Bridging the Gap
The 'Bridging the Gap' network is an informal
group of ecologists, conservation managers and palaeoecologists
interested in exploring the ways in which long term perspectives
(considered as 100-10 000 year time spans) can contribute to
understanding present ecosystems and ecosystem processes and to
predicting future responses to environmental and management
change. Methods such as palaeoecology allow generation of
100+ year monitoring series from a few months in the lab, and
although the value of these approaches is argued in broad terms
(e.g. Froyd & Willis 2008; Swetnam et al. 1999), examples of
actual effective input to conservation practice and ecological
planning ‘on the ground’ are rare (e.g. Chambers et al. 2007); we
argue that long-term methods have the potential to improve
ecological understanding and conservation practice, especially in
times of rapid change.
Research at Hull
Research at Hull focuses on efforts to improve
the translation of palaeoecological data into formats both easily
understood by and useful to conservation practitioners and
ecologists.
Network activities
Workshop 1: Supported
by the Hull Environment Research Institute (HERI) and NERC grant
(NE/D007577/1, to Dr Nicki Whitehouse (QU Belfast) and Dr David
Smith (University of Birmingham))
Discussion focused on identifying barriers to
better collaboration:
Barrier 1: ‘not knowing who to talk
to’ – networking is not helped by time and money
limitations. The proliferation of relevant conferences, and of
sessions within conferences, tend to segregate academic from
practitioner and ecologist from palaeoecologist. In
response: the group has set up an informal newsletter, for events,
discussion and information sharing, is organising a conference in
January 2010 (workshop 2), and currently seeks funding for other
activities
Barrier 2: ‘who reads what’ –
academics gain more ‘career rewards’ for publication in academic,
peer-reviewed journals than in outlets broadly read by
practitioners (Nature versus British Wildlife),
and such articles are usually written in a style which is not
easily accessible for practitioners (those who have access to
libraries that carry the journals), whilst many practitioners
wishing to write papers reflecting on their work must do so in
their own time, not as part of their regular duties.
Short notes summarising recent publications of interest in the
group’s informal newsletter are a small step towards lowering this
barrier
Barrier 3: ‘what are you on
about?’ – the challenge of translating data into
meaningful formats, of transferring knowledge for different
purposes without losing detail or uncertainty, and therefore of
using palaeoecological data in the planning and management
process:
Workshop 2
Newsletters:
Contact
To join the mailing list for the newsletter, please contact Dr
Jane Bunting M.J.Bunting@hull.ac.uk.
Page last updated by Tim Bettley on
11/14/2012