INQUA congress
Ian Lawson presented a summary of the group’s work in Peru at the Congress of the International Union for Quaternary Science in Nagoya, Japan.
Our carbon and vegetation map of Peruvian peatlands – in action
River levels are dropping in Loreto, northern Peru at this time of year, and that means that access is briefly possible to some of the fascinating peatland forests that we have been working on over the last few years. And for the first field season ever, the vegetation and carbon map published by Freddie Draper … Read more
Results featured in El Peruano
The results of Freddie Draper concerning the high carbon stocks of the peatlands of Loreto, northern Peru were featured in El Peruano – a Peruvian national newspaper. The article is based on our presentation on the margins of COP20, Lima, Peru in December 2014, and emphasises the role of the Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia … Read more
Updates on deforestation in Loreto, Perú
Two recent reports suggest that the potential threats to Amazonian peatlands from deforestation for oil palms and cacao, and gold mining and other extractive industries, are growing. The EIA published a particularly critical report last month, and MAAP also claims to have found evidence of significant deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon in its analyses of LandSat imagery. This raises the concern that … Read more
Congratulations to Dr Tom Kelly
Tom Kelly passed his PhD viva at the University of Leeds, with well-deserved commendations from his examiners Rob Marchant (University of York) and David Galbraith (Leeds). His supervisors (Ian Lawson, Katy Roucoux and Tim Baker) are very proud! Tom has already led or contributed to several papers through his research, and we look forward to … Read more
Annual Conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology in Zürich
The theme of this conference was “Resilience of tropical ecosystems – future challenges and opportunities” – very much in line with our research aims. Katy Roucoux gave a presentation on the palaeoecology of forest hollows, and presented (on Freddie’s behalf) a poster by Draper et al. summarizing our recent paper in ERL.
Meeting of the UK Tropical Peatlands Working Group, Leicester
Ian Lawson chaired the meeting, which welcomed several new members. Katy and Ian both gave presentations of their recent work.
New paper in Wetlands Ecology and Management
Lawson et al. “Improving estimates of carbon storage and flux in tropical peatlands” is now online at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11273-014-9402-2/fulltext.html. The paper was developed by members of the UK Tropical Peatlands Working Group and reflects the group’s ambition to work more closely together, using comparable research methods, in order to improve our understanding of carbon stocks and … Read more
New paper in Environmental Research Letters identifies the most carbon-dense ecosystem in Amazonia
Draper et al. “The distribution and amount of carbon in the largest peatland complex in Amazonia” shows, using a wide range of new field data, that peatland pole forest is the most carbon-dense type ecosystem in Amazonia, when below-ground carbon storage is taken into account. This work also revised the central estimate for carbon storage … Read more
Katy Roucoux and Ian Lawson move to the University of St Andrews
Only slightly further from the tropics than Leeds – and just as sunny! Katy and Ian have been welcomed into the Environmental Change Research Group, which is part of the Department of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews.