BES TEG meeting
Freddie Draper and Tom Kelly gave presentations on their projects at a meeting of the Tropical Ecology Group of the British Ecological Society at Imperial College.
Ian Lawson
Tropical peat meeting at Leicester University
Katy Roucoux and Ian Lawson led a one-day meeting which involved presentations of new projects and data, and discussions of some common methodological problems faced by tropical peatland researchers.
Fieldwork in the Congo
Greta Dargie, Ian Lawson and Simon Lewis spent several weeks in the Republic of Congo searching for peatlands. Greta’s PhD research, in collaboration with WCS Congo, aims to make the first systematic study of peatlands in the Congo Basin, developing the same kinds of themes that our group has been working on in Peru. Recent … Read more
Visits to Kew and Edinburgh
Katy Roucoux and Ian Lawson visited the pollen labs at Kew and Edinburgh in a quest for reference material to help pin down some of the pollen identifications from core QT-2010-1. The team has already compiled a substantial electronic database of pollen morphotypes and the LTFD reference collection is growing. Katy and Ian also discussed … Read more
SEM images of microfossils from Quistococha
Katy, Tom and Ian spent the morning working with an environmental SEM to produce images of fossil material from Quistococha, and some modern fern spores. The aim is to refine the pollen taxonomy by comparing SEM images of the fossil material with modern reference material.
Tropical peat meeting at Nottingham University
Katy, Ian, Tom, Freddie and other colleagues at Leeds attended a one-day meeting organised by Sofie Sjorgersten and gave presentations of their work.
Freddie Draper joins the team
Freddie has joined us at Leeds to study for a PhD, having just completed a BSc (Hons) in Ecology at Aberdeen. He co-organised an expedition to work on Peruvian forests as part of his BSc. Freddie will be working under the supervision of Katy Roucoux, Tim Baker and Ian Lawson on the past and present … Read more
Peru Fieldwork Round Two
This summer saw the completion of our second round of fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon. Tom Kelly, Ian Lawson and Katy Roucoux spent three weeks in Loreto, continuing their work on the peat swamp at Quistococha and surveying the wetlands around Jenaro Herrera on the Rio Ucuyali. The majority of this work will form part … Read more
NERC CASE award
Ian Lawson, as co-I with Simon Lewis (PI), Sue Page (co-I) and Andy Baird (co-I), has been awarded a NERC CASE doctoral training grant that will pioneer peatland research in the Cuvette Centrale of the Congo Basin. The CASE partner is WCS Congo, represented by Paul Telfer. Quantifying tropical peatland area and carbon storage in Central … Read more
Radiocarbon grant awarded
Tom Kelly and Ian Lawson have been awarded a grant-in-kind from NERC for six radiocarbon dates in support of Tom’s project. The grant is worth £3480.