Dr Elinor Breman
Dr Elinor Breman
Elinor gained her D.Phil. from the School of Geography and Environment, Oxford University in 2010. Her thesis examined the drivers of vegetation change at the present-day grassland-savanna ecotone in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa. This involved the use of a variety of palaeoecological techniques (pollen, charcoal, stable isotope and phytolith analysis) on three sedimentary sequences spanning the Holocene (last 10,000 years). The main focus of this work was climate-fire-vegetation dynamics in the summer rainfall region of South Africa, temporal (Holocene) and spatial (altitudinal) changes in C3– and C4-dominated grass ecosystems, and ecological thresholds and resilience within savannas and grasslands. This work was funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and supervised by Dr Lindsey Gillson and Prof. Kathy Willis. Elinor also holds an MSc in Forestry and Land Use from Oxford University, and an MA in Plant Sciences from Cambridge University. Previous work has investigated: the role of soil seed banks and seed dispersers in the restoration of fragmented forest; the role of sun flecks in the forest understory; and regeneration of native forest under pine plantations. Elinor has worked in tropical rainforest ecology in Costa Rica, restoration ecology in Madagascar, and run environmental expeditions to Nicaragua.
Selected Publications
Tovar, C., Breman, E., Brncic, T., Harris, D.J., Bailey, R. & Willis, K.J. (2014). Influence of 1100 years of burning on the central African rainforest. Ecography: DOI: 10.1111/ecog.00697. Abstract
Seddon, A.W.R., et. al. (2014) Looking forward through the past. Identification of 50 priority questions in palaeoecology. Journal of Ecology 102(1): 256-267. Paper.
Burrough, S. and Breman, E. (2013) Reply to Cordova et al.’s comment on ‘Can phytoliths provide an insight into past vegetation of the Middle Kalahari palaeolakes during the late Quaternary’: A case of misinterpretation. Journal of Arid Environments Abstract.
Breman, E., Gillson, L. and Willis, K. (2012). How fire and climate shaped grass-dominated vegetation and forest mosaics in northern South Africa during past millennia. The Holocene 22 (12) 1427-1439. Abstract
