I am a DPhil student funded through the NERC DTP in Environmental Research, supervised by Andy Hector (Plant Sciences, Oxford), Owen Lewis (Zoology, Oxford) and Nick Brown (Oxford).

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. Including 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.

Updates:

June 2019: Emily is conducting further fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands, looking at the effect of native reforestation on bird and soil microbe communities

A rewilding diary by Emily Warner – An Introduction: A new series of blog posts about my field work in the Scottish Highlands, working with conservation charity Trees for Life.

Contact Details 

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

Twitter: @EmilyWarner28