May 2022 – Ambroise Baker's Research

Monitoring Rewilding INTECOL session: Speakers line-up

The speaker’s line up is as follows:

Jens-Christian Svenning (keynote). Aarhus University. Monitoring ecological dynamics under trophic rewilding – A conceptual perspective

Sara King. Rewilding Britain. Rewilding Britain’s network and framework for monitoring rewilding: an update

Alan Puttock and Richard Brazier. University of Exeter. Undertaking research to inform the re-introduction of Eurasian beaver to Great Britain

Alan Law and Nigel Willby. University of Stirling. Aquatic biodiversity response in beaver-created ponds and wetlands

Colin Guilfoyle, Heather Lally, Elvira de Eyto, Conor Graham. Setting a baseline for ecological restoration in Wild Nephin National Park

Laura Waistell and Ambroise Baker. Teesside University. Monitoring animal welfare during rewilding: a case study of beaver introduction in Britain

Josiane Segar, Henrique Pereira, Nestor Fernandez. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. Assessing rewilding progress: bridging the gap between science and practice

Christopher Sandom. University of Sussex. Socio-ecological monitoring in the diverse world of rewilding.

Editorial Advisor for Plant People Planet, New Phytologist Foundation

This external committent at Plant People Planet will be an opportunity to bring together academic and botanical expertise and develop my editorial skills.

Plants, People, Planet aims to promote outstanding plant-based research in its broadest sense and to celebrate everything new, innovative and exciting in plant sciences that is relevant to society and people’s daily lives. For more details, see our Aims and Scope.

I am very fortunate to have joined the editorial board at large and will be serving as editorial advisor.

Recent observation and status of alpine clubmoss in the North York Moors (VC 62 NE Yorks)

My interests and skills as field botanist, researcher and university lecturer promoting teaching and learning of ecology in the natural environment, came together very nicely, when discovering a botanical rarity in the North York Moors (NYM) during a field trip with student.

This finding is now reported in BSBI News 150 pp37-39 Alpine Clubmoss. If you are interested in botany and would like to join the BSBI, then please, should to https://bsbi.org/. There are links to the join page and Louise’s blog, where people can download a sampler of the issue and a free article.

Finding alpine clubmoss (Diphasiastrum alpinum) at Danby Beacon challenged my identification skills. As a member of the BSBI (Botanical society of Britain and Ireland), I was able to benefit from the panel of referee, experts ready to help with any critical identification.

Also it prompted me to research previous observation of this species in the NYM, reported in the article. Key sources of information were the NBN Atlas, the BSBI database as well as this article.

The article even includes data collected by Teesside University student when practising a key skill in ecology and conservation: measuring vegetation structure and plant biodiversity using quadrats (illustrated below).

Recording plant biodiversity in acid grassland in the New Forest (Hampshire, UK), using a 1m x 1m quadrat.

About Me

My work focuses on how plants, biodiversity and complex ecosystems respond to environmental change. Answering this question is critical to developing: 1) guidance to accelerate ecological recovery and 2) evidence-based policies to protect the environment and human well-being in the context of global change. New evidences in my research chiefly come directly from studying plants, the natural environment and large-scale, long-term ecological systems.

Google Scholar Profile

Teesside University Profile

I am a Senior Lecturer in Ecology at Teesside University, UK. I was previously a post-doctoral researcher based in UCL (University College London), UK, working on landscape connectivity, biodiversity and ecosystem function in freshwater networks (projects: Lake BESS, Hydroscape). My PhD, completed in the Oxford Long-term Ecology Lab at the University of Oxford, UK, was a contribution to the hotly debated conservation practice of rewilding, using a long-term perspective.