Wendy Woodland

Quantitative estimates of water tables and soil moisture in Holocene peatlands from testate amoebae

Changes in surface wetness on Holocene ombrotrophic mires have principally been estimated from plant macrofossils and humification. Testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) provide an additional technique and have the potential to provide improved quantitative estimates of water-table depths and soil moisture. The relationship between hydrology and testate amoebae assemblages from 163 samples on nine British mires is explored using canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). Mean annual water-table depth and percentage soil moisture are two of the most important environmental variables related to the distribution of testate amoebae within peat. Transfer functions for these variables are developed using four underlying models; weighted aver aging (WA), tolerance downweighted weighted averaging (WA-Tol), weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS) and partial least squares (PLS). In ‘jack-knifed’ validation, WA produced the lowest prediction errors for water table, but was outperformed by WA-Tol for percentage moisture. WA and WA-Tol based transfer functions are then applied to a fossil data set from Bolton Fell Moss, Cumbria. This methodology offers a new technique for reconstructing surface wetness changes on British ombrotrophic and oligotrophic mires and provides data in terms of a meaningful environmental parameter. The cosmopolitan distribution of testate amoebae species suggests that the technique has a much wider geographical potential.

An Evaluation of Foreign Fieldwork in Promoting Deep Learning: A preliminary investigation

This article defines and evaluates the role of foreign fieldwork in promoting deep learning by university undergraduates of geography and environmental management. Empirical results show that students generally rose to the challenge of predictive-analytical learning to produce grades congruent with their Level 2 results. While some students began to question the acquisition of knowledge and came to realise its provisional nature, others met with considerable difficulty in achieving deeper understanding through problem-solving activity. Understanding was ultimately individually constructed and often assessment-driven. The academic integrity of fieldwork must be clarified in order to substantiate its continued place in higher education.

Testing peatland testate amoeba transfer functions: Appropriate methods for clustered training-sets

Transfer functions are widely used in palaeoecology to infer past environmental conditions from fossil remains of many groups of organisms. In contrast to traditional training-set design with one observation per site, some training-sets, including those for peatland testate amoeba-hydrology transfer functions, have a clustered structure with many observations from each site. Here we show that this clustered design causes standard performance statistics to be overly optimistic. Model performance when applied to independent data sets is considerably weaker than suggested by statistical cross-validation. We discuss the reasons for these problems and describe leave-one-site-out cross-validation and the cluster bootstrap as appropriate methods for clustered training-sets. Using these methods we show that the performance of most testate amoeba-hydrology transfer functions is worse than previously assumed and reconstructions are more uncertain.

Can Visitor Satisfaction and Knowledge About Tropical Rainforests be Enhanced Through Biodiversity Interpretation, and Does this Promote a Positive Attitude Towards Ecosystem Conservation?

This research note examines whether educating visitors about biological diversity during a visit to tropical rainforest can raise their levels of satisfaction and knowledge above those achieved from the experiential encounter alone. It thereby interrogates both the affective domain (subjective emotions and feelings) and the cognitive domain (objective knowledge acquisition) of visitors to rainforest. Selected aspects of biological diversity were interpreted in order to elucidate which were most conducive to enhanced satisfaction and knowledge. Visitor attitudes post-visit were ascertained to test whether increasing satisfaction and/or knowledge can encourage a more positive attitude towards ecosystem conservation and sustainable tourism. There is evidence that rainforest interpretation contributes substantially to tourist satisfaction at the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway in Queensland, Australia (Moscardo & Woods, 1998; Pearce & Moscardo, 1998). Skyrail visitors who used interpretive facilities were significantly more satisfied with their visit than those who did not. Additionally, comparison of visitors with different levels of exposure to the interpretation demonstrated that the more interpretation experienced by visitors, the more they learnt. Similarly, an examination of the impact of interpretive signs on visitor knowledge at the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk in Western Australia found significant increases in visitor knowledge and satisfaction as a result of their reading trail-side signs (Hughes & Morrison-Saunders, 2002). There has been much rhetoric that interpretation is an important element in the promotion of environmental conservation and sustainable tourism, largely by increasing visitor knowledge and environmental awareness, and by

Integrating Podcast Technology Effectively into Student Learning: A Reflexive Examination

This paper examines undergraduate student perceptions of the learning utility of video podcasts. The perceived and actual effectiveness of the technology was assessed by written questionnaire, focus groups and assessment results. The podcasts were perceived as effective in supporting learning, largely by offering a flexible and visual learning experience. They were also viewed as a useful resource for revision and assessment, stimulating factual recall. There were no significant differences, however, between examination grades from cohorts prior to and post-adoption of podcasts. There is a need to unite the technology with reflective discussion and critical application in a social constructivist framework.

Holocene sea-level change in the Severn Estuary, southwest England: a diatom-based sea-level transfer function for macrotidal settings

The recent growth in the use of microfossil-based transfer functions in late-Quaternary sea-level reconstructions reflects their potential to accurately quantify palaeo sea-level changes. This study details the development of a diatom-based sea-level transfer function for the Severn Estuary, southwest England, a macrotidal setting that experiences the second highest tidal range in the world. This setting presents difficulties in representing the full tidal range from mean sea level (MSL) to highest astronomical tide (HAT). However, two separate transects were merged successfully and a statistically significant relationship between contemporary diatom assemblages and altitude (m O.D.) was established. A diatom-based transfer function for palaeoaltitude was developed using weighted averaging (WA), tolerance downweighted weighted averaging (WA-Tol) and weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS). WA-Tol produced the lowest prediction errors for altitude and the transfer function was applied to a fossil diatom data set from Gordano Valley, a site adjacent to the Severn Estuary.

Linking Teaching and Research in an Undergraduate Fieldwork Module: a case study

This article provides an example of linking teaching and research within an undergraduate fieldwork module. It highlights student perceptions of the learning and assessment experience and it examines quantitatively the extent to which students were successful in deep learning. Empirical results showed that students generally rose to the challenge of predictive-analytical learning to produce grades congruent with their Level 2 results. Whilst some students began to question the acquisition of knowledge and came to realise its provisional nature, others met with considerable difficulty in achieving deeper understanding through research-based, problem-solving activity. Learning and assessing through active student involvement in the research process at Level 2 seems to be an appropriate method of preparing students for their independent dissertation at Level 3.