Atlantic woodland health: long term interations between climate, ecology and management

森林健康是一个日益受到国际关注的问题，大多数注意力集中在气候驱动因素和有大片森林覆盖的地区。相比之下，人们对气候变化如何影响林地覆盖有限且其构成受到文化遗产强烈影响的景观中的森林恢复力知之甚少。目前的评估方法加剧了这一知识差距，因为生态时间序列研究太短，无法了解林地反应、气候变化和管理遗产之间的滞后反应和潜在不平衡。这些问题在欧洲等长期存在的地区尤为重要。该项目将侧重于苏格兰西北部的温带大西洋林地社区，以探索气候变化-特别是变暖和突变-和人类影响如何相互作用，影响林地健康，通过多样性的古生态证据进行衡量，连续性和从扰动中恢复的能力。我们对欧洲西北部落叶林地动态的理解主要是由中期人类引起的广泛清除的范例主导的。全新世，其次是历史时期的选择性管理压力。绝大多数人认为，文化影响会导致生态系统恶化，这破坏了以承认和维护其文化和保护价值的方式管理残木的努力。苏格兰西北部的“温带雨林”是支离破碎的，我们对它对环境变化的敏感性和史前林地群落的连续性水平的理解也是如此。从更远的东部针叶林的古生态学证据表明，落叶类群可能更具竞争力的气候变暖阶段，类似于目前的条件。然而，数据太有限，以评估西部范围限制附近的海洋条件是否提供适合于人口恢复的小气候，或某些形式的管理干扰是否兼容的连续性和再生。

Forest health is a growing, international concern, with most attention focused on climatic drivers and regions with large tracts of forest cover. By contrast, relatively little is known about how climate change influences forest resilience in landscapes where woodland cover is limited and its composition is strongly influenced by cultural legacies. This gap in knowledge is exacerbated by current evaluation methods, since ecological time-series studies are too short to understand lagged responses and potential disequilibrium between woodland responses, climate shifts and management legacies. These issues are particularly relevant in longsettled landscapes, like Europe. This project will focus on temperate Atlantic woodland communities in NW Scotland to explore how climate change - particularly warmer and abrupt shifts - and human impacts interact to influence woodland health, measured through palaeoecological evidence for diversity, continuity and capacity to recover from perturbations.Our understanding of deciduous woodland dynamics in NW Europe is dominated by the paradigm of widespread human-induced clearance during the mid- Holocene, followed by selective management pressures in the historic period. Cultural impacts are, overwhelmingly, assumed to lead to ecosystem deterioration, which undermines efforts to manage relict woods in a way that recognises and maintains both their cultural and conservation values.'Temperate rainforest' in NW Scotland is fragmented, as is our understanding of its sensitivity to environmental change and the level of continuity from prehistoric woodland communities. Palaeoecological evidence from coniferous woods further east suggest that deciduous taxa may be more competitive during phases of climatic warming, analogous to current conditions. However, the data are too limited to assess whether oceanic conditions near western range limits provide microclimates suited to population recovery, or whether some forms of management disturbance are compatible with continuity and regeneration.