Scientific interests:

I am a plant macrofossil specialist with particular interests in vegetation history and palaeoecology in the Late-glacial and Holocene (14,000 - 0 years ago). I took up macrofossil analysis in 1970 and now have a wide experience in Europe and North America, with special emphasis on northern and arctic ecosystems. Besides Late-glacial projects in Scotland, Norway, and Minnesota, I have worked on the Holocene of Svalbard, Greenland, and Tibet, the full-glacial of Beringia (between Alaska and Siberia), and lake eutrophication and pollution studies in Minnesota, UK, and North Africa.

Other major research interests include

1. the reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from the stomatal density and d13C of fossil leaves through the Late-glacial and into the Holocene
2. the use of terrestrial plant macrofossils for AMS radiocarbon dating, chronology, and 14C variations in the Late-glacial, including the dating of volcanic ash layers and the quantification of the marine 14C reservoir age
3. the combination of plant macrofossil analyses with other proxies in multi-disciplinary studies.

My first multi-diciplinary study was on eutrophication in Minnesota lakes in 1970. The largest was the Kråkenes Project involving 24 scientists from 5 countries, to reconstruct the late-glacial and early Holocene ecosystem responses to the climate changes. This approach has been continued in the NORPAST and NORPEC projects with a transect of late-glacial sites from southern to northern Norway to determine regional climatic development and gradients since deglaciation. An assessment of recent pollution and ecosystem sustainability in North African lakes (CASSARINA) has combined analyses of diverse animal and plant remains with radiometric dating.

Near-future research involves completion of the NORPAST/NORPEC late-glacial transect in Norway, a re-investigation and radiocarbon dating of late-glacial sites in Scotland, and the completion of a multiproxy investigation of the Holocene ecosystem history of a West Greenland lake and the use of macrofossils and pollen analyses to investigate the late-glacial and Holocene vegetation history of the Lhasa Valley, Tibet. Possible future projects may develop with collaborators in China and Tibet. Collaboration will continue within the Bjerknes Centre on terrestrial-marine climate interactions.

Major research achievements

1. A pioneering study of the modern deposition of plant remains in lakes.
   
2. A pioneering multi-disciplinary study of lake eutrophication in 1970.
   
3. A multi-disciplinary reconstruction of the Late-glacial and early Holocene ecosystems, environment, and climate changes at Kråkenes Lake, western Norway. Besides aquatic and vegetational development, quantitative climate reconstructions were made and compared from 5 biological proxies and rates of environmental and climatic change were estimated. The project also included the establishment of a high-resolution Late-glacial/early Holocene radiocarbon chronology, the determination of the calendar ages of the late-glacial/early Holocene transition, of the start of the Younger Dryas, and of the Vedde and Saksunarvatn tephras, and the changes in pCO2 during the late-glacial and early Holocene determined from the stomatal density of fossil Salix herbacea leaves that emphasised the differences from the ice-core CO2 record. At least 26 publications have been produced from the project, including a special issue of Journal of Paleolimnology (2000, 23).
   
4. A palaeoecological reconstructions of rapid changes in lakes in North Africa over the last 100 years (CASSARINA project).
   
5. Evaluation of the importance of plant macrofossil data in the interpretation of late-glacial environments and climate.

Teaching
I teach undergraduates about Quaternary palaeoecology, including pollen analysis, and plant macrofossil analysis to graduates. I also teach field courses about plant ecology and taxonomy, and field methods used in Quaternary research. I have led graduate student excursions to Öland and Spain.

I teach an international course on ‘Introduction to Plant Macrofossil Analysis’ at ECRC, University College London.

I currently supervise or co-supervise 4 doctoral students in the University of Bergen.

Scientific Collaboration
I collaborate with numerous colleagues within the University of Bergen with geological and zoological interests as part of Quaternary palaeoecology projects within our University Strategic Grant NORPEC. I also collaborate with other Norwegian colleagues at the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at Trondheim.

I am affiliated to University College London as a Visiting Professor at the Environmental Change Research Centre. Here I teach a course each year on 'Introduction to Plant Macrofossil Analysis', and I collaborate on several research projects on palaeoenvironment of northern Egypt and recent lake ecosystem changes in the UK with scientists at the Centre. In addition, Viv Jones (ECRC, UCL) and Steve Brooks (Natural History Museum, London) collaborate in my current late-glacial research projects.

Elsewhere, I am involved in a project on representation of plant remains in recent lake sediments with Yan Zhao (Lanzhou), on the reconstruction of a lake ecosystem including its catchment in west Greenland with N. John Anderson (Loughborough) and in the assessment of recent biodiversity changes in the Norfolk Broads lakes, England with Carl Sayer (London).

Other interests:
I have a strong interest in photography of plants in the wild, and I particularly enjoy visiting alpine areas around the world to study their flora. My other major hobby is gardening, with a special interest in growing alpine plants.

Publications:
Details of my recent publications are given on the EECRG web page with links to electronic versions where permissable.