P11 - NERC Natural Environment Research Council

Polaris House
North Star Avenue,
Swindon, SN2 1EU
UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.nerc.ac.uk

The CNR Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) is the UK’s Centre of Excellence for research in the terrestrial and freshwater environmental sciences. Five of CEH’s sites will take part, combining expertise in field ecological investigation and genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics of trees, insects, and soil fungi, together with gridded bioinformatics, genomic database, modelling and analytical tools. Five different units of CEH involved in the NoE: CEH Dorset, CEH Oxford, CEH Lancaster, CEH Edinburgh, and CEH Banchory.


The key persons involved in the NoE are:

CEH Dorset

Andrew Lowe is a senior scientific officer and has been studying spatial genetic structure and gene flow dynamics within plant species for the last 12 years. He has developed and lead several large EU projects, mostly concentrating on the ecological and evolutionary genetics of tropical trees.

Jeremy Thomas is an IMP band 2 scientist and Director of CEH Dorset.

James Bullock is a principle scientific officer and head of the Conservation Biology Section at Dorset. He is interested in quantifying seed dispersal, as it is such a vital stage in a plant’s life cycle, being the only time at which plants can move any appreciable distance.

Jo Bond is a Higher Scientific Officer in the Molecular Ecology group and runs the molecular lab. She has undertaken a range of population genetic investigations of plants and insects and has proven proficiency in developing new markers for a range of species.


CEH Oxford

Mark Bailey is an IMP-band 2 scientist, director of CEH Oxford, and CEH Science Director for Biodiversity. He uses genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic techniques to examine anthropogenic drivers of soil mesofauanal diversity, and the consequences of changes in biodiversity for soil processes (mostly C and N mineralisation).

Andrew Whiteley is a Senior Scientific Officer and head of the Molecular Microbial Ecology Section at CEH Oxford. He has extensive experience of the molecular detection of prokaryotes and eukaryotes in their natural environments and developed RNA-SIP procedures to asses their functionality using stable isotope tracers.

Dawn Field leads the Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics Group at CEH Oxford. She applies molecular evolutionary theory and computational biology to ask questions about how sequences evolve at the DNA-level. In particular, she is interested in exploiting collections of complete genome sequences to detect biological patterns that explain how genotype leads to phenotype.


CEH Lancaster

Nisha Parekh applies both traditional and more modern, microbiological and molecular techniques to link micro-organisms with soil processes and to study changes in soil microbial diversity in response to environmental and/or anthropogenic disturbances.

Helena Black is principally interested in investigating the importance of soil biota in the maintenance of ecosystem functions. Over the last seventeen years, she has had extensive experience in measuring and monitoring the role of soil biota in different land uses and habitats.


CEH Edinburgh

Julia Wilson is head of the Biosystem Management Section at CEH Edinburgh. Her work has focussed on forestry and agroforestry in the tropics since the mid 1980s. She is primarily interested in: interspecific differences in tree - crop interactions in agroforestry, focussing on below ground competition and how to control it, arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal fungi in forests and agroforestry systems.

Pete Levy is a senior scientific officer in the Ecosystem Process Modelling Section. He is developing ecophysiological envelop models to allow prediction of ecosystem (mostly trees) distribution and climatic feedbacks for a range of input climate variables (both past and future).

Stephen Cavers is a higher scientific officer Biosystem Management Section at CEH Edinburgh, he joined CEH in 1998.

CEH Banchory

Allan Watt is director of CEH Banchory. He leads the BioAssess project, developing tools for assessing biodiversity and quantifying the impact of land use change on biodiversity, and the BIOFORUM project, a forum for scientists and stakeholders concerned about conflicts between the conservation of biodiversity and human activities.

Phil E. Hulme is the head of the Ecosystem Dynamics Section at CEH Banchory.

Mick Marquiss is a population ecologist interested in phenology and population fluctuation. For some species, there is currently a mismatch between phenology/breeding/ moult/ migration and their key resources.