a loss of functional integrity over recent centuries, but it is unclear whether all moorland habitats are equally vulnerable. This study examines the relative sensitivity of four contrasting moorland communities to historic land-use changes and assesses whether these management pressures are pushing some moorlands beyond their Holocene range of variability. Late Holocene dynamics in the Peak District, northern England, were investigated using high resolution pollen, fungal spore and charcoal data, and multivariate analyses. All sites show high Calluna values during the 19th century and converge on local Poaceae dominance during the 20th century. This involved a shift from gradual or cyclical variability and moderate changes in pollen abundance during preceding centuries, to rapid transitions between mono-dominant pollen assemblages and a functional shift to taxa with competitive traits; these are interpreted as a regime shift. Evidence for the recent recovery of dwarf shrubs and Sphagnum is strong at one site, with slight evidence from two others, but disturbance could push the system back to grass dominance. The deep blanket peat site may have crossed a threshold, leading to a persistent grass dominated state. Studying regime shifts on decadal to centennial scales can help bridge the gap between ecology and palaeoecology by providing a robust basis for assessing vulnerability, setting restoration priorities and managing novel peatland states.

Interdisciplinary Conversations: The Collective Model

Environmental history prides itself on being explicitly interdisciplinary. This is usually considered to mean the fostering of dialogue ‘between humanistic scholarship, environmental science, and other disciplines’.1 This position has emerged largely because of the subject’s obvious relationship with environmental and biological/ecological sciences, which have long dominated investigations into the natural world. Once documentary historians began to ‘discover’ and discuss the relationship between society and the environment, it was natural that they should incorporate the findings and some of the methods of ecology in particular. One need only think of the titles of two important environmental history texts — Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Crosby and The Ecological Indian by Shepard Krech — to note the explicit link, particularly in the United States. Crosby is a historian and Krech an anthropologist. Some have moved the other way: Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist and physiologist, has earned international acclaim for his syntheses of human history, placing biology at the explanatory heart of key historical questions; biologist Daniel Botkin believes that his subject cannot be divorced from human cultural activity, past and present. All have attempted to integrate more traditional historical narratives with scientific findings, achieving impressive results.2

The application of resilience concepts in palaeoecology

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.