Forest History of the Beinn Eighe Nature Reserve

A Radiocarbon‐dated Pollen Diagram From North‐west Scotland

“…The only recent studies documenting the history of Late-Weichselian and Flandrian vegetation in north-west Scotland are from Loch Droma (Kirk and Godwin, 1963) and Beinn Eighe (Durno and McVean, 1959) in Ross and Cromarty. There are a number of pollen diagrams from eastern Sutherland and Caithness (Durno, 1958), but they do not necessarily reflect conditions in the more oceanic west.…”

Holocene reworking of drift-mantled hillslopes in the Scottish Highlands

“…However, human activity cannot be dismissed as a possible cause of drift erosion at section 3. The evidence for a coeval decline in arboreal pollen frequencies and increase in dwarf shrub frequencies at the top of unit 2 may represent woodland coppicing (T. C. Smout, personal communication, 1998), possibly related to iron-working and charcoal-burning activities which took place in and around Glen Docherty from at least 400 cal.yr BP (Dixon, 1886;Durno and McVean, 1959). Removal of a protective woodland canopy at this site may have rendered steep drift slopes more sensitive to subsequent climatically induced hydrological changes by accelerating runoff response to high-magnitude storm events, and thus may be related indirectly to the emplacement of the reworked deposits overlying unit 2 at section 3 after ca.…”

“…Durno and McVean, 1959;McVean and Lockie, 1967;Harvey et al, 1981;Innes, 1983aInnes, , b, 1997Harvey and Renwick, 1987;Brazier et al, 1988;Harvey, 1992). In contrast, several workers (e.g.…”

The palaeoecological and prehistoric context of minerogenic layers in blanket peat: a study from Loch Dee, southwest Scotland

“…Thus, well-known examples from the North York Moors (Erdtman, 1928;Simmons and Cundill, 1974;Simmons et al, 1975;Innes 1988a, 1988b) may be set alongside those from the southern Pennines (Tallis and McGuire, 1972), Wales (Wiltshire and Moore, 1983), Scotland (Knox, 1954;Durno and McVean, 1959;Birks and Madsen, 1979;, Carter, 1986) and Northern Ireland (McGreal and Larmour 1979; Hirons and Smith, 1986). Smith and Hirons (1986) considered the geomorphological implications of mineral layers in valley and blanket peats from the Mourne Mountains, Northern Ireland, and suggested that these layers were formed as a response to the effect of environmental changes on a potentially unstable store of debris on the valley slopes above the mire.…”

“…Smith and Hirons (1986) considered the geomorphological implications of mineral layers in valley and blanket peats from the Mourne Mountains, Northern Ireland, and suggested that these layers were formed as a response to the effect of environmental changes on a potentially unstable store of debris on the valley slopes above the mire. From evidence at the Beinn Eighe Nature Reserve, Wester Ross, Durno and McVean (1959) inferred that forest fires had burned timber and raw humus, leaving an exposed surface of quartzitic drift over which much washing of charcoal and sand took place onto the surface of the blanket peat.…”