Showcasing student and early career professional work

This special edition of our webinar series is dedicated to showcasing emerging voices in landscape ecology. It will highlight the exciting and innovative work being carried out by students and early‑career professionals whose research and practice are helping to shape the future of landscape ecology.

Join us to discover fresh perspectives, explore new ideas, and support the next generation of landscape ecologists. This session offers a welcoming and encouraging space where presenters can build their professional networks and gain confidence in communicating their work.

Register here now!

We’ll be hearing from:

• Orestis Aslandis, University of Reading - The impact of outdoor recreational disturbance on bird populations in the New Forest National Park

  Outdoor recreation plays a crucial role in promoting human well-being and fostering nature connectedness. However, it can pose significant threats to birds across various ecological scales. While effects on bird behaviour and physiology have been addressed heavily, the landscape-level effects on bird populations have been overlooked. To fill this gap, we use a least-cost surface model on human movement and park-wide data for species of conservation concern, along with spatial data on environmental confounding variables. Preliminary results have shown no impact on two small passerine populations, while future analyses will include potentially more sensitive species. We use our findings to support informed decision-making about the future of outdoor recreation.

• Ben Wilson, University of Stirling - Metamorph-orestry: Investigating moth responses to continuous cover forest stand transformation

  Humans have negatively impacted the planet throughout the Anthropocene, resulting in five of nine planetary boundaries being breached and a sixth mass extinction event through biodiversity loss. Climate change has further adversely affected forests through pests and diseases, fire, drought and windthrow, often resulting in large-scale mortality. Here, we explore continuous cover forest management to not only better support biodiversity but to ensure forest resilience for future generations.

• Dr Carmen Rose Medina-Carmona, University of Stirling - Integrating trees and edible fungi into grazing systems

  In this talk, Carmen will share her research on integrating edible fungi-inoculated trees into rough grazing systems in the Scottish hill ground, a land-sharing strategy called Mycoforestry. The trial, established in collaboration with a local farmer, is the first of its kind in Scotland and explores impacts on soil health, biodiversity, and farm scale diversification.

• Roshana Gautam, University of Licoln - Vegetation Succession in Post-Agricultural Landscapes: The Role of Rewilding and Rewetting

  Roshana’s research examines how vegetation communities, greenhouse gas fluxes, and soil microbial communities vary across rewilded and rewetted areas with differing land use histories at the Doddington Estate. The Estate (770 ha) was intensively farmed until 2021, after which it transitioned toward a rewilding approach. The vegetation results confirmed that rewilding and rewetting drive plant communities towards different temporal directions with varied species diversity.

Register here now!