Elena Pearce
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Biology - Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity. Aarhus University
Biography
Natural baselines tell us what landscapes would have looked like in the past, before the strong influence of humans. They also help us to understand what to expect if we were to carry out large scale rewilding initiatives.
My research is focused on recreating natural baselines in Europe, particularly to see how forested or open landscapes would have been. I’m looking at baselines from two different periods: before Homo sapiens arrival to Europe (the Eemian interglacial ~130,000 years ago) and after their spread across the continent (the Early Holocene ~11,700 years ago). This is to establish multiple baselines and gain an insight into the effects of early humans on the landscape.
Whether the landscape existed as a closed-canopy forest or open savannah is dependent on the role of large grazing animals and other disturbance factors, such as fire. Understanding the dynamics between vegetation structure and disturbance also forms a large part of my work.
