Predicting ecosystems responses under changing environment conditions is one of the major challenges in ecology. It is rendered more complex by the non-linear dynamics which characterise ecosystems and the partially stochastic nature of key drivers. Environmental drivers (including climate, nutrients, fire, and herbivores) change in time and space, sometimes gradually and smoothly, sometimes less gradually, [...]

I’ve seen a new approach to use of ornamental plants several occasions recently: walls of plants covering outdoor and indoor sites. At the indoor site, in Heathrow Airport, I was even more happy to see that Patrick Blanc, credited with conceiving the ‘indoor living wall’ in the legend next to the plantings, is described as a ‘botanist’. [...]

I didn’t do modern history at school so my impression of the industrial revolution is largely a mish-mash of pop history and some misremembered Industrial Archaeology courses. What I do recall is that the emphasis in the Industrial Revolution is firmly on the Industrial side. Agriculture existed as a place for people to leave to [...]

Most international archaeological work in South America has concentrated on the Andes for various reasons. It’s more accessible, the ruins are more visible, there’s a better ethnohistorical record from the conquistadors, there’s variety over short distances because change in height makes vertical economies possible where different foods grow at different heights and they’re just the [...]

Palms may be the most useful group of plants in tropical American forests and in this project we study the effect of extraction and trade of palms on forests in the western Amazon, Andes, and Pacific lowlands of South America. In 2008 the European Community’s 7th Framework programme signed a contract with six European and [...]