Northern Research Station Seminar Series 2008/9

 

Economics, discounting & climate change: where does forestry fit in?

10^th October 2008 by Prof Colin Price (Bangor University).

Many methods have been proposed for assigning a price to carbon fluxes and states. Because of the lags between fluxes and economic effects, the process of discounting is crucial to prices derived. In particular, the discount rate affects the relative merit of different forestry options, and whether forest sequestration is an economically competitive option.

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Climate change is a social issue

24^th October 2008 by Dr Anna Lawrence (Forest Research).

Climate change affects humans and trees, and increases the significance of the relationship between the two. Anna will give an overview of how the climate change agenda relates to the three broad themes of Forest Research's social research: human wellbeing, social capital and inclusion, and governance.

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A context for forest research in Scotland

21^st November 2008 by Dr Bob McIntosh (Forestry Commission).

The presentation will consider the current policy environment and future challenges for the sector with a view to identifying key research needs.

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Science and public engagement in environmental conflicts

12^th December 2008 by Dr Dave Carss (CEH).

Two great environmental challenges are the conservation of biodiversity and the sustainable management of natural resources. Although these challenges require an interdisciplinary approach, it is often the case that only biologists have contributed to the formulation of evidence-based management policy. However, a growing move towards wider inclusion of other actors in management debate has led to a reflection on the role of science. A purely biological approach is usually inadequate to the task of trying to address why human-wildlife conflicts occur and why they can remain contentious for decades. Managing environmental conflicts requires flexible, adaptive policy-making and greater efforts to improve dialogue between all stakeholders involved.

We look at a specific conflict and how local environmental assessments and ‘perceptions’ are taken into greater consideration in order to move towards a more sustainable future and the issues that arise from this.

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Impacts of climate change on land-use function

9^th January 2009 by Prof Mark Rounsevell (UoE).

Land use is a key element of the world around us with land use change having important consequences for a range of environmental issues such as biodiversity and conservation policy, water resources and quality and climate change, amongst others. The presentation will examine the use of foresight analysis and modelling in exploring future land use change.

Particular attention will be paid to alternative evaluation frameworks, approaches to dealing with uncertainty and the use of Agent-Based Modelling (ABM). ABM is an emerging technique in land use studies that is especially well suited to linking human and natural systems at different spatial and temporal scales. ABM has great potential for multi-disciplinary assessments that can tackle not only the impacts of environmental change, but also the capacity of individuals and society to adapt to change.

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Greenspace quality and quality of life

30^th January 2009 by Prof Catharine Ward Thompson (OPENspace, Edinburgh College of Art).

This presentation will focus on issues of landscape perception, especially in relation to greenspace, and the implications for healthy lifestyles and quality of life.

It will explore some of the challenges to enhancing access to green and natural places, and woodlands in particular, as well as some of the opportunities for improving healthy engagement with such outdoor environments. It will draw on a range of research undertaken by OPENspace research centre, including work with teenagers, with older and disabled people, and with different communities across the UK, to explore what aspects of the physical environment attract or deter different groups.

The presentation will conclude with a discussion of ongoing research on ways to better understand the links between greenspace and health and wellbeing, the challenges inherent in such work, and the implications for the design, planning and management of outdoor environments.

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Understanding the carbon cycle of forest ecosystems - a data assimilation approach

20^th February 2009 by Dr Matthew Williams (Edinburgh University).

"We are now learning much about carbon cycling from continuous monitoring of forest gas exchange through the eddy covariance technique. On hourly to seasonal timescales we can quantify C exchanges from forests, identifying seasonal and inter-annual variability. But understanding the processes that drive carbon exchange requires close links to process models. I will describe current approaches for extracting process information on carbon cycling from CO2 flux data and the limits on model predictive capability. I will also show how geostatistical techniques can be used to generate spatial confidence intervals on key variables, and how these affect regional extrapolations of carbon cycling."

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Forest Research and climate change

13^th March 2009 by Dr James Morison (Forest Research).

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SRF - Not just forestry on a short rotation!

30^th April 2009 by Alan Harrison (Forest Research).

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