Conference Programme
Monday 20 June
17.00 – 18.00
19.00 – 20.00
Registration, Foyer of Information Technology Building
Wine reception, foyer of IT Building
Tuesday 21 June
08.0
Registration, foyer of IT Building
09.00
Formal opening & opening address
Alan Craig, National Parks & Wildlife Service, Ireland
SESSION 1
09.25
THE EU HABITATS DIRECTIVE
CHAIR JOHN CROSS
Keynote address - EU nature & biodiversity context for conserving European Vegetation
Micheál O’Briain, European Commission
09.55
The Habitats of the Habitats Directive
Doug Evans, European Topic Centre – Biodiversity, France
10.20
Natura 2000 habitat types of Greece evaluated in the light of distribution, impact factors &
responsibility
Panayotis Dimopoulos, Erwin Bergmeier & Petra Fischer, University of Ioannina,
Greece
10.45
Coffee
SESSION 2:
SKEFFINGTON
11.15
IRISH VEGETATION
CHAIR MICHELINE SHEEHY
Irish vegetation - the best of its kind in Europe!
John Cross, National Parks & Wildlife Service, Ireland
11.40
Visual representations of Irish vegetation by artists and cartographers
James White, University College Dublin, Ireland
12.05
The likelihood of human introduction as an explanation for the anomalous biogeographical
distributions of certain plant groups in Ireland
Tom Curtis, National Parks & Wildlife Service, Ireland
12.30
Where did Ireland’s trees come from?
Fraser Mitchell, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
13.00
Lunch
SESSION 3:
14.30
VEGETATION MAPPING
CHAIR GRACE O’DONOVAN
The use and application of the Map of Natural Vegetation of Europe in Germany
Udo Bohn & Gisella Gollub, Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Germany
14.55 Mapping ecological pattern and process in the UK using the concept of the ecoscape
John Rodwell, Lancaster, England
15.20
Mapping the epiphytic lichen diversity & assessment of environmental quality in an Irish
semi-natural woodland
Lenka Brodeková, Alan Gilmer, Paul Dowding, Howard Fox & Anna Guttová, Dublin
Institute of Technology, Ireland
15.45
Coffee
SESSION 4:
GENERAL VEGETATION DESCRIPTIONS I
CHAIR ENDA MOONEY
16.15
Geography of the birch woodlands of the northern European Russia and the Caucasus
Galina Ogureeva, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Federation
16.40 Forest vegetation past and present in Turkey and its conservation planning
Alper Çolak, Istanbul University, Turkey
17.05
Vegetation of Irish hedgerows
Declan Doogue & Daniel Kelly, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
17.30
Demonstration of the CD-ROM of the Map of the Natural Vegetation of Europe
18:00
POSTER SESSION & RECEPTION
Wednesday 22 June
SESSION 5:
VEGETATION CLASSIFICATION & MAPPING I
09.00
Semi-natural grassland vegetation in Bulgaria
09.25
Grasslands from the sky – fact or fiction
CHAIR JOHN RODWELL
Iva Apostolova & Tenyo Meshinev, Institute of Botany, Bulgaria.
Grace O’Donovan & Sharon Parr, University College Dublin, Ireland
09.50
A vegetation classification demonstrating continua within grasslands and heaths of
conservation interest in the Burren, Ireland
Sharon Parr, Grace O’Donovan, John Finn & S. Ward, University College Dublin,
Ireland
10.15
A cluster analysis approach to classifying Irish native woodlands
10.40
Coffee
Philip Perrin, BEC Consultants Ltd., Ireland
SESSION 6:
11.15
VEGETATION CLASSIFICATION & MAPPING II
CHAIR FRASER MITCHELL
The vegetation of artificial drainage channels in the UK: how does its composition correspond
with described communities?
Owen Mountford, NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, England
11.40
Using GPS and GIS in the mapping & analysis of vegetation patterns along streams in
Southern Ireland
Mihai Coroi, Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, Michael Gormally & Paul Giller,
University College Cork, Ireland
12.05
Instruments for vegetation surveillance along the Belgian coast: combining remote sensing &
field mapping
12.30
A review and floristic analysis of grey dune vegetation in the U.K.
13.00
Lunch
Sam Provoost, Institute of Nature Conservation, Brussels.
Peter Rhind & David Stevens, Countryside Council for Wales
SESSION 7:
14.30
VEGETATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
CHAIR MICHAEL O’CONNELL
Modeling climate change impacts on species’ distributions in Britain & Ireland based on
dispersal characteristics, climatic suitability and land cover
Paula Harrison, Pamela M. Berry, Nathalie Butt, Richard Pearson & Terry Dawson,
University of Oxford, England.
14.55
Climate Change Impacts on Irish Vegetation
Mike Jones, Alison Donnelly & Clare Byrne, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
15.20
Ecological change on topoclimate gradients in south-east Spain: evidence for global warming
at middle latitudes
Tom Dargie, Salima Benhouhou, Monica Dargie, Alistair Headley, Brendan
O’Hanrahan & Susanna Tong, Boreas Ecology, Scotland
15.45
Coffee
SESSION 8:
16.15
GENERAL VEGETATION DESCRIPTIONS II
CHAIR TOM CURTIS
Machair vegetation in Ireland
Karen Gaynor, National Parks & Wildlife Service, Ireland
16.40
Alluvial woodlands in the Czech Republic and Ireland – a comparison
17.05
The Vegetation of Ireland’s Blanket Bogs
Zdenka Neuhäuslova & John Cross, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Caitríona Douglas, National Parks & Wildlife Service, Ireland
19.30
BUS DEPARTS FOR GLENLO ABBEY
20:00
CONFERENCE DINNER IN GLENLO ABBEY
Thursday 23 June
SESSION 9:
09.00
GENERAL VEGETATION DESCRIPTIONS III
CHAIR DANIEL KELLY
Treelines and habitats in European alpine environments
Laszlo Nagy, McConnell Ecological Research, Scotland
09.25
High mountain vegetation of the Caucasus
George Nakhutsrishvili, Georgian Academy of Science, Georgia
09.50
Species inventory and conservation of Bryophytes in Ireland.
David Holyoak, Cambourne, England
SESSION 10:
MANAGEMENT, LANDUSE CHANGE & RESTORATION
CHAIR ANDREW BLEASDALE
10.15
A recent history of oak (Quercus petraea)-dominated woodland in Killarney, Ireland, based
on tree-ring analysis
10.40
Coffee
11.15
Changes in the vegetation of Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire, U.K., 1974-2002
Aileen O’Sullivan, Coillte Teoranta, Ireland
Keith Kirby, English Nature
11.40
Restoration of poor fen vegetation on Clara Bog
Patrick Crushell, University College Cork, Ireland
12.05
Alvar vegetation of Öland – changes, monitoring & restoration
Ejvind Rosén, Uppsala University, Sweden
12.30.1 Vegetation-Hydrology-Herbivore interactions on Skealoghan Turlough, Co. Mayo: Implications
for the grazing management of turloughs
James Moran, Micheline Sheehy Skeffington & Michael Gormally, Teagasc Resource
Centre, Ireland
13.00
Lunch
SESSION 10:
14.30
MONITORING & CONDITION ASSESSMENT
CHAIR JOHN WILSON
Monitoring habitats and vegetation in the UK for nature conservation
Ian Strachan, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, U.K.
14.55
Biodiversity & Disturbance in a Semi-Arid Ecosystem – Patterns and Scale
Gerald Jurasinski, University of Bayreuth, Germany
15.20 The Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) scheme in Northern Ireland: ten years of agrienvironment monitoring
Peter McEvoy, Melanie Flexen & Jim McAdam, Queen’s University, Northern Ireland
15.45
Coffee
16.15
Assessment of biological condition in EU habitat types
Jesper Fredshavn & Erik Buchwald, National Environmental Research Institute & The
Forest & Nature Agency, Denmark.
16.40 BioHab: a European framework for monitoring changes in the landscape and vegetation using
plant life forms
Desire Paelinckx, B. Bunce, R. Jongman & G. De Blust, Institute of Nature
Conservation, Belgium
17.05
Closing session
John Wilson, National Parks & Wildlife Service, Ireland.
19.45
CONFERENCE BARBEQUE