Emily Warner

DPhil candidate

emily.warner@env-res.ox.ac.uk

I am interested in biodiversity and ecosystem function responses to reforestation and forest restoration.

My DPhil will assess the consequences of upland reforestation in the UK, in collaboration with the forest restoration NGO Trees for Life. I will also use existing data to conduct a global assessment of reforestation effects on carbon storage and biodiversity levels.

I graduated from the University of Oxford with a First Class degree in Biological Sciences in 2015, and studied for an MRes in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College London in 2017. For my MRes I conducted two research projects. The first was a synthetic review of biodiversity responses to ecological restoration, as part of the PREDICTS project at the Natural History Museum, London. My second project was field based, and assessed the response of plant-invertebrate interactions to a naturally occurring geothermal temperature gradient in the Hengill Valley, Iceland.

I spent the year between my undergraduate and Master’s degrees gaining practical conservation experience with UK NGOs. This included two months as a volunteer with Trees for Life, experiencing landscape-scale forest restoration in the Scottish Highlands, and five months as an ecological survey trainee at Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, during which I developed an enthusiasm for botany.

Publications

Warner, E., Lewis, O.T., Brown, N., Green, R., McDonnell, A., Gilbert, A., & Hector, A. (2021). Does restoring native forest restore ecosystem functioning? Evidence from a large-scale forest restoration project in the Scottish Highlands. Restoration Ecology, in press.

Warner, E., Hector, A., Brown, N., Green, R., Savory, A., Gilbert, D., McDonnell, A. & Lewis, O.T. (2021). The response of plants, carabid beetles and birds to 30 years of native reforestation in the Scottish Highlands. Journal of Applied Ecology, http://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13944