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Quaternary Palaeoecology, first published in 1980, discusses the
methods and approaches by which Quaternary environments can be
reconstructed from the fossil and sedimentary record. This
knowledge is of great value as the Quaternary was a time of rapid
ecological change, culminating in the present pattern and diversity
of ecosystems. It is possible not only to relate these changes to
fluctuating climates but also to infer what Man's early influence
may have been. The authors describe how past flora and fauna can be
reconstructed and how the numbers of fossils can be used to
reconstruct past plant and animal populations and communities, and
past environments. John Birks has researched in a variety of fields
within Quaternary palaeoecology, including pollen analysis and
vegetation history, environmental change, past climate
reconstruction, and palaeolimnology. Since the 1980s he has
introduced and developed numerical methods and quantitative
approaches into palaeoecology and palaeolimnology. Besides research
in Norway and the UK, he has also worked on palaeoecological
problems in Svalbard, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Minnesota, and
the Yukon. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals
and has published widely on many aspects of Quaternary
palaeoecology. He is currently Professor of Quantitative
Palaeoecology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and University
College London, UK. Hilary Birks researches on palaeoecology and
past climates primarily through the use of plant macrofossil
analysis. She took up the study of plant macrofossils in Minnesota,
USA in 1970, where she investigated the modern representation of
plants in lake sediments by their fruits and seeds, and also worked
on the palaeolimnological record of recent eutrophication and
late-glacial palaeoecology. Since then she has extended her
macrofossil studies to the late-glacial of Scotland and western
Norway, the full-glacial of Beringia (Alaska) and recent changes in
North African lakes brought about by human activities. She is
Professor of Palaeoecology at the University of Bergen, Norway and
teaches palaeoecology at the University of Bergen and University
College London, UK.
The Cultural Landscape - Past, Present and Future considers
different aspects of man's intervention with natural vegetation and
the landscape resulting from a long equilibrium of co-existence.
These landscapes are not stable, and the recent and ever
accelerating changes in technology and life-style have increasingly
affected many ancient landscapes, as old land-use practices are
abandoned and traditions forgotten. The papers in this book
describe and trace the development of cultural landscapes in
different climatic and biogeographical regions in Europe. Remnants
of traditional land-use still remaining are described, particularly
from Western Norway, where traditions have lingered because the
rugged topography of the region is inimicable to high-technology.
Each chapter is by an expert in the field. The topics cover the
documentation of present cultural landscapes, their maintenance and
restoration, and the history of the development of cultural
landscapes from the Stone Age onwards, linking the intensity of
landscape utilization with population dynamics and technological
attainments. The disciplines involved include vegetation science,
vegetation history, ecology, palaeoecology, archaeology, sociology,
geography and history.
British Plant Communities is the first systematic and comprehensive
account of the vegetation types of this country. It covers all
natural, semi-natural and major artificial habitats in Great
Britain (but not Northern Ireland), representing the fruits of
fifteen years of research by leading plant ecologists. The book
breaks new ground in wedding the rigorous interest in the
classification of plant communities that has characterized
Continental phytosociology with the deep concern traditional in
Great Britain to understand how vegetation works. The published
volumes have been greeted with universal acclaim, and the series
has become firmly established as a framework for a wide variety of
teaching, research and management activities in ecology,
conservation and land-use planning.
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