I have just completed by PhD, that was funded by the Sylva Foundation and Linacre College, Oxford, working under the supervision of Andy Hector, Nick Brown and Gabriel Hemery. My research is looking into the ecological impacts of ash dieback in the UK.

Ash Dieback, caused by the fungal agent Chalara fraxinea, is an emergent lethal disease of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) which is threatening ash survival in many parts of Europe and which is now present across the UK. My project is looking into the resilience of UK ecosystems to severe loss of ash with regard to associated biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially carbon storage and landscape connectivity. I will also be investigating the potential for other tree species to compensate for loss of ash in woodlands. I am delighted to have this opportunity to work on one of the key conservation issues currently playing out in the UK and Europe.

I graduated with a degree in Biological Sciences from Oxford University before completing an MSc in Applied Ecology and Conservation at the University of East Anglia. I worked previously as an assistant reserve warden for the National Trust at Wicken Fen NNR in Cambridgeshire, and have also carried out a research project in Malaysian Borneo investigating the effects of rainforest logging on the parasite loads of Bornean birds for my MSc.

Contact Details:

louise.hill@plants.ox.ac.uk

Publications:

Hill, L., Jones, G., Atkinson, N., Hector, A., Hemery, G., & Brown, N. (2019). The£ 15 billion cost of ash dieback in Britain. Current Biology, 29(9), R315-R316.

Hill, L., Hemery, G., Hector, A., & Brown, N. (2018). Maintaining ecosystem properties after loss of ash in Great Britain. Journal of Applied Ecology (July) 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13255

Hill, L., Hector, A., Hemery, G., Smart, S., Tanadini, M., & Brown, N. (2017). Abundance distributions for tree species in Great Britain: A two-stage approach to modeling abundance using species distribution modeling and random forest. Ecology and Evolution 7(4): 1043-1056. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2661