The Ancient Woodlands Ireland project combines existing methodologies with novel approaches to deliver an all-island Ancient Woodlands Inventory for Ireland. The multidisciplinary project is drawing on expertise in GIS and remote sensing, paleoecology, contemporary ecology, and history to assess temporal changes in woodland cover in Ireland over the last 400 years. Ultimately, the project will provide valuable data that can be used to enhance the protection of Ireland’s ancient woodlands and help prioritize sites for woodland restoration. The appointee will conduct vegetation surveys at selected ancient and recent woodland sites across Ireland. This new data will be supplemented with information in existing national forest vegetation datasets to generate ancient woodland indicator plant species lists for Ireland. A second goal of the research post is to evaluate the potential use of soil microbiome data as an indicator of woodland ancientness. DNA will be extracted from soil samples collected from ancient and recent woodland sites across Ireland, and soil microbiomes will be compared using phylogenetic cluster analysis.

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