Katherine J Willis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3588422 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katherine J Willis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katherine J |
| FAMILY NAME | Willis |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIS K J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6763-2489 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A walk in the park—Identifying healthy greenspaces using scents
Societal Impact Statement As urbanisation accelerates globally, access to nature is increasingly recognised as vital for public health and wellbeing. We captured and analysed plant‐emitted airborne ‘scent signatures’ across Oxford's urban greenspaces to assess their potential health relevance. We found that sites differ in levels of health‐promoting volatiles and harmful pollutants and that these compounds vary with environmental conditions such …
Smelling Wellness
This pilot study investigated whether ambient biogenic volatile organic compounds (bVOCs)-scent profiles emitted by botanic glasshouse vegetation-could contribute to quantifiable human health and wellbeing outcomes. Over 11 months in 2024 (January-December), human participant trials were conducted at the Oxford Botanic Garden to compare the physiological and psychological effects associated with spending 30 min exposures in five different vegetat…
Carbon storage and sequestration rates of trees inside and outside forests in Great Britain
Efforts to abate climate change heavily rely on carbon sequestration by trees. However, analyses of tree carbon dynamics often neglect trees outside of forests (TOFs) and spatially detailed information about tree carbon sequestration rates are largely missing. Here we describe a new method which combines remote sensing with forest inventory data from 127 358 sites to first estimate tree age and site productivity, which we then used to estimate ca…
Temperate Regenerative Agriculture practices increase soil carbon but not crop yield—a meta-analysis
Regenerative Agriculture (RA) claims to build soil organic carbon (SOC) and increase crop yields through simultaneous adoption of a suite of management practices which restore soil health. However, this claim is largely unevidenced as few studies of fully integrated regenerative systems are currently available. As a first step to addressing this knowledge gap, we here examine three practices now being promoted as part of RA: reducing tillage inte…
Seeing roots from space
With predicted climate change, drylands are set to get warmer and drier, increasing water stress for the vegetation in these regions. Plant sensitivity to drier periods and drought events will largely depend on trait strategies to access and store water, often linked to the root system. However, understanding the role of below-ground traits in enhancing ecological resilience to these climate changes remains poorly understood. We present the resul…
The future of Southeast Asia's tropical peatlands
A palynological perspective on the impacts of European contact
The Spanish conquest of the Cuchumatanes Highlands (1524–1541 ce ) led to dramatic land use changes adhering to colonial practices and values, which included the rearing of livestock, agriculture, timber extraction, mining, and the relocation of indigenous populations to new settlements. These changes are often recorded in historical accounts and official records; however, these are sparse, incomplete, and have been lost over the passage of time.…
Indigenous uses of wild and tended plant biodiversity maintain ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes of the Terai Plains of Nepal
Background Despite a rapidly accumulating evidence base quantifying ecosystem services, the role of biodiversity in the maintenance of ecosystem services in shared human-nature environments is still understudied, as is how indigenous and agriculturally dependent communities perceive, use, and manage biodiversity. The present study aims to document traditional ethnobotanical knowledge of the ecosystem service benefits derived from wild and tended …
Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change
The time is now For decades, scientists have been raising calls for societal changes that will reduce our impacts on nature. Though much conservation has occurred, our natural environment continues to decline under the weight of our consumption. Humanity depends directly on the output of nature; thus, this decline will affect us, just as it does the other species with which we share this world. Díaz et al. review the findings of the largest asses…
The Apparent Resilience of the Dry Tropical Forests of the Nicaraguan Region of the Central American Dry Corridor to Variations in Climate Over the Last C. 1200 Years
The Central American Dry Corridor (CADC) is the most densely populated area of the Central American Isthmus and is subject to the greatest variability in precipitation between seasons. The vegetation of this region is composed of Dry Tropical Forests (DTF), which are suggested to be highly susceptible to variations in climate and anthropogenic development. This study examines the vulnerability of past DTF surrounding the Asese peninsula, Nicaragu…
Pollination service delivery for European crops
Pollen productivity estimates from old-growth forest strongly differ from those obtained in cultural landscapes
Pollen productivity estimates of individual plant taxa are necessary when determining changes of vegetation cover during the Holocene. To date, studies describing this parameter in lowland temperate Europe have been carried out in cultural landscapes showing low forest cover and dominated by human activities. However, these may be of limited use when applied to reconstruct past land cover, for instance, from pre-agricultural landscapes. The aim o…
Reconstructing Holocene vegetation on the island of Gran Canaria before and after human colonization
We provide the first fossil pollen and charcoal analysis from the island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). The pollen record obtained from Laguna de Valleseco (870 m a.s.l.) spans the late Holocene ( c. 4500–1500 cal. yr BP) and thereby captures the impact of human colonization. During the earliest period, pollen composition resembled contemporary thermophilous communities, with palms ( Phoenix canariensis) and junipers ( Juniperus cf. turbinata)…
Ecosystem resilience to late-Holocene climate change in the Upper Zambezi Valley
Peat deposits from wetlands in the Upper Zambezi Valley provide an important long-term window on ecosystem dynamics in the Kalahari basin during the late Holocene. We use fossil pollen and macro-charcoal extracted from peat cores contained in three wetland sites to examine the response of vegetation to regional climate change. We find that during the last 6 ka, internal ecosystem dynamics are more important than climate, as observed by independen…
Climate variability and associated vegetation response throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) between 60 and 8 ka
Climate and abrupt vegetation change in Northern Europe since the last deglaciation
A long-standing question in palaeoecology has been to determine the importance of climate driving vegetation change since the last deglaciation. Here, we investigate the local-to-regional dynamics of vegetation change during the Lateglacial and the Holocene in Northern Europe. We extracted sites from the European Pollen Database and used the squared-chord distance (SCD) dissimilarity metric to identify time periods of high pollen assemblage turno…
John Birks
We describe the career of John Birks as a pioneering scientist who has, over a career spanning five decades, transformed palaeoecology from a largely descriptive to a rigorous quantitative science relevant to contemporary questions in ecology and environmental change. We review his influence on students and colleagues not only at Cambridge and Bergen Universities, his places of primary employment, but also on individuals and research groups in Eu…
It’s all in the detail
Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2
Do dung fungal spores make a good proxy for past distribution of large herbivores?
Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2
Neotropical refugia
Patterns of endemism in the Neotropics have been explained by restriction of forest to ‘refugia’ in arid cold-stages of the Quaternary (Haffer J (1969) Speciation in Amazonian forest birds. Science 165: 131–137). The palaeoecological record, however, shows no such forest contraction. We review palaeoecological and phylogenetic data on the response of Neotropical taxa and communities to climatic changes of the Cenozoic. Solar insolation varies ove…
Detecting the provenance of Galápagos non-native pollen
The influence of non-native pollen, both long-distance transported and from introduced taxa, on reconstruction of past vegetation is not often well quantified in palynological investigations. We examined both fossil and modern samples from the Galápagos Islands, a remote archipelago lying 1000 km from the nearest continent. These islands are particularly well-suited for such an assessment, as (1) the native flora is limited and well-known, enabli…
Late-Holocene successional dynamics in a transitional forest of west-central Mexico
The determination of past successional stages, as well as the factors triggering succession, is crucial for the understanding of forest dynamics and the design of current and future management and conservation strategies. Shifts between successional stages can take decades or even centuries to occur because of tree longevity; therefore palaeoecological studies are important tools for their study. The present research involved the palaeoreconstruc…
How fire and climate shaped grass-dominated vegetation and forest mosaics in northern South Africa during past millennia
Grassland and savanna are globally important ecosystems, both ecologically and economically. These grass-dominated systems are at risk from current and future climate change and increasing anthropogenic impact. Key questions for understanding the resilience and variability of grass-dominated ecosystems under current and future environmental conditions include: How have these systems responded to climate change and disturbance in the past? What ar…
The Neolithic transition - fact or fiction? Palaeoecological evidence from the Balkans
Extensive study of the spread of agriculture from the near east to northern Europe by archaeologists has failed to establish the extent to which early Neolithic farmers had an impact upon the landscape. Two current theories for how early farming spread from southeast to northern Europe (population expansion resulting in the surplus population moving northwards, and cultural migration of technologies and crops without a large population movement) …
Testing the sensitivity of charcoal as an indicator of fire events in savanna environments
The charcoal record contained in lake sedimentary sequences is often used to infer past fire events. Studies to calibrate such charcoal records have been carried out in a range of mid- to high-latitude regions and relationships have been determined between size and quantity of charcoal in the sediment and proximity and spatial extent of the fires. Very little is known, however, about the relationship between fire events in savanna ecosystems and …
Fire and climate change impacts on lowland forest composition in northern Congo during the last 2580 years from palaeoecological analyses of a seasonally flooded swamp
The mixed semi-evergreen forests in lowland central equatorial Africa can contain many elements of secondary vegetation. This raises the question of what factors have determined the current forest composition in this region. Is this forest in the process of succession after natural climatic variation and/or anthropogenic disturbances in the past, or is it a stable forest type? This paper presents a multiproxy palaeoecological analysis of a sedime…
Legacy of the past land-use changes and management on the ‘natural’ upland forest composition in the Apuseni Natural Park, Romania
The Apuseni Natural Park (ANP) in northwestern Romania was founded in 1990 to protect the old-growth forests in this region and their high species diversity. We present results from palaeoecological investigation (pollen, micro- and macrocharcoal) of two sedimentary sequences from ANP alongside regional archaeological and historical records to explore (1) the degree to which the present-day vegetation in this part of the reserve is a consequence …
Reconstructing Holocene vegetation on the island of Gran Canaria before and after human colonization
We provide the first fossil pollen and charcoal analysis from the island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). The pollen record obtained from Laguna de Valleseco (870 m a.s.l.) spans the late Holocene ( c. 4500–1500 cal. yr BP) and thereby captures the impact of human colonization. During the earliest period, pollen composition resembled contemporary thermophilous communities, with palms ( Phoenix canariensis) and junipers ( Juniperus cf. turbinata)…
How fire and climate shaped grass-dominated vegetation and forest mosaics in northern South Africa during past millennia
Grassland and savanna are globally important ecosystems, both ecologically and economically. These grass-dominated systems are at risk from current and future climate change and increasing anthropogenic impact. Key questions for understanding the resilience and variability of grass-dominated ecosystems under current and future environmental conditions include: How have these systems responded to climate change and disturbance in the past? What ar…
The impact of ancient civilization on the northeastern Chinese landscape
The Western Liaohe River Basin in northeastern China is one of the cradles of ancient Chinese civilization. Archaeological records from this region indicate that human occupation began about 8000 years ago and that agriculture and pastoralism were important activities from an early stage. Very little is known, however, about the effects that these activities had upon the landscape. This paper presents the results of a palaeoecological study from …
Pollen productivity estimates from old-growth forest strongly differ from those obtained in cultural landscapes
Pollen productivity estimates of individual plant taxa are necessary when determining changes of vegetation cover during the Holocene. To date, studies describing this parameter in lowland temperate Europe have been carried out in cultural landscapes showing low forest cover and dominated by human activities. However, these may be of limited use when applied to reconstruct past land cover, for instance, from pre-agricultural landscapes. The aim o…
Prehistoric farming and the postglacial expansion of beech and hombeam
Küster (1997) has argued that human activity rather than climatic ‘deterioration’ has been responsible for the postglacial expansion of beech (Fagus sylvatica) and hornbeam (Carpinus hetulus) into the oak (Quercus sp.) woodlands of central Europe. We concur that climatic change plays a subordinate role to human activity in the establishment of these taxa, although we feel that the approach adopted by Küster overlooks important ecological and meth…
Indigenous uses of wild and tended plant biodiversity maintain ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes of the Terai Plains of Nepal
Background Despite a rapidly accumulating evidence base quantifying ecosystem services, the role of biodiversity in the maintenance of ecosystem services in shared human-nature environments is still understudied, as is how indigenous and agriculturally dependent communities perceive, use, and manage biodiversity. The present study aims to document traditional ethnobotanical knowledge of the ecosystem service benefits derived from wild and tended …
Historic fuel wood use in the Galápagos Islands
Detecting the provenance of Galápagos non-native pollen
The influence of non-native pollen, both long-distance transported and from introduced taxa, on reconstruction of past vegetation is not often well quantified in palynological investigations. We examined both fossil and modern samples from the Galápagos Islands, a remote archipelago lying 1000 km from the nearest continent. These islands are particularly well-suited for such an assessment, as (1) the native flora is limited and well-known, enabli…
Prehistoric land degradation in Hungary
The recent study of Kis-Mohos Tó lake in Hungary reveals an important sequence of prehistoric landscape changes from the earliest land clearance to the early Middle Ages. The recognition of land degradation, through the application of new analytical methods, forms an important part of the discussion
Ecosystem resilience to late-Holocene climate change in the Upper Zambezi Valley
Peat deposits from wetlands in the Upper Zambezi Valley provide an important long-term window on ecosystem dynamics in the Kalahari basin during the late Holocene. We use fossil pollen and macro-charcoal extracted from peat cores contained in three wetland sites to examine the response of vegetation to regional climate change. We find that during the last 6 ka, internal ecosystem dynamics are more important than climate, as observed by independen…
The future of Southeast Asia's tropical peatlands
Pollination service delivery for European crops
Climate and abrupt vegetation change in Northern Europe since the last deglaciation
A long-standing question in palaeoecology has been to determine the importance of climate driving vegetation change since the last deglaciation. Here, we investigate the local-to-regional dynamics of vegetation change during the Lateglacial and the Holocene in Northern Europe. We extracted sites from the European Pollen Database and used the squared-chord distance (SCD) dissimilarity metric to identify time periods of high pollen assemblage turno…
Neotropical refugia
Patterns of endemism in the Neotropics have been explained by restriction of forest to ‘refugia’ in arid cold-stages of the Quaternary (Haffer J (1969) Speciation in Amazonian forest birds. Science 165: 131–137). The palaeoecological record, however, shows no such forest contraction. We review palaeoecological and phylogenetic data on the response of Neotropical taxa and communities to climatic changes of the Cenozoic. Solar insolation varies ove…
Subsidies to Owner-Occupiers
In this paper, the subsidies accruing to owner-occupiers in the Newcastle travel-to-work area (TTWA) for the period 1985-87 is examined. Data at the micro level from two building societies are used to produce estimates of the impact of mortgage-interest tax relief at source and the nontaxation of imputed rent. The overall level of subsidy is shown to have fallen through time and the greatest relative subsidies are given to households with the sma…
Quaternary Refugia of North European Trees
An attempt is made to investigate the nature of cold-stage distributions for those forest trees which today extend to northern Europe. Evidence is taken from the pollen record of the present and earlier interglacials, a model of past climate, modern tree distributions, and physiography of southern Europe. The trees occupied mid-altitude sites in the mountains of southern Europe, especially in the western Balkans and Italy during the last cold sta…
Subsidies to Owner-Occupiers
In this paper, the subsidies accruing to owner-occupiers in the Newcastle travel-to-work area (TTWA) for the period 1985-87 is examined. Data at the micro level from two building societies are used to produce estimates of the impact of mortgage-interest tax relief at source and the nontaxation of imputed rent. The overall level of subsidy is shown to have fallen through time and the greatest relative subsidies are given to households with the sma…
The vegetational history of the Balkans
The Neolithic transition - fact or fiction? Palaeoecological evidence from the Balkans
Extensive study of the spread of agriculture from the near east to northern Europe by archaeologists has failed to establish the extent to which early Neolithic farmers had an impact upon the landscape. Two current theories for how early farming spread from southeast to northern Europe (population expansion resulting in the surplus population moving northwards, and cultural migration of technologies and crops without a large population movement) …
The Neolithic transition in the Balkans
Prehistoric land degradation in Hungary
The recent study of Kis-Mohos Tó lake in Hungary reveals an important sequence of prehistoric landscape changes from the earliest land clearance to the early Middle Ages. The recognition of land degradation, through the application of new analytical methods, forms an important part of the discussion
Prehistoric farming and the postglacial expansion of beech and hombeam
Küster (1997) has argued that human activity rather than climatic ‘deterioration’ has been responsible for the postglacial expansion of beech (Fagus sylvatica) and hornbeam (Carpinus hetulus) into the oak (Quercus sp.) woodlands of central Europe. We concur that climatic change plays a subordinate role to human activity in the establishment of these taxa, although we feel that the approach adopted by Küster overlooks important ecological and meth…
The Full-Glacial Forests of Central and Southeastern Europe
The presence of trees in central and southern Europe during the last full-glaciation has long been a matter of debate. A low but persistent presence of fossil tree pollen in central and southern European full-glacial paleoecological sequences has been interpreted either as representing long-distance pollen transport from southerly refuges or as representing in situ refugial populations. Here we present macroscopic charcoal results from 31 sequenc…
Trees or no trees? The environments of central and eastern Europe during the Last Glaciation
How "Virgin" Is Virgin Rainforest?
Forest Fire History in Amazonia Inferred From Intensive Soil Charcoal Sampling and Radiocarbon Dating
What Is Natural? The Need for a Long-Term Perspective in Biodiversity Conservation
Ecosystems change in response to factors such as climate variability, invasions, and wildfires. Most records used to assess such change are based on short-term ecological data or satellite imagery spanning only a few decades. In many instances it is impossible to disentangle natural variability from other, potentially significant trends in these records, partly because of their short time scale. We summarize recent studies that show how paleoecol…
The impact of ancient civilization on the northeastern Chinese landscape
The Western Liaohe River Basin in northeastern China is one of the cradles of ancient Chinese civilization. Archaeological records from this region indicate that human occupation began about 8000 years ago and that agriculture and pastoralism were important activities from an early stage. Very little is known, however, about the effects that these activities had upon the landscape. This paper presents the results of a palaeoecological study from …
Testing the sensitivity of charcoal as an indicator of fire events in savanna environments
The charcoal record contained in lake sedimentary sequences is often used to infer past fire events. Studies to calibrate such charcoal records have been carried out in a range of mid- to high-latitude regions and relationships have been determined between size and quantity of charcoal in the sediment and proximity and spatial extent of the fires. Very little is known, however, about the relationship between fire events in savanna ecosystems and …
Fire and climate change impacts on lowland forest composition in northern Congo during the last 2580 years from palaeoecological analyses of a seasonally flooded swamp
The mixed semi-evergreen forests in lowland central equatorial Africa can contain many elements of secondary vegetation. This raises the question of what factors have determined the current forest composition in this region. Is this forest in the process of succession after natural climatic variation and/or anthropogenic disturbances in the past, or is it a stable forest type? This paper presents a multiproxy palaeoecological analysis of a sedime…
Legacy of the past land-use changes and management on the ‘natural’ upland forest composition in the Apuseni Natural Park, Romania
The Apuseni Natural Park (ANP) in northwestern Romania was founded in 1990 to protect the old-growth forests in this region and their high species diversity. We present results from palaeoecological investigation (pollen, micro- and macrocharcoal) of two sedimentary sequences from ANP alongside regional archaeological and historical records to explore (1) the degree to which the present-day vegetation in this part of the reserve is a consequence …
Historic fuel wood use in the Galápagos Islands
Late-Holocene successional dynamics in a transitional forest of west-central Mexico
The determination of past successional stages, as well as the factors triggering succession, is crucial for the understanding of forest dynamics and the design of current and future management and conservation strategies. Shifts between successional stages can take decades or even centuries to occur because of tree longevity; therefore palaeoecological studies are important tools for their study. The present research involved the palaeoreconstruc…
How fire and climate shaped grass-dominated vegetation and forest mosaics in northern South Africa during past millennia
Grassland and savanna are globally important ecosystems, both ecologically and economically. These grass-dominated systems are at risk from current and future climate change and increasing anthropogenic impact. Key questions for understanding the resilience and variability of grass-dominated ecosystems under current and future environmental conditions include: How have these systems responded to climate change and disturbance in the past? What ar…
Neotropical refugia
Patterns of endemism in the Neotropics have been explained by restriction of forest to ‘refugia’ in arid cold-stages of the Quaternary (Haffer J (1969) Speciation in Amazonian forest birds. Science 165: 131–137). The palaeoecological record, however, shows no such forest contraction. We review palaeoecological and phylogenetic data on the response of Neotropical taxa and communities to climatic changes of the Cenozoic. Solar insolation varies ove…
Detecting the provenance of Galápagos non-native pollen
The influence of non-native pollen, both long-distance transported and from introduced taxa, on reconstruction of past vegetation is not often well quantified in palynological investigations. We examined both fossil and modern samples from the Galápagos Islands, a remote archipelago lying 1000 km from the nearest continent. These islands are particularly well-suited for such an assessment, as (1) the native flora is limited and well-known, enabli…
Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2
Do dung fungal spores make a good proxy for past distribution of large herbivores?
Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2
Climate variability and associated vegetation response throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) between 60 and 8 ka
Climate and abrupt vegetation change in Northern Europe since the last deglaciation
A long-standing question in palaeoecology has been to determine the importance of climate driving vegetation change since the last deglaciation. Here, we investigate the local-to-regional dynamics of vegetation change during the Lateglacial and the Holocene in Northern Europe. We extracted sites from the European Pollen Database and used the squared-chord distance (SCD) dissimilarity metric to identify time periods of high pollen assemblage turno…
Geography (31 works) · Biology (26 works) · Ecology (21 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (20 works) · Physical geography (18 works) · Archaeology (16 works) · Climate change (16 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (13 works) · Environmental Science (12 works) · Holocene (12 works)