Objectives:

• To document long term vegetation changes across a range of major UK habitat types  by revisiting plots first recorded in the 1950s-1970s across Scotland and examine potential drivers of these changes, both temporally and spatially.
• To analyse and compare the findings with similar work in these habitats across Europe through ALTER-Net partners.

Habitat types:

• Alpine
• Forest
• Heathland
• Wetland
• Grassland

Drivers:

• Climate
• Pollution
• Land use (primarily changes in grazing by both wild and domestic herbivores)

– all have national datasets covering about the same time period.

Key questions:

• What are the main apparent drivers of change in these important habitats and how have they changed through time?
• How do the UK findings compare with similar work across Europe and what can we learn from this?

Outputs

• Ross, L., Hester, A., Sier, A., Aarrestad, P.A., Alignier, A., Britton, A., Bullock, J., Dick, J., Gillet, F., Hroudova, Z., Kanka, R., Lennartsson, T., Petriccione, B., Petřik, P., Schmidt, W., Smart, S., Staszewski, T. and Tasser, E. Back to the Future: drivers of long-term vegetation change in major habitats across Europe (unpublished report to ALTER-Net)