Re-defining native woodland

Genetic provenance and best practice woodland management: a case study in native alder (Alnus glutinosa)

“…Less than 1.5% of the land area in Britain is occupied by native forest (Brown 1997). Comparable data for Ireland suggest that less than 1% of land area is native woodland and this is continuing to decrease as a result of intensive agriculture and forestry practice (Cross 1998).…”

A proposal of new conditions and criteria for the evaluation of woodlands

“…Most definitions of "forest" are purely structural based mainly on tree cover, minimum height, minimum area and tree density. On the academic level, many authors tried to define the structural thresholds for definition of forests and woodlands (Beard 1955;Mueller-Dombois and Ellenberg 1974;Edwards 1983;Brown 1997;McElhinny 2005;Box and Fujiwara 2013).…”

“…Despite that the species in question are "country native", they do not originally belong to the original eco-region. To discriminate the post-glacial true origin of species is a very hard task (Brown 1997) for palaeo-botanists, and perhaps it is unpractical. Globalization of species may occur by natural or anthropic causes, according to the dissemination strategy of each species.…”

Conceptual Clarity, Scientific Rigour and ‘The Stories We Are’: Engaging with Two Challenges to the Objectivity of Invasion Biology

“…As a prominent and recent example of a large body of work that predominantly focuses on the assumptions, internal logic and coherence of the central concepts of invasion biology (see, for instance , Brown 1997 ;Shrader -Frechette 2001 ;Woods & Moriarty 2001 ;Aitken 2004 ;Townsend 2005 ;Warren 2007 ), I focus in this chapter on the critique expressed by Mark Sagoff (1999Sagoff ( , 2003Sagoff ( , 2005Sagoff ( , 2006Sagoff ( , 2009a against ecological science in general, and invasion biology in particular. In this critique he argues that ecological science and invasion biology alike are unable to defi ne their objects of study (ecosystems and the sense in which they can be identifi ed as ' the same ' , or ' of a kind ' ), are unable to test falsifi able hypotheses about changes in the ecosystem, are unable to explain effi cient cause for ecosystem structure, pattern, design or function, and are unable to apply their theories to solve real -life problems.…”