Andrea Britton is a senior post-doctoral research scientist in the Ecological Sciences Group and leads the Air Quality Topic for the Scottish Government Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Research Programme. Andrea is a plant and soil ecologist with over 20 years’ experience of working on a wide range of applied ecological research topics. Her primary interests lie in the biodiversity and functioning of upland and especially alpine ecosystems, and the changes occurring in these ecosystems as a result of human influences including pollutant (nitrogen and sulphur) deposition and climate change.
The impact of nitrogen deposition on upland and alpine ecosystems has been a long-running theme in Andrea’s research. Nitrogen deposition is one of the leading causes of habitat degradation and biodiversity loss in the UK and Andrea’s research quantifies these impacts, develops methods for monitoring them and explores the potential for mitigation or recovery. This area of work is strongly policy relevant and applied and contributes to the evidence base underpinning UK air pollution policy and to the development of critical loads for nitrogen deposition used to set pollution reduction targets across Europe.
Currently, Andrea is leading the Nitrogen Impacts in Natural Ecosystems [2] (NINE) project within the Scottish Government Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Research Programme. This project aims to improve understanding of how nitrogen deposition interacts with climate change to impact biodiversity and ecosystem function in Scottish semi-natural habitats, with a particular focus on alpine and forest habitats and below ground biodiversity. The research uses a variety of approaches at different scales, from short-term studies manipulating nitrogen inputs and climate under controlled conditions in the laboratory, to a long-term field-based experiment at Culardoch [3] in the Cairngorm Mountains, and country-wide surveys of above and below ground biodiversity using both traditional and molecular methods.
Andrea also has a keen interest in the exploration of Scottish alpine biodiversity, both above and below ground, and in developing understanding of how biodiversity is influenced by the environment and relates to ecological function. This area of work is supported by traditional taxonomic skills with groups such as bryophytes and lichens which have particular importance in UK alpine habitats and utilises modern molecular methods to uncover alpine soil biodiversity across a wide range of taxa. Recent work at Ben Avon [4] in the Cairngorms has started to reveal the magnitude of soil biodiversity in Scottish alpine habitats and explore how this relates to important soil functions such as carbon and nutrient storage.
Exploration and monitoring of biodiversity in alpine habitats present particular challenges due to the time required to access remote mountain areas. In a recent pilot study [5] in the Cairngorms National Park, Andrea and colleagues worked with plant conservation charity Plantlife to test the potential for citizen science surveys of alpine soil biodiversity using molecular methods. This highly successful pilot demonstrated great scope for engaging with the hill walking public and is currently being expanded to the national scale as the Mountain Heights, Hidden Depths project [6] which forms part of the Scottish Government Research project Scotland’s biodiversity: people, data and monitoring [7].
Links:
[1] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0603-7432
[2] http://www.hutton.ac.uk/NINE
[3] https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/departments/ecological-sciences/research-facilities/culardoch
[4] https://sefari.scot/research/mountain-heights-hidden-depths
[5] https://sefari.scot/research/going-underground-testing-the-potential-of-citizen-science-and-dna-to-explore-alpine-soil
[6] https://munro-biodiversity.hutton.ac.uk/
[7] https://sefari.scot/research/projects/scotland%E2%80%99s-biodiversity-people-data-and-monitoring