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Our main research interests involve the assessment and conservation of sensitive habitats and ecosystems
with a focus on wetlands.
Wetland Ecology and Conservation Projects:
Palus Demos: Paludiculture for sustainable agriculture in wetlands
2025-2029
Palus Demos is a EU HORIZON project with 26 partners to create three large-scale demonstration sites for paludiculture across three strategically chosen European countries to explore new agricultural business models, develop markets for paludiculture products, increase employment, and enhance biodiversity and water quality, aligning with the European Green Deal. The project will inspire various stakeholders by showing how paludiculture can preserve peat soils, provide economic opportunities, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will use a bottom-up approach, create sustainable practices at these sites, stimulate the market, and provide policy recommendations to address potential challenges.
See project website here:
https://palusdemos.org/
LIFE Multi-Peat project. 2021-2026
OBJECTIVES
OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the LIFE MULTI PEAT project is to contribute to the goals of EU climate change mitigation (CCM) policy through the restoration of peatlands in Poland (PL), Germany (DE), Belgium (BE), the Netherlands (NL) and Ireland (IE).
The specific objectives are threefold:
1) The large-scale practical restoration of degraded peatlands leading to the cessation of significant GHG emissions from these areas and the restoration of their carbon sink function, as well as the improvement of knowledge on techniques and tools for measuring GHG emissions;
2) The development of a knowledge base and replicable techniques for halting further significant emissions from different classes of degraded peatlands and ultimately restoring their potential as carbon sinks;
3) The development of effective policy tools, such as a peatland policy toolkit that includes an EU-wide policy catalogue, data portal, and a policy development tool that brings together in one place relevant information for policy makers, climate change activists, experts, and the public.
Irish Project sites:
1) Galway Wind Park, Ireland.
2) Private landowner site (s). To be determined.
https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/life/publicWebsite/project/details/5563
Care Peat: Restoring the carbon storage capacity of peatlands. 2019-2023
Care-Peat is an Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) project with 12 partners working together to reduce carbon emissions and restore the carbon storage capacity of different types of peatlands in North-West Europe. The main partnership consists of 7 knowledge institutes and 5 nature organisations from Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Together with 7 sub-partners and 41 associated partners, we develop and test new techniques and socio-economic strategies for carbon reduction.
Care Peat featured at COP 26 at the Peatlands Pavillion
Re-PEAT: Historical Bog change. 2021-2025
Re-PEAT is an EPA/DAFM funded project using the 1810-1814 Bog survey of Ireland maps to reconstruct past and current bog condition in selected bogs within Ireland.
See project site here sites.google.com/view/project-repeat/home for more information.
The Commissioners Report on the Nature and Extent of Bogs in Ireland (1810-1814) surveyed over one million acres of bogs. This project resurrects these historical maps for conservation and restoration planning, and to raise public awareness of bogs. Students will select maps based on their original quality and availability of modern ecological survey data for geo-referencing via Geographic Information System (GIS). Complementary field surveys will verify boundaries and categorize the extent of bog degradation. The final objective is to publish geo-referenced maps, document bog loss / degradation, and to raise awareness about the importance of biodiversity and source water protection.
I am currently recruiting individuals interested in a Research Assistant to complete these objectives.
Marine and Coastal Conservation Projects
SEERAC
This is a DAFM funded project (website)
The project will develop a quantitative, Spatially Explicit Ecological Risk Assessment framework for development in Irish Coastal waters. The framework is intended to demonstrate the use of systematic spatial planning conservation methodology as a decision support system for consent authorities.
Machair Ecosystem Function
As part of an ongoing EPA funded project: 'From source to sink: the response and recovery of coastal catchment ecosystems to large perturbations'; I am assessing plant functional traits to use as a proxy for ecosystem resilience to changes in storm frequency and intensity. We are using both historical (BIOMAR 1996) and current botanical surveys to address these changes by monitoring light, plant-available moisture and soil characteristics.
Nature-Based Solutions
Project: Beach-dune environments as a Nature-based Solution: Understanding controlling variables in human dominated landscapes.
The project will develop a conceptual model of post-storm recovery using ecological, geomorphological and human perspectives. The sites will be located in rural sites that have been severely impacted by recent storms. Existing partnerships between NUI Galway, Geography and active community groups in these locations will be utilised to develop test sites. The model will be structured around testing intervention options to enhance dune recovery versus control areas that are left to natural recovery processes. A modified DIPSR (drivers, pressures, state, impact and response model) will support the work as a common language between management and science.
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